measuring well being and progress brochure

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

Measuring well-being and progress

The OECD Better Life Initiative: Measuring well-being and progress

The OECD Better Life Initiative (www.oecd.org/betterlifeinitiative), launched in May 2011 on the occasion of the OECD’s 50th Anniversary, focuses on developing statistics that can capture aspects of life that matter to people and that, taken together, help to shape the quality of their lives. Two important elements of this initiative are the How’s Life? report and the Better Life Index. How’s Life?, published every two years, provides a comprehensive picture of well-being in OECD countries and other major economies, by looking at people’s material conditions and quality of life across the population. The Better Life Index is an interactive web-based tool that allows citizens to compare well-being across OECD countries and beyond.

On-going research on measuring well-being and progress

The OECD Better Life Initiative also encompasses a range of research and methodological projects on measuring well-being. This work can be grouped under the three conceptual pillars of:

» Material conditions » Quality of life » Sustainability

For more than 10 years, the OECD has been looking beyond the functioning of the economic system to consider the diverse experiences and living conditions of people and households. Measuring the well-being of people and the progress of societies is a key priority for the OECD, whose overarching mission is to promote “Better Policies for Better Lives”. Since the launch of the OECD Better Life Initiative in 2011, various research projects and many national and international initiatives have demonstrated the strong global interest in indicators and analysis that go beyond GDP. This brochure presents some of the projects on “Going Beyond GDP” currently being carried out by the OECD Statistics Directorate.

“Measuring Progress of Societies, […] has become fundamental for development and policy-making in general. Improving the quality of our lives should be the ultimate target of public policies”.

Angel Gurría, OECD Secretary-General

2Measuring Well-Being and Progress

www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org

How’s Life?

How’s Life? Measuring Well‑Being (www.oecd.org/howslife), a report released every two years, is prepared under the oversight of the OECD Committee on Statistics. It paints a comprehensive picture of well-being in OECD countries and other major economies, by looking at people’s material conditions and quality of life in eleven dimensions, i.e. income and wealth; jobs and earnings; housing conditions; health status; work-life balance; education and skills; social connections; civic engagement and governance; environmental quality; personal security; and subjective well-being. The OECD Framework for analysing well-being and societal progress is shown on page 4. In the two years since the fi rst edition was published, the report had a signifi cant infl uence on the ways in which well-being is measured across the world

and on the public debate on what matters to citizens. The publication of this report responds to a demand from citizens, analysts and policy makers for better and more comparable information on people’s well-being and societal progress.

The second edition of How’s Life? was released in November 2013. This edition provides an update on the most important aspects that shape people’s lives and well-being. In addition, the report contains in-depth studies of four key cross-cutting issues. First, this report analyses how well-being has changed during the global economic and fi nancial crisis: even though some effects of the crisis may become visible only in the long-term, the report fi nds that the Great Recession has had serious implications for both the economic and non-economic well-being of households. Secondly, the report looks at gender differences in well-being, showing that the traditional gender gap in favour of men has reduced but has not disappeared; it also fi nds that women and men do well in different areas of well-being and that they are increasingly sharing tasks and roles. Third, the report looks at the quality of employment and well-being in the workplace; it presents evidence on the main factors that drive people’s commitment at work and that are key to strengthening their capacity to cope with demanding jobs. Finally, the report studies the links between current and future well-being by looking at ways to defi ne and measure the sustainability of well-being over time.

T h e t w o m a i n p i l l a r s o f t h e O E C D B e t t e r L i f e I n i t i a t i v e a r e t h e H ow ’s L i f e ? r e p o r t a n d Yo u r B e t t e r L i f e I n d e x

3 Measuring Well-Being and Progress

www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org

The Better Life Index

The Better Life Index (www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org), released for the fi rst time in May 2011, has been designed to involve people in the discussion on well-being and, through this process, to learn what matters the most to them. This interactive web-based tool enables citizens to compare well-being across countries by giving their own weight to each of the eleven dimensions explored in the OECD well-being framework. The web application allows users to see how countries’ average achievements compare, based on the user’s own personal priorities in life, and enables users to share their index and choices of weights with other people in their networks, as well as with the OECD.

As of October 2013, the Better Life Index has attracted over 2.6 million visitors and over 6 million page views from 184 countries. Over 47,000 users have shared their indexes with the OECD, generating information on the importance that users attach to various life dimensions and on how these preferences differ across countries and the demographic characteristics of users. The feedback gathered from these users shows that, on average, life satisfaction, health status and education are the dimensions deemed as most important, although all dimensions are found to resonate with people’s sense of well-being.

The Better Life Index is regularly updated and enhanced. Since its creation, the tool has been enriched with additional indicators and key measures on inequalities and gender differences. It also now covers the Russian Federation and Brazil. The Better Life Index is currently available in English, French, Russian and Spanish, with a German version to be added soon. The latest version of the tool is also available on portable devices (tablets and ipads) and can be embedded in website and blogs.

Your Better Life Index

11 topics to define well being

Your Better Life Index is an interactive tool that allows citizens to measure and compare well-being across countries, based on the topics the OECD has identified

as essential in the areas of material living conditions and quality of life.

Each flower represents a country

5 circlesto setyour priorities













Each fl ower represents a country and each petal represents a topic

Rate the topics according to their importance to you


Understanding the issues

Why measure well-being and progress?

Recent years have seen an increasing awareness that macro economic statistics, such as GDP do not provide policy-makers with a sufficiently detailed picture of the living conditions that ordinary people experience. While this awareness was already evident during the years of strong growth and “good” economic performance that characterised the early part of the 2000s, the financial and economic crisis of the past few years has further amplified this sentiment – because indicators like GDP alone cannot show the full human costs of the crisis. Developing statistics that can better reflect the wide range of factors that matter to people and their well-being (the so called “household perspective”) is of crucial importance for the credibility and accountability of public policies and for the very functioning of democracy.

What is progress?

Progress is about improvements in the well-being of people and households. Assessing such progress requires looking not only at the functioning of the economic system but also at the diverse experiences and living conditions of people. The OECD Framework for Measuring Well-Being and Progress (see illustration below) is based on the recommendations made in 2009 by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress – also known as the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Commission – convened by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, to which the OECD contributed significantly. It also reflects earlier OECD work and various national initiatives in the field. This Framework is built around three distinct domains: material conditions, quality of life and sustainability. Each of these domains includes a number of relevant dimensions. While the well-being of each person can be described in terms of a number of separate outcomes, the assessment of conditions for society as a whole requires aggregating these outcomes for broader communities, and considering both population averages and inequalities, based on the preferences and value judgments of each community.

The Measuring Well-Being and Progress website: www.oecd.org/measuringprogress

OECD Framework for Measuring Well-Being and Progress

INDIVIDUAL WELL-BEING[Populations averages and differences across groups]

SUSTAINABILITY OF WELL-BEING OVER TIMERequires preserving different types of capital:

Quality of Life Material Conditions

GDP

Health status

Human capital

Social capital

Natural capital

Economic capital

Income and wealth

Regrettables

Work-life balance Jobs and earnings

Education and skills Housing

Social connections

Civic engagement and governance

Environmental quality

Personal security

Subjective well-being


Material conditions

Measuring people’s material conditions (i.e. their command over commodities) requires looking not only at their income but also at their assets and consumption, and at how these economic resources are distributed among different people and population groups. It also requires focusing on the economic resources of households rather than on measures pertaining to the economic system as a whole (e.g. GDP per capita). The OECD has been working to improve the measurement of material conditions through a range of initiatives, some of which are listed below.

Measuring disparities in national accounts

The System of National Accounts (SNA) provides information on households’ income, consumption and wealth through a set of accounts pertaining to the household sector. However, this information only shows totals for the whole number of households and average conditions in that population. These averages will not necessarily reflect the conditions that the majority of people experience when there are large inequalities across a population.

To overcome these limitations, a joint OECD-Eurostat Expert Group on Disparities in National Accounts (EG DNA) was created in 2010, under the auspices of the OECD Committee on Statistics, to look at how information on the distribution of households’ income, consumption and wealth can be integrated in national accounts, on the basis of existing surveys and administrative data. The work of this Expert Group required comparing the total amounts of household income, consumption expenditure and wealth holdings in micro and macro (SNA) sources, and in a second stage, calculating experimental distributional statistics consistent with National Accounts totals (see the forthcoming OECD Statistics Working Papers: “Distributional Measures Across Household Groups in a National Accounts Framework” and “A Cross-country Comparison of Household Income, Consumption and Wealth between Micro Sources and National Accounts Aggregates” in “Further reading” section). As a follow-up of this work, a

new Expert Group is being established with the aim of streamlining the methodology, of improving the consistency of the estimates of disparity indicators for household income and consumption, as well as of compiling more timely distributional estimates of levels and changes in income, consumption and savings consistent with the SNA framework.

Measurement of services produced by households for their own use

The measures of household consumption and production in the SNA exclude most services produced by households for their own use, such as care for children and the elderly, cooking, cleaning, etc. However, these services are sizeable in all countries and their contribution to overall consumption may differ significantly over time and across countries. The OECD pursued work to estimate the monetary value of these services, concluding that, whatever the valuation methodology used, consideration of these services would lead in all OECD countries to lower gaps relative to the United States (the country where household final consumption expenditure per capita is highest), with this gap narrowing from 70% to 50% in the case of Turkey (see OECD Statistics Working Paper: “Incorporating Estimates of Household Production of Non-Market Services into International Comparisons of Material Well-Being” in “Further reading” section).

Differences between growth in real GDP per capita and real household income per capita

In some periods, real GDP growth may differ substantially from the growth in real households’ adjusted disposable income (see Figure 1), the OECD headline measure of households’ material conditions. There are a number of factors that might drive these differences, ranging from terms-of-trade effects, to differences in the pace of income growth for households, relative to government and the corporate sector. The OECD is conducting work to quantify the importance of these different factors. The exercise is expected to be completed by early


2014. A report containing a conceptual framework for understanding the differences between GDP and household income as well as an analysis of empirical results is expected by end 2014. At a later stage, the OECD will investigate the feasibility of linking this work with parallel work on income disparities between categories of households.

Integrated analysis of microdata on household income, expenditures and wealth

Most of the analysis on the material conditions of households at the micro level (e.g. the analysis of poverty, or inequality) is based on income. However, material conditions and their sustainability over time also strongly depend on household wealth and consumption. While there are international standards for the collection of micro-data on household income (the OECD contributed to the recent revision of the international standards on household income statistics, see Canberra Group Handbook on Household Income Statistics, Second Edition 2011) and consumption, no such standards currently exist in the case of household wealth. Finally, most household surveys do not collect information on the joint distribution of income, consumption and wealth and, even when such information exists, measures describing the joint distribution of these resources (e.g. how many people with adequate income or consumption have insufficient wealth) are poorly developed.

An OECD Expert Group was set up in 2011 under the auspices of the OECD Committee on Statistics to address these limits. Guidelines for measuring the distribution of household wealth and for elaborating a framework for the production, analysis and dissemination of micro-statistics in these fields were completed in May 2013 (see the section “Just Published”). Follow-up work is now being undertaken to gather comparable information on the distribution of household wealth, based on existing surveys, with results expected by the end of 2014.

Quality of life

Economic resources, while important, are not all that matters for people’s well-being. Health status, human contact, education, jobs, environmental quality, civic engagement, governance, security and free time are all fundamental to our quality of life, as are people’s subjective experiences of life – including, for example, their feelings and emotions, and their satisfaction with life as a whole. Measuring quality of life requires looking at all of these elements at the same time: economic and non-economic, subjective and objective, as well as averages and disparities across population groups. The OECD Statistics Directorate is working to improve measures of quality of life through the initiatives listed below.

Figure 1. Differences between growth of real GDP per capita and growth in Household real net Adjusted Disposable Income (HADI) in the United States and the Euro area

(2001=100)

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Source: OECD, National Accounts database 2013


Measuring job quality

Job quality is a strong determinant of people’s life satisfaction, as people spend a majority of their daily life at work and work for a significant part of their life. Job quality covers many different aspects, ranging from work autonomy to interactions with colleagues and support from managers, as well as to more traditional dimensions such as earnings and job security. What these aspects all have in common is that they all contribute to people’s well-being. The 2013 edition of How’s Life? includes a preliminary analysis of these issues. Figure 2 illustrates the relationship between job quality and well-being at work, by showing that European workers facing stressful working conditions report more frequently that work impairs their health.

Due to its multiple facets, job quality is difficult to measure in ways that are amenable to comparison over time, across countries and socio-demographic groups. These measurement difficulties have been a major obstacle to giving more prominence to job quality in the policy debate so far. To address these issues, the OECD is launching a new project on “Defining, Measuring and Assessing Job Quality and its Links to Labour Market Performance and Well-Being”. This project will develop an operational framework for analysing job quality with the main

aim of going beyond the unemployment rates when assessing labour market performance and drawing out policy recommendations.

Well-being and inclusive growth

The notion of Inclusive Growth is broadly associated with the idea that economic growth is important but not sufficient for welfare improvements, unless the growth dividends are shared fairly among individuals and groups. At the same time there is also increasing recognition that economic growth may spill over (or not) in other non-material dimensions, such as health and education. The level and distribution of both income and the different non-income dimensions that matter for people are therefore key aspects of Inclusive Growth.

The OECD project on Inclusive Growth (“Inclusive Growth: Concepts, Methods and Work Ahead”) builds on these ideas and develops a monetary measure of living standards that accounts for some selected non-income dimensions of well-being and for their distributional aspects. In practice, the risk of unemployment and health status are the dimensions considered, along with household income, for tracking the inclusiveness of growth. Inclusiveness is captured by looking

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Poor working conditions Proportion saying work impairs health

Figure 2. Share of workers with poor working conditions and shares of those reporting a negative impact on health

Unweighted average accross 22 European countries, 2010

Source: European Survey on Working Conditions, Wave 5, 2010, Eurofound.


measures of subjective well-being: life satisfaction and the experience of stress. The decline in life satisfaction in Europe, in the years following 2008 is particularly clear.

Over the last two years, much progress has been made in developing better measures of subjective well-being. In March 2013, the OECD released the OECD Guidelines on Measuring Subjective Well‑being: the first set of international guidelines aimed at national statistical offices and other producers, and users of survey-based data on subjective well-being. The launch of the Guidelines has been supported by a workshop for data producers and users held in New York in September 2013, with two similar workshops to follow in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region in 2014.

Further methodological work is underway within the OECD focusing on the policy uses of data on people’s affective states (moods and emotions), and on the impact of culture on how people respond to subjective well-being questions. Reports summarising this work will be released in 2014. Beyond the OECD, there has been rapid progress in collecting measures of subjective well-being in national statistics. Currently 29 out of 34 OECD countries either collect, or are committed to collecting within the next few years, the primary

at three (i.e. income, jobs, health) dimensions of well-being and by taking into account distributions of outcomes along these dimensions across population groups (see Figure 3 for evidence on how the various dimensions of living standards considered in the project have evolved over time). The project represents one way to move beyond the multi-dimensional well-being framework described above (where outcomes in different dimensions are measured in physical units) to highlight the size of the possible trade-offs between dimensions, based on estimates of the “shadow prices” of these elements. While, at this stage, the inequality term considered only captures the effect of income disparities, work is planned to extend the evidence to other types of inequalities (e.g. health). As a follow-up to this project, time series of living standards for the OECD countries will be produced.

Developing guidelines on the measurement of subjective well-being

Indicators of subjective well-being have the potential to provide critical information about people’s lives, shedding light on the relationship between the objective circumstances in which people live, and how they experience and evaluate those circumstances. For example, Figure 4 illustrates the effect of the financial crisis in Europe based on two

Figure 3. Relative contributions of household income, longevity, unemployment and income inequality to growth in living standards, 1995-2007

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DEU AUT USA SWE PRT BEL DNK CAN NLD ITA FRA CZE NZL GBR NOR AUS HUN FIN

Inequality Income growth Longevity Unemployment Interaction term Economic growth Living standards

Source: Boarini, R., J. Cordoba, F. Murtin and M. Ripoll (forthcoming); “Beyond GDP – Is There A Law of One Shadow Price?”; OECD Statistics Working Papers.


to develop metrics that better capture the broad notions of economic, natural, human and social capital, and how these evolve over time, through some of the initiatives listed below.

Measuring natural capital

One critical element of a society’s asset base is provided by its natural resources. The OECD is developing indicators to monitor countries’ stocks of natural resources, and has started work on estimating the monetary value of those natural resources that are recognised in the System of National Accounts, in particular land and subsoil assets. This work also feeds into the development of the OECD’s Green Growth Indicators (GGI) and is part of the implementation of the UN new System of Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounts (SEEA). Beyond natural resources, data compilation on SEEA also covers key pollutants.

While having good measures of these stocks and pollutants is important, it is also critical to know how these resources and other global environmental commons are affected by consumption patterns in countries other than those where production takes place. A case in point is the climate system, which is affected by emissions of greenhouse gases due to various economic activities. Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are typically measured on the basis of what countries produce even though consumption

measure of subjective well-being identified in the OECD Guidelines.

Sustainability

Assessing the sustainability of well-being over time is challenging: many of the elements that will affect future well-being (ranging from changes in tastes, through to changes in technology) cannot be known and measured in the present. We can, however, assess the stocks of resources that help to shape well-being outcomes, and monitor whether these resources are being sustained for use by future generations. The OECD measurement approach therefore concentrates on four different types of resources (or “capitals”) that can be measured today, and that matter for future well-being, i.e. economic, natural, human and social capital. While the stocks of these resources will not be the only determinants of well-being over time, they offer a practical means to examine the link between the present and the future: through the accumulation or depletion of resource stocks, the choices made by one generation can influence the opportunities available to the next. The 2013 edition of How’s Life? describes the nature of the challenge of measuring the sustainability of well-being, drawing largely on the recently released report by the UNECE/OECD/Eurostat Task Force on the measurement of sustainable development. The OECD is working

Figure 4. Subjective well-being and the crisis

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Note: Life satisfaction is measured on the Cantril ladder (y-axis on the left), stress as the percentage of people who experienced stress yesterday (on the right). OECD average includes only countries for which a complete time series is available: Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States. Selected countries of the OECD Euro area are those for which complete time series are available: France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

Source: OECD calculations based on GallupWorld Poll, www.gallup.com/strategicconsulting/en-us/worldpoll.aspx.


large enough to compensate for population ageing and related depreciation of human capital.

Measuring social capital

The OECD Statistics Directorate has recently completed a project, funded by the European Commission, to review the Measurement of Social Capital. The final report of the project identifies four main ways in which the concept of “social capital” can be conceptualised and measured:

» personal relationships, referring to the structure of people’s networks (i.e. the people they know) and the social behaviours that contribute to establishing and maintaining those networks, such as spending time with others, or exchanging news by telephone or email;

» social network support, which is a direct outcome of the nature of people’s personal relationships, and refers to the resources – emotional, material, practical, financial, intellectual or professional - that are available to each individual through their personal social networks;

» civic engagement, which comprises the activities and networks through which people contribute to civic and community life,

of the associated products may occur elsewhere. The OECD has created national estimates of CO2 emissions that are based on consumption, to supplement more conventional measures of emissions based on production. This project, which is also part of the OECD work on Green Growth Indicators, is based on World Input-Output tables.

Measuring human capital

The sustainability of well-being over time is related to changes in all of a country’s resources, including human capital (i.e. the stock of competencies, knowledge and skills embodied in people). The OECD has developed experimental monetary estimates of the stock of human capital, to complement existing indicators that are based on years of schooling or levels of competencies. Monetary estimates of the stock of human capital are useful as they can be compared with stocks of physical capital (e.g. infrastructures, machineries, etc.), see Figure 5. In addition, these estimates allow one to assess how changes in this stock of human capital are affected by a variety of factors, such as education attainment, labour market and demographic factors. Monetary estimates of human capital per capita in volume terms made by Liu (2011) suggest that it has been declining in some countries (Israel, Korea, Norway and the United States), as investment in education is not

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Figure 5. Stock of human capital relative to GDP and to the stock of physical capital, 2006

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Source: OECD, National Accounts databaseInformation on data for Israel: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/888932315602

Human capital/GDP Human capital/Physical capital


such as volunteering, political participation, group membership and different forms of community action;

» and trust and cooperative norms, referring to the trust (generalised trust and institutional trust), social norms and shared values that underpin societal functioning and enable mutually benefi cial cooperation.

In addition to an extensive review of the literature, the project has included the compilation of a ‘databank’ of relevant questions from surveys around the world pertaining to the four aspects of social capital mentioned above. Surveys were identifi ed through desktop research and through enquiries to national statistical offi ces in OECD countries. While not exhaustive, the databank currently consists of around 1300 questions from over 50 surveys and survey modules. It is intended as a tool for statisticians and researchers interested in the measurement of different aspects of social capital.

Just published

A serie of publications is released to offer international guidance on measuring the various dimensions of people’s well-being both for economic and non-economic dimensions.

Guidelines for micro statistics on household wealth

Released on 12 June 2013, this publication presents an internationally agreed set of guidelines for producing statistics on household wealth at the micro level, i.e. at the level of individuals and households. It fi lls an important gap in the

existing international guidance on measuring the various dimensions of people’s economic well-being. It addresses the common conceptual, defi nitional and practical problems that countries

face in producing such statistics, and are meant to improve the comparability of the currently available country data. These Guidelines, prepared by an international expert group working under the auspices of the OECD (OECD Committee of Statistics), propose a set of standard concepts, defi nitions and classifi cations for micro wealth statistics, and cover different phases in the statistical production process, including sources and methods for measuring particular forms of wealth, best practice in using household surveys or other sources to compile wealth statistics, the development of analytic measures, the dissemination of data, and data quality assurance.

Framework for statistics on the distribution of household income, consumption, and wealth

This publication was released simultaneously with the companion report, Guidelines for Micro Statistics on Household Wealth. The Framework presents an internationally agreed framework to support the joint analysis of micro-level

statistics on household income, consumption and wealth. In response to the growing demand for relevant statistics, its aim is to extend the existing international frameworks for measuring household income and consumption at the micro level to include wealth, and describes income, consumption and wealth as three separate but interrelated dimensions of people’s economic well-being. The framework, prepared as well by an the OECD Committee of Statistics, is intended to assist national statistical offi ces and other data producers to develop data sets at the household level that are suitable for integrated analysis, and for facilitating comparisons between countries. The Framework is widely applicable, with relevance to countries that are at different stages of statistical development, that have different statistical


social, environmental and economic progress. The core mission of Wikiprogress is to connect worldwide organisations and individuals wishing to develop new and smarter measures of progress.

Wikigender (www.wikigender.org) aims to facilitate the exchange and improve the knowledge on gender equality-related issues around the world. A particular focus lies

on gathering empirical evidence and identifying adequate statistics to measure gender equality. Wikigender aims to highlight the importance of social institutions such as norms, traditions and cultural practices that impact on women’s empowerment.

Wikichild (www.wikichild.org) is a global network which focuses on sharing knowledge, news and developments for the global child well-being community. The portal draws on expertise from the

OECD, government and international organisations, NGOs, and other organisations around the world concerned with child well-being.

Related networks

A number of thematic and regional networks have been created in recent months as part of Wikiprogress, the global platform that serves as reference point for the ‘progress community’.

The Global Progress Research Network (GPRNet) (www.wikiprogress.org/index.php/GPRNet) is a multidisciplinary network of individuals committed to promoting research and debate, and building knowledge, understanding and collaboration on societal progress, its meaning, measurement and development.

The Wikiprogress Latin America Network (WPAL) (http://wikiprogressal.blogspot.fr/) is a research community based on a multidisciplinary exchange of knowledge and information among academics, analysts, opinion leaders, and citizens,

infrastructures, and that operate in different economic and social environments.

Guidelines on measuring subjective well-being

Conversely to the first two publications, this report tackles non-economic dimensions of well-being to focus on the measurement of people’s quality of life. These Guidelines were released on 20 March 2013 and represent the fi rst attempt

to provide international recommendations on collecting, publishing, and analysing subjective well-being data. They provide guidance on collecting information on people’s evaluations and experiences of life, as well as on collecting “eudaimonic” measures of psychological well-being. The Guidelines also outline why measures of subjective well-being are relevant for monitoring and policy making, and why national statistical agencies have a critical role to play in enhancing the usefulness of existing measures. They identify the best approaches for measuring, in a reliable and consistent way, the various dimensions of subjective well-being, and provide guidance for reporting on such measures. The Guidelines also include a number of prototype survey modules on subjective well-being that national and international agencies can use in their surveys.

Related initiatives and networks

Related initiatives

Wikiprogress (www.wikiprogress.org) is a global platform for sharing information in order to evaluate


on well-being measurement in Latin American countries and on how measurement can contribute to public policy.

The Wikiprogress Africa Network (http://wikiprogressafrica.blogspot.fr/) aims to foster knowledge sharing on measuring progress in an African context.

The Wikiprogress European Network on Measuring Progress (www.wikiprogress.org/index.php/European_Network_on_Measuring_Progress) aims to foster the on-going debate on the measurement of well-being and the progress of societies among all relevant stakeholders and strives to facilitate knowledge sharing and discussion within the European context.

Network products

The Wikiprogress eBrief (http://wikiprogress.org/index.php/Wikiprogress_eBrief) is a monthly electronic bulletin goes to over 31,500 subscribers and provides a snapshot of current news features and initiatives related to progress and well-being.

The Online Discussion Series (http://wikiprogress.org/index.php/Online_Discussions) provides the community with an opportunity to exchange ideas, share information, expand their knowledge base and identify pertinent connections in the global networks. Discussions are on varied topics and are usually related to an event, an index or a publication. Following are a few examples of the discussions conducted on the platforms in recent months.

How Should Older People’s Well-being be Measured? (www.wikiprogress.org/index.php/Online_Discussion:How_should_older_people%E2%80%99s_well-being_be_measured%3F) This was a timely discussion on the Global AgeWatch Index that was launched by

the HelpAge Network on 1 October 2013 – the UN International Day of Older Persons. It is the fi rst global index to rank countries according to the social and economic well-being of older people.

Políticas Públicas para El Buen Vivir y el Bienestar (www.wikiprogress.org/index.php/Online_Discussion:_Pol%C3%ADticas_P%C3%BAblicas_para_El_Buen_Vivir_y_el_Bienestar). This was the fi rst in a series of ten discussions to be lead by Wikiprogress Latin America that will culminate in a publication that will be presented at the 5th OECD World Forum on “Statistics, Knowledge and Policy” in 2015.

How Should Child Well-being be Measured in View of Future Development Frameworks? (http://wikiprogress.org/index.php/Online_Discussion:_How_should_child_well-being_be_measured_in_view_of_future_development_frameworks%3F) This was an opportunity to bring together a diversity of voices to a discussion highlighting factors which affect child well-being, as well as the challenges in measurement and the best practices in the fi eld.

The Impact of Discriminatory Social Norms on Adolescent Girls (www.wikigender.org/index.php/Online_Discussion:_The_impact_of_discriminatory_social_norms_on_adolescent_girls). The outcomes from this discussion were disseminated to a workshop in London co-organised by the OECD Development Centre, the Overseas Development Institute, the Department for International Development (DFID UK) and The Girl Hub.

The Wikiprogress ProgBlog (http://theblogprogress.blogspot.fr/) regularly features posts on the latest in research, data, initiatives and developments in progress and well-being globally. There are currently over 400 blogs on the site.


Further reading

» OECD (2013), How’s Life?: Measuring Well‑Being, OECD Publishing. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264201392-en

» OECD (2013), Guidelines for micro statistics on household wealth, OECD Publishing. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264194878-en

» OECD (2013), Framework for statistics on the distribution of household income, consumption, and wealth, OECD Publishing. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264194830-en

» OECD (2013), Guidelines on measuring subjective well‑being, OECD Publishing. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264191655-en

» OECD (2011) How’s life? Measuring W e l l ‑ B e i n g . h t t p : / / d x . d o i .org/10.1787/9789264121164-en

» OECD (2011), Towards Green Growth: Monitoring Progress: OECD Indicators, OECD Green Growth Studies, OECD Publishing. www.oecd.org/document /56/0,3746,en_2649_37425_48033720_1_1_1_37425,00 .html

» Boarini, R., J. Cordoba, F. Murtin and M. Ripoll (forthcoming); “Beyond GDP – Is There A Law of One Shadow Price?”; OECD Statistics Working Papers.

» Scrivens, K., Smith, C. (forthcoming); “Four social interpretations of social capital: an agenda for measurement”; OECD Statistics Working Papers.

» Fesseau M. and M. Mattonetti (forthcoming), “Distributional Measures Across Household Groups in a National Accounts Framework: Results from an experimental cross-country exercise on household income, consumption and saving”, OECD Statistics Working Papers, OECD Publishing.

» Fesseau M., F. Wolff and M. Mattonetti (forthcoming), “A Cross-country Comparison of Household Income, Consumption and Wealth between Micro Sources and National Accounts Aggregates”, OECD Statistics Working Papers, OECD Publishing.

» Fleche, S., C. Smith and P. Sorsa (2012), “Exploring Determinants of Subjective Well-Being in OECD Countries: Evidence from the World Value Survey”, OECD Statistics Working Papers, 2012/01, OECD Publishing. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/5k9ffc6p1rvb-en

» Boarini R., M. Comola, F. De Keulenaer, R. Manchin and C. Smith (2012), “What Makes for a Better Life? The Determinants of Subjective Well-Being in OECD Countries: Evidence from the Gallup World Poll”, OECD Statistics Working Papers, 2012/03, OECD Publishing. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/5k9b9ltjm937-en

» Ahmad N. and N. Yamano (2012), “Carbon Dioxide Emissions Embodied in Goods and Services: Domestic Consumption Versus Production”, OECD Statistics Working Papers, OECD Publishing (forthcoming).

» Ruiz, N. (2011), “Measuring the Joint Distribution of Household’s Income, Consumption and Wealth Using Nested Atkinson Measures”, OECD Statistics Working Papers, 2011/05, OECD Publishing. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/5k9cr2xxh4nq-en

http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264201392-en

http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264121164-en

http://www.oecd.org/document /56/0,3746,en_2649_37425_48033720_1_1_1_37425,00.html

http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/5k9b9ltjm937-en


» Liu G. (2011), “Measuring the Stock of Human Capital for Comparative Analysis: An Application of the Lifetime Income Approach to Selected Countries”, OECD Statistics Working Papers, 2011/06, OECD Publishing. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/5kg3h0jnn9r5-en

» Ahmad, N. and S. Koh (2011), “Incorporating Estimates of Household Production of Non-Market Services into International Comparisons of Material Well-Being”, OECD Statistics Working Papers, 2011/07, OECD Publishing. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/5kg3h0jgk87g-en

» Silva, J., F. de Keulenaer and N. Johnstone (2012), “Environmental Quality and Life Satisfaction: Evidence Based on Micro-Data”,

OECD Statistics Working Papers, No. 44, OECD Publishing. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/5k9cw678dlr0-en

» OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), www.oecd.org/piaac

» “Developing a Framework for Understanding and Measuring National Well-Being”, Alison Spence, Matthew Powell and Abbie Self, United Kingdom, Offi ce for National Statistics, July 2011. www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/user-guidance/well-being/publications/developing-a-framework-for-understanding-and-measuring-national-well-being.pdf

http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/5kg3h0jgk87g-en

http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/5k9cw678dlr0-en

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/user-guidance/well-being/publications/developing-a-framework-forunderstanding-and-measuring-national-wellbeing.pdf

OECD Statistics DirectorateParis, November 2013

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