National Accounts of Well-being:Bringing Real Wealth onto the Balance Sheet

National Accounts of Well-being:
bringing real wealth onto the balance sheet

nef - The New Economics Foundation, 2009

Available online PDF [72p.] at: http://www.neweconomics.org/gen/uploads/iglzyk45xj2jksb01c14fvq424012009010050.pdf

“….National Accounts of Well-being presents proposal to guide the direction of modern societies and the lives of people who live in them. It demonstrates why national governments should directly measure people’s subjective well-being: their experiences, feelings and perceptions of how their lives are going. It calls for these measures to be collected on a regular, systematic basis and published as National Accounts of Well-being. The measures are needed because the economic indicators which governments currently rely on tell us little about the relative success or failure of countries in supporting a good life for their citizens.

This report lays out a framework for developing National Accounts of Well-being to provide:

· A new way of assessing societal progress. National Accounts of Well-being, by explicitly capturing how people feel and experience their lives, help to redefine our notions of national progress, success and what we value as a society.

· A cross-cutting and more informative approach to policy-making. The challenges now facing policy-makers, including the ‘triple crunch’ of financial crisis, climate change and oil price shocks, are unprecedented. Silo working has long been criticised; now – when the need for systemic change is clear and present – it must be overcome. National Accounts of Well-being – by capturing population well-being across areas of traditional policy-making, and looking beyond narrow, efficiency-driven economic indicators – provide policy-makers with a better chance of understanding the real impact of their decisions on people’s lives.

· Better engagement between national governments and the public. By resonating with what people care about, National Accounts of Well-being provide opportunities for national governments to reconnect with their citizens and, in doing so, to address the democratic deficit now facing many European nations…..”

Content:

Executive summary
1. Introduction
2. Why we need National Accounts of Well-being
3. Gathering momentum
4. National Accounts of Well-being: a framework
5. Findings 1: A new view of Europe
6. Findings 2: The components of national well-being
7. Findings 3: Well-being and life conditions
8. How governments will use National Accounts of Well-being
9. Towards National Accounts of Well-being: the next steps
Appendix 1: Measuring well-being – the limits of life satisfaction
Appendix 2: How the indicators were calculated
Appendix 3: European Social Survey question aggregation
Appendix 4: Country scores for all indicators
Endnotes

From: Nic Marks Founder of the centre for well-being, nef