www.ons.gov.uk/well-being
Measuring National Well-being in the UK
Glenn Everett, Director
Measuring National Well-being Programme, ONS
20 June 2013, LSE, London
Agenda
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Background to MNW programme
Programme aims
Achievements so far
Policy use
What’s next
Questions
Not that new a concept...
“The Gross National Product counts
air pollution and cigarette
advertising, and ambulances to
clear our highways of carnage... It
counts napalm and the cost of a
nuclear warhead, and armored
cars for police who fight riots in
our streets... (It) does not allow for
the health of our children, the
quality of their education, or the
joy of their play...
it measures everything except that
which makes life worthwhile.”
Robert Kennedy,
18 March 1968
UK Prime Minister asks...
“You’ve got to take
practical steps to make
sure government is
properly focused on our
quality of life as well as
economic growth”
“this information will help
government work out,
with evidence, the best
ways of helping to
improve people’s wellbeing.”
David Cameron,
November 2010
“Statistics are the bedrock
of democracy, in a country
where we care about what
is happening. We must
measure what matters the key elements of
national well-being. We
want to develop measures
based on what people tell
us matters most.”
Jil Matheson,
November 2010
What are we trying to achieve?
An accepted and trusted set of National Statistics to help
people understand and monitor national well-being.
The ‘triple bottom line’
Economy
Social
Environment &
Sustainability
Why are we doing this
• To provide information to monitor and
understand the wellbeing of the UK.
• Move beyond GDP as main measure of
national progress.
• Provide policy makers information to take into
account the impact on the well-being of people
and the environment.
• Ultimately to make better decisions.
National debate
Ran between Nov 10 & Apr
11 - ‘what matters to you?’
Held 175 events attended
by 7,000+ people
Generated 34,000+
responses, most online
Helped identify key areas
that matter most
Follow on consultation Oct
11 to Jan 12
1,800 responses
Consultation on domains and measures
• We’ve listened…
…to the nearly 1,800 responses to the consultation on
domains and measures, which outlined broad support for
approach taken
• We have….
…revised some of the measures in light of comments
received and are continuing to evaluate feasibility of
other suggestions
• We propose…
…10 domains with 3 to 5 headline measures each,
mixture of both objective and subjective measures.
Domains of National Well-being
Individual Well-Being
People’s own Assessment of their
own well-being (SWB)
Education and skills
Health
Equality/Fairness
Personal Finance
Where we live
Our relationships
What we do
Factors directly affecting individual wellbeing
Natural Environment
Governance
The Economy
More contextual domains
Sustainability Issues over time
What are we doing
• Using many existing sources (around 21) to
populate the Domains.
• Added 4 questions on personal well-being to
household surveys:
• Life satisfaction; Worthwhile life; Happy & Anxious
yesterday.
• Findings analysed alongside other information
to help understand impact on well-being
• ONS aims to inform debate and improve
decision making.
Developments
Economy
Social
Environment &
Sustainability
• Human Capital stock estimates
• Economic position of households
• Developing non-market estimates
• Experimental subjective well-being data
• Consultation on domains and measures
• Cross-cutting analyses
• Develop social capital estimates
• UK Env Accts – Blue book
• Contributions to development of international
standards for international accounting
• Consultation on measuring natural capital and
ecosystems
What’s been published to date..
Reports on consultation.
List of 10 domains and measures.
First annual report: ‘Life in the UK’.
Analysis of annual experimental subjective
well-being dataset from the APS, 4/11 – 3/12
Articles covering each of the domains – health,
economy, where we live, personal finance, etc.
Interactive wheel, bar charts and maps
highlighting distributions & sub-regional
estimates
National Well-being wheel
Maps
Charts
What matters most to personal well-being?
Latest findings from regression analysis of personal well-being
found:
• Self-reported health, employment status and relationship status
most important aspects of personal well-being
• Higher earnings don’t necessarily lead to higher feelings of
happiness but do increase people’s life satisfaction
• People in higher occupations or higher qualifications more
anxious than lower occupations or qualifications
• Choice important – people working in a job that they are content
with have higher life satisfaction than those wanting an additional
or different job.
Policy Appraisal
• It is important these new measures are
not just published but become part of
public debate and are used to improve the
development, implementation and
evaluation of policies
• In July 2011 the Treasury and Dept for
Work & Pensions updated the Green Book
to include an approach that uses subjective
well-being measurement, to improve social
cost-benefit analysis.
• Social cost-benefit analysis seeks to
express the full social costs and full social
benefits of policies in monetary terms.
• Such estimates can inform options,
analysis and business cases.
What’s next...
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Encourage use of well-being data in policy.
• Review and refine domains and measures of well-being, including assessment
of change.
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Further research drivers of well-being.
• Review framework for presenting well-being data to cover sustainability, equity
and sub-national information.
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Further development of the SWB questions.
• Continue to develop other indicators (eg human, social & natural capitals, nonmarket production, etc).
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Continued input on International developments (UN, OECD, EU).
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The programme will continue to consult widely.
Key messages
• Long-term development project – still learning –
experimental outputs
• NOT a ‘happiness index’
• Consider importance of distributions not just averages
• Not a single measure – need both objective and
subjective data
• Supplements – not supplants GDP
• Use for better targeting of scarce resources
• Use for ‘Better policies for better lives’ (OECD)
Questions
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See more: www.ons.gov.uk/well-being