This quality of life metric is purely economic, but it is easy to read it as general life quality- personally, I'd swap now for 1820s homesteading out west in a heartbeat even though that would register as 'extreme poverty' on the economic scale.
There's also a big difference between living in a part of the world where the woods provide a relatively temperate climate. Try living out in the forest to Papua New Guinea with 100% humidity.
By the way, try to make sure you don't accidentally get bitten by a rabid animal because the cure for rabies wasn't invented until the 1880s.
[And 50% have a washing machine. Mine broke a few months and it was a big mess until we got a new one.]
Government can't "end" it any more than it can end partying.
If you're talking about the ability to live off the land you don't own and owning land without paying taxes, that's a different story.