The term "quality of life" has been used in several approaches and is a subject of research essential for health. Much research has been dedicated to studying the old in new perspectives, but most of these studies refer to elderly who live in urban environments, with few researches on the subject of aging in rural areas. The instrument used was the WHOQOL-OLD, modified for the elderly, in order to evaluate and compare the quality of life of elderly residents in urban and rural environments. The sample consisted of 30 women, aged over 60 years. Statistical treatment consisted of descriptive and inferential analyses. The data were analyzed using SPSS version 13.0 for Windows. The level of error and statistical significance was set at 5% (p <0.05). After analyzing the results, the elderly were classified as medium of OQL-old less than 13 as being in possession of sufficient quality of life, 46% of elderly residents in the urban area showed levels at or above 13, surpassing the 40 % of individuals living in rural areas, which obtained levels higher than 13. It was found that the fact of living in different geographical regions not affected by levels of quality of life. It is recommended that further studies are conducted so as to complement and compare the results of quality of life of older people from other regions with a view to obtain a qualitative classification of quality of life of elderly people with various socio-demographic and cultural characteristics.
Quality of Life; Rural Population; Urban Population; Aged, Women; Quality of life; Rural and urban environments