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Welcome to the Measuring Societal Wellbeing Seminar 4th Oct 2010

Welcome to the Measuring Societal Wellbeing Seminar 4th Oct 2010 Looking at how we take forward the Stiglitz, Sen & Fitoussi agenda across the UK. There’s more to life than GDP but how do we measure it?. Paul Allin Deputy Director: Societal Wellbeing, ONS. What is societal wellbeing?.

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Welcome to the Measuring Societal Wellbeing Seminar 4th Oct 2010

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  1. Welcome to the Measuring Societal Wellbeing Seminar 4th Oct 2010 Looking at how we take forward the Stiglitz, Sen & Fitoussi agenda across the UK

  2. There’s more to life than GDP but how do we measure it? Paul Allin Deputy Director: Societal Wellbeing, ONS

  3. What is societal wellbeing? Wellbeing Quality of life Happiness Life satisfaction Welfare Sustainability • A multi-dimensional measure of the progress of society • Economic, environment and social dimensions • Difficult to theorise, define and measure • It’s big picture stuff (potentially linked to lots of detail)!

  4. Why measure wellbeing? • Well known problem • more to life than GDP • Social Trends, SDIs, etc • New impetus • Academic, political, international • Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi report • Budget June 2010 “The Government is committed to developing broader indicators of well-being and sustainability”

  5. Stiglitz framework • Classical GDP issues (5 recs) • Incl alternative measures; income, consumption and wealth jointly and distributions; households; non-market activities • Quality of life (5 recs) • Objective and subjective measures, inequalities, links and aggregate indexes • Sustainable developt & environment (2 recs) • Dashboard, stocks, economic and physical • Discuss incl at national round-tables

  6. Measures of economic activity • GDP, although important, has limitations for measuring societal wellbeing. • Additional measures of National Income in theory provide better measures of societal wellbeing – e.g. NDP, GNI, NNI. • Go beyond National Income measures and look at household income and expenditure to better understand material wellbeing. Chiripanhura, B (2010) Measures of economic activity and their implications for societal wellbeing, August 2010, ELMR, ONS.

  7. Measures of subjective wellbeing • ONS research into what subjective questions are being asked. • Life satisfaction/happiness measures already collected on a range of surveys and presented in DEFRA SDIs. • Role for ONS to collect subjective wellbeing data on its household surveys? (eg LA ests) • How could high quality subjective wellbeing data inform public debate and policy making? Waldron, S (2010) Measuring Subjective Wellbeing in the UK, September 2010, Working Paper, ONS

  8. Proposed way forward • Cross government work led by National Statistician • Ministerial group/advisory board • National debate developed in stages • Review of SDIs • Subjective wellbeing measures • Better engagement with international developments • Long term process moving to wider measures

  9. Resources, resources, resources • Existing evidence base Social Trends, SDIs, income and wealth distribution etc, Wellbeing Knowledge Bank • Using existing networks eg APPG on Wellbeing Economics? • SR10 bid incl for subjective wellbeing • Joining up with related initiatives SDI review, national themes, impact indicators, data review, SITF, Big Society, international

  10. Welcome your comments/questions • Extent of interest among Ministers and policy colleagues • Fit with related initiatives • Ensuring high level engagement across Whitehall • Conducting an effective national debate • Sustainability of existing sources to exploit Thank you!

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