MEASURING WELL- BEING


Housing and a healthy work/life balance are two of the 11 dimensions of well-being identified by the OECD framework.


hugely successful at reaching a wide audience and getting analysts and members of the public interested in how to measure wellbeing. Earlier this year, Your Better Life Index was named an Official Honoree in the “Government” category of the Webby Awards, the prestigious international body recognizing excellence on the Internet. How’s Life? has also been well received by researchers and statistical agencies as an important contribution to the field of wellbeing measurement. Both of these streams of work will be regularly updated and improved. However, the real challenge is to ensure that better measures will have an impact on policies. For well-being measures to


(www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org) is an online interactive tool which allows people to construct their own summary index to compare well- being across countries. One of the main challenges in measuring a multi-dimensional concept such as well-being is that people have different views about what is most important to them. This is why it has proven difficult, if not impossible, to develop a single- number index combining information on all the different dimensions of well-being, each based on different metrics. Developing such a composite index would involve making choices about the weight of these different components, choices which can be controversial. On the other hand, summary indices are useful communication tools, combining information on several dimensions in order to compare living conditions across countries or over time. The OECD has addressed this challenge in a way that allows users to create their own personalised index by rating the importance of each of the eleven well-being dimensions used by the OECD. Users can then compare well-being in the 34


OECD countries, and share their index with other people and with the OECD. Overall, close to 800,000 people have used the OECD tool since last May.


How’s life? The How’s Life? Measuring Well- Being report takes a more in-depth look at the headline indicators used to construct Your Better Life Index, as well as introducing secondary indicators for each dimension for greater contextual depth. The report considers each well-being dimension in turn, presenting information on average outcomes as well as on inequalities in these outcomes by age group, gender and, where possible, socio- economic conditions, and exploring the determinants of each well- being dimensions. Each chapter ends by setting out the statistical agenda ahead. How’s Life? is an essential companion to Your Better Life Index, as it identifies the areas where more work will be needed to develop better metrics in the future.


Next steps: Strengthening the links between measures and policies Your Better Life Index has been


start making a real difference to people’s lives, they have to be explicitly brought into the policy- making process. The current international


interest in wellbeing is an opportunity that should be capitalized to bridge the gap between well-being metrics and policy interventions. Yet, to ensure that the evaluation of the well- being impacts of policies becomes more systematic and robust, significant research is required to better understand the causal influences at work and the ways in which well-being policies should effectively be implemented. The OECD is developing a


framework aimed at better understanding the drivers of well- being and interpreting the overall impact of alternative policies on people’s life. The ultimate purpose is to bring


considerations of well-being more firmly into government decision- making and to provide governments with advice on the well-being effects of different policy options. Of course, the way well-being


measures are used in policy- making will differ depending on the context and priorities of each country. While the focus of the


Better Life Initiative to date has been on OECD countries (and, to a more limited extent, on selected partner countries such as India, South Africa, Indonesia, China and Russia), future work will look at how to extend the well-being framework to developing countries. It is now widely recognized that "development" constitutes more than improvements in GDP. With the 2015 deadline for the “Millennium Development Goals" approaching, discussions are now underway to develop a follow-up framework based on a more holistic view of development, with the notion of well-being at its core. The OECD commitment to


develop better indicators of people’s life is stronger than ever. We are working in close collaboration with the many countries and organizations (in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Australia, Korea, Japan, China, as well as the European Statistical System, to name just a few) that have launched ambitious national and regional initiatives in this field. In many ways, however, this work is still in its infancy; developing better measures of progress, and ensuring that these are used by policy makers, is an ongoing mission. To provide impetus towards this


goal, the OECD is organizing a range of high-level regional conferences in Latin America, Asia, Africa and Europe bringing together experts from governments, statistical offices, academia and the private and non- profit sectors, culminating in the 4th OECD World Forum on “Statistics, Knowledge and Policy”, to be held in New Delhi, India, in October 2012 which will focus on measuring well-being for development and policy-making.


Endnotes 1. A few Commonwealth governments have been collecting data on subjective well-being for some time, including Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom.


The Parliamentarian | 2012: Issue Two | 119


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