It is well known that reduced ability to perform activities of daily living (ADL) and declining mobility are both related to advanced age. This relation is also valid for low quality-of-life. It is not, however, the advanced age per se that causes the low quality-of-life. Rather, it seems that it is the declining mobility that unable people to manage their daily lives satisfactory - a circumstance that is often overlooked, since the most frequently used measuring method, the ADL-scale, is mainly focusing on people's functional ability and not their mobility. Hence, the assumption and aim for this study has been to investigate to which extent mobility factors, in comparison to the control factors age, gender and ability to perform ADL, may explain low (physical) quality-of-life (SF-12, PCS-12). The study includes people (n=1402) aged 60-96, who participated in a baseline survey in one (Blekinge) of four included centres of the longitudinal and multi-centre cohort study, The Swedish National study on Ageing and Care (SNAC), in 2001, a study with a 61% response rate. Collected data indicated that mobility factors such as reduced ability either to walk a distance of 200 metres or less without stopping, or walking in stairs, or rising from a chair or opening a bottle played a crucial part when developing conditions of low (physical) quality-of-life (PCS-12), while control factors such as gender, age and ability to perform ADL, did not. The results suggest that multiple factors of reduced mobility, rather than impairment in ability to perform ADL, appear to increase the risk for low (physical) quality-of-life, and that targeting these phenomena in health care interventions, are essential.