cultivar_22_Final_EN

Time to focus on what matters: an agenda for measurement and policy 57 people’s well-being ”. A signif- icant body of research and statistical work has thus been developed aiming to provide alternative or complemen- tary metrics of human pro- gress. Many countries have developed frameworks for measuring various aspects of well-being, aimed at gaining a better understanding of people’s lives at the individual, household, community and territorial levels. At the international level, other initiatives, such as the European Commission’s Beyond GDP, added to the impetus to look for – and to use – new approaches to the measurement of quality of life and progress. In 2011, the OECD, which had been leading the international work on well-being measurement and policy for over a decade, launched a new project to produce better indicators of progress across the dif- ferent areas that matter for people’s well-being. The OECD Better Life Initiative takes a broad approach to defining social progress by focusing on 11 dimen- sions of individual well-being, i.e. income and wealth; work and job quality; housing; health; knowledge and skills; environmental quality; subjective well-be- ing; safety; work-life balance; social connections; and civic engagement. In line with the recommendations in the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi report, the OECD Better Life Initiative : i) focuses on the individuals, rather than on the economy, ii) considers the distribution of well-being in the population alongside average achieve- ments in each country; iii) is multidimensional; and iv) balances objective meas- ures and subjective judgements. Importantly, it also stresses the need to assess both current and future well-being, considering the latter in terms of a num- ber of key resources (economic, social, natural and human capital) that have the potential to generate well-being over time. The OECD Better Life Initiative has been an ambitious undertaking, but an important one, as its aim is not only to produce well-being evidence using the best currently-available data, but also to ensure that over time the new metrics are effectively used to inform policy-making. Indeed, ulti- mately, the goal of most gov- ernments is not just to grow economies, but rather to improve the lives of citizens. And while GDP growth is critical for achieving a number of important objec- tives, including adequate financing of social pro- grammes and public investments, it should always be recognized as a means to other ends rather than as a goal in itself, and that the quality of economic growth matters, not just its quantity. From measurement to policies One reason the 2008 financial crisis morphed into a social and political crisis is that relying on GDP not only gave a false picture of the overall state of well-being, it also contributed to the decline of trust in governments and experts, as people saw that their own situation was not improving despite the fact that, based on GDP figures, it was stated that a recovery was underway. If we had used better met- rics, we might have realized that the effects of the crisis on people’s economic well-being and quality of life were much deeper than the GDP statistics indicated. And if that had been the case, perhaps governments would have responded more strongly to mitigate the negative impacts of the crisis. Indeed, measuring well-be- ing cannot be an end in itself. For well-being indicators to contribute to better lives, they must be used in deci- sion-making by policy makers and by the general public. Although more and more countries have taken on the challenge of developing well-being frameworks, less have taken steps to use these indi- cators more systematically in their policy settings and decisions. While developing a better ‘compass’ or a new ‘GPS’ is essential to provide a more com- prehensive diagnosis of the state of a country now and in the future, it would be naïve to think that indi- cators and statistics will be the only factor at play. As noted by J.M. Keynes, “The real difficulty in changing Indeed, ultimately, the goal of most governments is not just to grow economies, but rather to improve the lives of citizens. “The real difficulty in changing any enterprise lies not in developing new ideas, but in escaping from old ones”.