By guest author They say it takes a village. This well-worn expression comes up again and again and its message is straightforward: our social connections and communities matter. They make us feel grounded and supported and, quite frankly, they make life both easier and better. Anyone who has moved somewhere new and has had to [...]

By Julia Laplane, OECD This article is on “Education “, the third most popular topic in the Better Life Index. Education is a cornerstone of a functioning society. As Benjamin Franklin put it: “An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.” But as education becomes longer and increasingly expensive, are we teaching our young people [...]

By Julia Laplane, OECD Today’s article is on “Work-Life Balance”, the 4th most popular topic in the Better Life Index. How far would you go to get, or keep, a job? British reality sitcom “The work experience” tested that question on young job seekers. Naïve graduates are tricked into believing they are starting an internship [...]

By guest author What do we mean when we talk about societal well-being? The concept of well-being changes between historical periods, places and cultures and cannot therefore be defined simply according to a theoretical format. Moreover, scientific research in this field shows us that, at the moment, no single statistical indicator is capable of fully [...]

By Martine Zaïda, OECD Did you know that 2013 is the International Year of Statistics? Organisations worldwide are coming together to celebrate and recognise the contributions of statistical science. Through the combined energies of close to 2,000 organisations involved from virtually every country in the world, the International Year of Statistics aims to promote the [...]

By guest author What makes for a better life? This is one of the most serious questions of our time. In fact it is one of the most serious questions of all time. Throughout history mankind has grappled with this question: from Plato questioning “the right way to conduct our lives” to Descartes’ grand proclamation [...]

  On the International Day of Happiness, 20 March 2013 the OECD released a detailed set of Guidelines on Measuring Subjective Well-being. This is essentially a handbook for statisticians involved in collecting and publishing information on subjective well-being (measures of life satisfaction, happiness, and similar concepts). All of this, one might think, sounds very worthy, but extremely [...]

By Katherine Scrivens, OECD  Relationships matter for individuals and society – but how can we measure their value?   Humans are social creatures. Beyond the immediate pleasure we get from being with others,  the quality of our social relationships is one of the most important factors shaping well-being outcomes throughout the life course.  Academic achievement, [...]

As part of the Wikiprogress on Gender Equality series, this progblog article is bought to you by Angela Hariche and Karen Barnes Robinson.  They graduated together five years ago, and took a job in the same firm in the same city. Three years later, he can afford a down payment on a house and she cannot.   Her day starts [...]

By Julia Laplane, OECD “No man is an island entire of itself” – but what does this mean today, in the 21st century, with our competitive economies and virtual reality societies? We know that GDP is flawed as a measure of how happy people really are. Many of our societies tend to be unhappier today [...]

Since the Australian Bureau of Statistics first published Measures of Australia’s Progress (MAP) in 2002, it has been bringing together a large range of statistics about Australia’s society, economy and environment to help give an insight into our national progress and ask the question – ‘Is life in Australia getting better?’. The statistics are put into social, economic and [...]

By Julia Laplane, OECD We all know that good health is important to a good life – and as the Roman poet Juvenal made clear some 2,000 years ago, that means physical and mental health. “Mens sana in corpora sano” (a healthy mind in a health body) was his recipe for a long and happy [...]

By Julia Laplane, OECD  They were doing it in Egypt 3,000 years ago on papyrus to count people, cattle and corn, while 16th century Incas did it by tying knots in lengths of string — Inca Khipu  and the Roman Empire used them to check its stock of adult males fit for military service — [...]

By guest author In New Zealand, a widening gap between the rich and the rest threatens many of the country’s greatest strengths, writes Max Rashbrooke, who argues for a new settlement of welfare. During the last three decades, New Zealand has undergone a startling transformation, from a conservative, largely monocultural society with a heavily protected [...]

By Sue Kendall, OECD How do you cope with a hard winter? Turn up the heating? Put on warmer clothes? Or come out of the forest and start eating your neighbours’ reindeer? A state of emergency has been declared in the Yakutia (Sakha) republic, in the northeast of the Russian Federation, because hungry wolves have [...]

By Julia Laplane, OECD As memories of year-end celebrations fade and New Year resolutions start to tarnish, the time has come to think about what the coming year may have in store for us. Economic prospects remain bleak, with the latest OECD Economic Outlook forecasting a “hesitant and uneven recovery” over the next two years. [...]

By guest authors Gallup* is a strong believer that many factors beyond income contribute to a good life. That is why the company measures dozens of behavioral economic indicators as part of its World Poll. Gallup has now conducted more than 1 million surveys on more than 100 metrics in 160 countries and areas since [...]

By Julia Laplane Are girls really born with a desire to dress in pink and play with dolls while boys favour blue clothing and prefer to play with cars? And if not, why have these ideas become so ingrained in many countries that they are taken for granted? Advertising clearly plays a key role in [...]

By guest author How can we measure quality of life? The State of the World’s Cities 2012/2013: Prosperity of Cities report from the UN-Habitat programme, which focuses on the prosperity of cities, ranks cities according to criteria including environmental sustainability, social equity and inclusion, productivity, infrastructure and quality of life. But how far is quality of life [...]

By Martine Durand, OECD  On October 16, 2012 almost 400,000 babies were born in the world. On that same day, approximately 1000 people from around the world, including economists, statisticians, policy-makers and representatives from business and civil society, met to talk about the future lives of these babies. The 4th OECD World Forum on Measuring Well-Being [...]

By guest author On November 1, 2012 New Jersey and New York were grappling with the devastating effects of super-storm Sandy.  On the same day Bloomberg’s Businessweek magazine published a story with the controversial cover headline “Its Global Warming, Stupid.” The next day, Bloomberg posted another bluntly written article arguing that the best defense against devastating [...]

Over the last few years, and even more so after Rio+20, many calls have been heard for new tools to measure development towards sustainability, to measure wellbeing and happiness of people. And now there also is the challenge of another Eureka moment. Wow, let’s see if there is one. Stiglitz stated: ‘If we measure the wrong [...]

By guest author In the collective consciousness, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is usually associated with only ecological and philanthropic activities, but there is more to CSR than that. CSR is about engaging with the social environment in which one lives. For better understanding I refer to a key word: community, defined as a reciprocal agreement with the habitat [...]

By guest author Individual freedom can only exist within the social context in which people live, and among the ways in which it is possible to exercise this freedom, that of respecting democratic rules deserves a special place.  One of the brightest examples is given by the the Athenian democracy, where the separation between the State and the [...]

We all want a better life, but what does this mean, and how to measure it?  We know that happiness and well-being are not just a question of GDP and that we also need to take into account elements such as education, your household’s income, standard of housing and access to vital elements such as [...]

By Romina Boarini, OECD “Here is my secret. It is very simple: it is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eyes”. So said Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s Little Prince, and he was right. Many of the things that are essential to our lives, friendship, trust [...]

By Julia Laplane, OECD As NASA’s rover, Curiosity, reveals proof that water, a “key ingredient for life”, once ran on planet Mars, questions emerge that go well beyond David Bowie’s enigmatic song title. If water was present on Mars for “thousands or millions of years”, what happened to cause desertification and replace vigorous streams with [...]

With the deadline for the Millennium Development Goals drawing nearer, there is much discussion around what needs to be done to achieve these goals, as well as what will happen post 2015.   (This post first appeared on the Wikiprogress ProgBlog)   It must be acknowledged that the Goals have provided a clear framework for the monitoring and evaluation of [...]

By Julia Laplane, OECD Did you know… that seniors read up to three times faster on an Ipad than on paper books? Or that 50% of the people who use Kindles are over 50 years old? Despite a general belief that new technologies are the privilege of the young, age and innovation are not necessarily [...]

By Carrie Exton, OECD For many people, thinking about work brings mixed emotions. Day-to-day stresses, strains and frustrations can be off-set by office camaraderie, the satisfaction of meeting deadlines or targets, and the rewards of feeling like you’re doing a “good job”.  Crucially, of course, paid work also provides a salary – to help cover [...]

By Julia Laplane, OECD “The sinews of war are infinite money”. So said statesman Cicero. As the campaign for the American election begins, it seems the sinews of politics are equally tied to effective fund-raising. The costs of the 2012 American presidential election are set to reach record amounts, if they follow an established pattern [...]

By guest author Three traditional poles of the capitalist global economy – Japan, Europe and the U.S. – seem to compete for the largest public debt. Who’s the most fiscally irresponsible, and why, asks this article written by Craig J. Willy for the Bertelsmann Stiftung foundation . In the medium to long-term, virtually all the [...]

By Julia Laplane, OECD “Working hours are never long enough. Each day is a holiday, and ordinary holidays are grudged as enforced interruptions in an absorbing vocation.”, so said Winston Churchill. Luckily, he appears to be an exception, as nearly 1 billion people enjoyed a welcome break in 2010. Holidays are an opportunity to relax, [...]

By Carine Viac, OECD Speaking to business leaders during  the G20 summit in Mexico, the OECD Secretary-General said that Europe and the euro zone represented “the major risk for the world economy” while  the head of the World Bank noted that everyone was “waiting for Europe to tell us what it’s going to do“. All [...]

By Julia Laplane, OECD “The Olympic movement gives the world an ideal which reckons with the reality of life”, so said Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern games: This ideal goes far beyond the world of sports and echoes a universal quest for happiness and well-being. It is also a valuable reminder that while [...]

By Sue Kendall-Bilicki, OECD Health is one of the primary concerns for all of us. “How are you”, “Comment ça va”, Wie gehts” are not just common courtesies when we meet, they reflect our sense that feeling well is a large part of feeling good. But how much is good health worth? And how much [...]

By Romina Boarini, OECD Measuring well-being is about going beyond the cold numbers of GDP. But cold as it may be, GDP remains a very important indicator for measuring the economic performance of countries, which is a fundamental driver of well-being. This is not only because income means higher material standards but also because income [...]

Here’s one of the best ever openings to a paper in any academic discipline you care to name: “The economic changes that occurred in this country during recent years are sufficiently striking to be apparent to any observer without the assistance of statistical measurements. There is considerable value, however, in checking the unarmed observation of even a careful [...]

Costa Rica and most Latin American countries are more ecologically efficient than richer nations such as the USA and Germany. That’s the message that comes out of the new Happy Planet Index, launched today by nef (the new economics foundation). (This post first appeared on the Wikiprogress ProgBlog under the title “The 2012 Happy Planet Index launched today) The [...]

By Sue Kendall-Bilicki, OECD “A healthy mind in a healthy body” – that recipe for happiness dates at least 2,000 years to Roman poet Juvenal, who in his tenth “Satire” listed these as the prerequisites for human happiness.  On the face of it, the world has changed beyond imagining since then, but when it comes [...]

By Sue Kendall-Bilicki, OECD According to an old joke, when a lost traveler asked a farmer the way to the next village, he received the unhelpful reply “Well, to begin with I would not start from here”. A useful reminder that if we want to achieve anything in life, we need to think carefully before [...]

This post first appeared on the Wikiprogress ProgBlog under the title Underlying discrimination against women stopping progress on gender equality and development A girl who is married early and then begins child rearing early is not likely to finish her education, which then limits her employment opportunities. Her lower status in the family will not only affect her [...]

The Better Life Index has been referred to in different ways in recent press releases:  “The Happiness Index”, “The Good Life Index”, “The Quality of Life Index”… You could call it a global survey asking people what they think is important. To answer this question, the many press releases and online reactions are a good [...]

By Sue Kendall-Bilicki, OECD The problem with averages is that they are so impersonal. There is no doubt that the information they give can be useful – if the average performance in maths, reading and science in your country is higher than the average for dozens of countries, that tells you something about the quality [...]

By Sue Kendall-Bilicki, OECD “Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.” wrote Galileo Galilei, the 17th century Italian physicist, mathematician and astronomer often called the “Father of Modern Science”. But just how do you measure people’s general happiness and satisfaction in life? For a start, what is important in life seems [...]