28.11.2022

Focus: Vincent Siegerink (Economist in the OECD WISE Centre) spoke about the need for businesses to take up and align measures of well-being with those in use by governments. He showed which steps the OECD has taken to strive towards harmonization and talked about initiatives to pilot well-being surveys, which are an instrumental step in unlocking more data about well-being in firms.

Discussion: Well-being surveys are useful for all types of companies as well as for public employers and government agencies. The importance of packaging data in different ways for different audiences was discussed, as was the need to include future generations as stakeholders. Being able to provide a more granular perspective on well-being is extremely valuable, as aggregation has its shortcomings. What does data on the effort made by companies to advance their social performance say about their actual performance?

Conclusion: The past decade has seen impressive steps by governments and national statistical offices to better measure people’s well-being and use such information in policy and decision-making processes. For businesses, too, measuring well-being is a valuable exercise, for example to inform sustainability management practices, provide investors with better data on stakeholder impacts, and make a contribution to societal goals. Ideally, governments and businesses should rally around a similar set of metrics, which would allow data interoperability, rendering the measurement of well-being more informative. Metrics should also evaluate the actual performance of businesses as opposed to only evaluating the effort they (claim to) make.

Go Deeper: Here you can find an OECD paper on the topic.

24.10.2022

Focus: Dr. Dasho Karma Ura (President of the Centre for Bhutan and Gross National Happiness Studies) and Dr. Sabina Alkire (Professor of Poverty and Human Development, Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), University of Oxford) presented on the scope, methodology, and policy-potential of Multidimensional Indices of Poverty and Well-Being with a particular focus on the case of Bhutan – the first country to have developed both a multidimensional happiness index and a multidimensional poverty index as official statistics and policy-tools.

Discussion: The methodology underlying both measures and the ways in which they can inform both national and subnational policymaking were discussed. This included how Multidimensional Indices of Poverty and Well-Being complement existing statistical efforts and measures and how they can they be used to guide effective policies for the equitable reduction of disadvantages to advance the well-being of all.

Conclusion: Indices such as MPI and GNH are useful in giving some degree of empowerment to individuals and providing more personalized measures of wellbeing. However, further thought is required on how to deal with people's vastly different conceptions of “what makes life worthwhile” as well as on whether the components making up these sorts of indices are substitutable or not.

Go Deeper: Here you can find OPHI’s book on Multidimensional Poverty Measurement and Analysis as well as their latest Global MPI 2022 report.

19.09.2022 

Focus: Per Espen Stoknes (Project Lead, Earth4All) presented their newly published book which challenges the current linear, neoliberal, growth-at-all-costs economic approach and promotes policies to move beyond GDP for a safe, secure, and prosperous future.

Discussion: Questions that were raised and pondered on included how to represent the quality of democratic institutions in a quantitative model, how to build democratic institutions and social trust, and how to connect short-term democratic cycles with long-term narratives and institutions that are capable of countering the short-termism of everyday politics.

Conclusion: Policy solutions are bedeviled by questions of fairness and therefore equal participation in finding solutions is extremely important. Citizen’s assemblies are a great example of how to do this. Narratives that will reach and persuade people as well as help to align people’s values with taking necessary action are equally crucial.

Go Deeper: Here you can find more information about the book Earth for All: A Survival Guide for Humanity and an Executive Summary available in multiple languages.

16.05.2022

Focus: Dennis J. Snower and Katharina Lima de Miranda introduced the SAGE Dashboard – a tool for measuring the wellbeing of societies beyond GDP – and presented insights from their recently published paper which examines the effect of the pandemic on solidarity, agency, GDP, and environmental performance (SAGE for short) in G7 countries.
 
Discussion: The diverse effects on S and A experienced by different countries during the pandemic suggest that governments’ social policies have an important role to play alongside economic and health policies in coping with the pandemic. The interactions between economic prosperity, social prosperity, and environmental sustainability are important to monitor and there remains a need for more and better-quality disaggregated data.
 
Conclusion: This first session provided an introduction to the work taking place at TNI and GSI to advance the creation of a more holistic measure of prosperity and connect the measurement agenda to policymakers.

Go Deeper:
Here you can find their paper on Societal Responses to Covid-19: Evidence from the G7 Countries.