And leave the well alone.
(Indian-born) Spike Milligan
I was in Delhi last week for the “World Forum on Measuring Progress and Wellbeing” organised by the OECD and the Indian Government. Participants included Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Joe Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sachs, Richard Layard and a statistically significant sample of Government Chief Statisticians, including the UK’s Jil Matheson.
Here’s what I and others said about the conference on the OECD website.
Most people can tell you what an enjoyable and purposeful life means for them. But it is a much harder thing to measure, especially across different countries and cultures.
But measurement matters. As Stiglitz said in Delhi, “If countries measure the wrong thing, then they’ll do the wrong thing”. He noted that in Canada GDP has risen by 31% since 1994 but quality of life has increased less than a third as quickly (and quality of the environment has decreased). UK Prime Minister David Cameron sent a video message to the conference in which he talked of the need to go “beyond GDP”. And Lord Layard reminded us of Robert Kennedy’s famous comment that GDP can only tell us so much about whether overall economic activity is good for jobs, the environment and life satisfaction.
We need new ways of measuring progress and wellbeing.
The conference discussed development of new metrics of what matters to people, so that governments can prioritise policy efforts in those areas. Ian Wood’s guest blog in August explained recent UK work in this area. In Delhi, governments in Mexico, Australia, Japan, France, Italy, Bhutan, India and elsewhere outlined their efforts. All are drawing on OECD leadership.
There’s clearly a long way to go before the work is fully developed. I see three main challenges: increased awareness; better measurement; and application to policy-making. But I came away from Delhi convinced that efforts to generate better ways of measuring our quality of life are essential, and could genuinely revolutionise our approach to public policy.