The wellbeing approach and the ‘wellbeing economy’ have become well known and widely used phrases in the last 10 years. The benefits of understanding societal wellbeing are recognised across the political spectrum, and many governments across the world have made steps towards measuring and understanding wellbeing in their own countries.
The UK and its constituent nations have also made progress in tracking wellbeing. Data on the subject are collected through a range of longitudinal studies, attitude surveys, and official statistics. These are collated by the Office for National Statistics in their Measures of National Well-being Dashboard, which brings together more than 40 wellbeing measures under 10 headings, including health, our relationships, where we live, personal finance, and education and skills.
A single measure of wellbeing?
But what has not been achieved, until now, is the production of a single measure of wellbeing; the regular calculation of a country’s wellbeing, announced as a single figure to provide clear information and transparency to understand and communicate society’s progress. We have one measure for economic performance, GDP, but nothing similar for social progress. So, is it possible to provide a single measure of wellbeing, or Gross Domestic Wellbeing (GDWe)? Our data analysis for the Carnegie UK Trust suggests that the answer appears to be ‘yes’, with caveats around the quality of some existing data sources.
Our approach to developing GDWe is based on the understanding that societal wellbeing is based on social, economic, environmental and democratic outcomes. A flourishing society is one where everyone has what they need to live well now and in the future, where meaningful relationships are nurtured, and where we can all contribute to society and set our own direction in life. GDWe helps us measure these key features of wellbeing.
The task of producing that single measure is not without significant data and methodological challenges and is not perfect. In the UK, it is currently more feasible to generate a single measure in England, as the scale and reliability of the data required across the population is only available at an England-level. Furthermore, data is collected from a wide variety of sources and in different ways, meaning that it has to go through a degree of statistical normalisation to make sure all 40+ measures are comparable.
The importance of relationships
To create the GDWe measures, we used datasets mainly collected and published by ONS, and compiled data for each indicator. We used a total of 12 surveys, including Understanding Society, plus nine other published datasets.
There is growing evidence that positive relationships and kindness influence wellbeing. To be specific, the quality of relationships – between individuals, communities and across generations – has a strong influence on individual, community and societal wellbeing. Personal connections can provide ‘capital’ which influences a range of outcomes across the wellbeing domains.
We used Understanding Society data to assess whether people have positive relationships (or ‘people to rely on’), or if their relationships are not as strong as they would like (those in ‘unhappy relationships’ and that report feelings of loneliness).
Data challenges
Normalisation of data, while relatively complex, is achievable for all the indicators in the current National Wellbeing dataset. However, challenges around some data, in particular data collected from population surveys, cannot currently be entirely overcome. Survey data from high quality datasets like the Labour Force Survey, is not currently collected with the intention of measuring wellbeing, and some data are incomplete. Some survey questions required to measure GDWe are asked irregularly or are rotated in and out of surveys, while there is often also a significant time lag between the collection and publication of other data.
So, it is with these caveats and imperfections that we have produced the first single measure of GDWe in England. It is experimental, and we are hoping to learn as we go in order to improve the end product.
But in the spirit of not letting perfection be the enemy of the good, this single measure does show that GDWe is possible. And, below the headline figure, it illustrates how each of the constituent elements contributes to the overall measure, providing policymakers and others with invaluable insight and granular detail, as well as the overall picture of how GDWe compares with GDP.
Starting point
As long ago as 1968, Robert Kennedy said that GDP does not measure “our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion… it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile”. We might argue, though, that it has been 2020-21, and Covid-19, which have really brought this idea into focus.
This era – and the Carnegie UK Trust’s report – represent the starting point in a much-needed conversation. Although some have raised questions about the early impact of New Zealand’s ‘wellbeing budget’, we can look to their Living Standards Framework for learning about GDWe – including how developing survey tools customised for measuring wellbeing can help overcome the data consistency issues described above.
This research shows that a single measure of GDWe is possible, and we have made an important first step. With political will, policy application, media use and public awareness, it can become a high quality, transparent and user-friendly contributor to the national conversation and understanding.
Visit the Carnegie UK Trust website to download the full GDWe report
A summary version is also available
Authors
Mark Diffley
Mark Diffley is founder and director of Diffley Partnership and an Associate at the Carnegie UK Trust
