AN ANALYSIS OF QUALITY OF LIFE, INCOME DISTRIBUTION AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT IN WEST VIRGINIA James Obadiah Bukenya Dissertation Submitted to the College of Agriculture, Forestry and Consumer Sciences at West Virginia University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Natural Resource Economics Tesfa G. Gebremedhin, Ph.D., Chair Peter V. Schaeffer, Ph.D. Dennis K. Smith, Ph.D. Stratford M. Douglas, Ph.D. Scott Loveridge, Ph.D. Dale Colyer, Ph.D. Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics Morgantown, West Virginia 2001 Keywords: Quality of life, health, utility, development, spatial analysis, per capita income Copyright 2001 James Obadiah Bukenya