We regard the outflow of young people from our home as a factor in the breakdown of the regional economy. We investigated the situation of depopulation in the neighbouring region of Miyoshi-city for high school students (third grade) by using both sociology-based and psychology-based questionnaires (BREF-WHOQOL26).
The main results are as follows.
1) Total QOL (quality of life) scores of girl students were statistically lower than that of boys.
2) The number of items which bore a significant correlation to the total QOL scores for girl students was statistically smaller than those for boy students.
3) The regression analysis showed that the total QOL scores of girl students were influenced by the items concerning natural conservation, affection shown at home and safety from natural disasters while, those of boy students were influenced by the items concerning the completion of medical care and welfare, the contribution of home life, home comforts, affection shown at home, communicative activities with people from other regions and the circumstance of education.
From these findings the policy that induced the increased rate of QOL in females was fundamentally necessary for the activation of endogenous development of hilly and mountainous areas, because there were some difficult situations from which the preadolescent female could not gain satisfaction in these regions.