Georgiana Ivan Eurostat, European Commission Eurostat, Luxembourg 29.04.2015 Measuring Quality of Life and Well-Being in the European Union Georgiana Ivan Eurostat, European Commission Eurostat

We are going to talk about.. Quality of life and how is measured by the European Statistical System(ESS): political background, the process of establishing a scoreboard and the output The average quality of life of different groups and why measuring it matters Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union ESDS Working Group 29.04.2015 Eurostat

European context of measuring Quality of Life Indicators Consistency with theory The Triangle for Quality of Indicators (QoL) SSF Report Europe 2020 GDP & Beyond Political relevance Measurability Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union ESDS Working Group 29.04.2015 Eurostat

Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union Report by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress (2009) Coordinated by J. Stiglitz, A. Sen and J.P. Fitoussi Stressing the need of using other measures to complement GDP when measuring the progress of societies Grouped into three areas: emphasizing the (1) household perspective, (2) environmental and (3) quality of life indicators Better distributional measures for complementing central tendencies Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union ESDS Working Group 29.04.2015 Eurostat

GDP and beyond: additional actions and indicators Commission roadmap for actions in the short/medium term = GDP and beyond EC Communication Aug 2009 Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union ESDS Working Group 29.04.2015 Eurostat

Priorities set out in the European Roadmap 2009 Complementing GDP with environmental and social indicators: A comprehensive environmental index; Quality of life and well-being. Near real time information for decision-making: More timely environmental indicators; More timely social indicators (precise actions for EU-SILC). Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union ESDS Working Group 29.04.2015 Eurostat

Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union The ESS response Stiglitz Report Sponsorship Group (SpG) launched by the European Statistical System (ESS) - February 2010 SpG report adopted by ESS - November 2011 Expert Group on Quality of life indicators- first meeting June 2012 Europe 2020 Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union ESDS Working Group 29.04.2015 Eurostat

Expert Group on Quality of life indicators Participants: 10 MS, OECD, Eurofound, scientific experts 6 meetings so far Made proposals for dimensions, topics, indicators (including headlines), variables data sources to be used, way of dissemination Directors social statistics agreed in 2013 on a first set of QoL indicators on Eurostat's website http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/gdp-and-beyond/quality-of-life/data Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union ESDS Working Group 29.04.2015 Eurostat

Expert Group on Quality of life indicators Specific guiding principles Relevance of the indicator in relation to quality of life Data coverage Data availability Data availability at a non-aggregated level Possibility of showing information on the whole distribution Reducing the complexity (by building synthetic indicators) Overall consistency of the set Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union ESDS Working Group 29.04.2015 Eurostat

European Quality of life framework Material living conditions Jobs Overall experience of life Health Environment Education Governance Social relations& leisure Safety Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union ESDS Working Group 29.04.2015 Eurostat

Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union Example Dimension 'Leisure and social interactions' Sub-dimension : 'Social interactions' Variable/indicator 'frequency of getting together with friends' 'satisfaction with personal relationships' Sub-dimension : ' Leisure' 'frequency of going to the cinema, live performances, live sport events or cultural sites' Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union ESDS Working Group 29.04.2015 Eurostat

Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union Headline indicators 70 existing indicators+ 20 topics to be developed a need for agreement on the criteria and then of selected headline indicators the headline list has been finalised at the last meeting (20-21.04) and it consists of 14 indicators covering the 9 dimensions Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union ESDS Working Group 29.04.2015 Eurostat

Headline indicators list Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union ESDS Working Group 29.04.2015 Eurostat

2013 SILC Ad-Hoc Module on Subjective well-being “People’s experiences of their lives” - Under analysis, part of the data disseminated, the rest 1st of June Main components: cognitive, affect, eudaimonics (OECD guidelines) Overall life satisfaction question (cognitive), proposed to be collected in the core of EU-SILC, which is repeated every year 22 other variables, complementing objective data for most QoL dimensions Most measured on a scale from 0-10 Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union ESDS Working Group 29.04.2015 Eurostat

Subjective Well-Being: quality aspects Legal basis (2003 +…): variables, common concepts, classifications, procedures Quality requirement: large sample size by country, some larger (NUTS2) Manual: for 2013 AHM well-being: reference questionnaire (importance of wording, order etc) in all EU languages via a translation protocol) Easy to test the impact of different determinants on life satisfaction (rotational panel dimension) Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union ESDS Working Group 29.04.2015 Eurostat

Analysing the indicators Flagship publication (+Statistics explained pages) One article per dimension (except 1st one, which has been split into Material conditions and Housing) To be disseminated first part of June 2015 Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union ESDS Working Group 29.04.2015 Eurostat

What matters more for life satisfaction? Health, age or income? ESDS Working Group 29.04.2015 Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union Eurostat

What matters more for life satisfaction? Health.. EU-SILC 2013 Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union ESDS Working Group 29.04.2015 Eurostat

What matters more for life satisfaction? …or income? EU-SILC 2013 Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union ESDS Working Group 29.04.2015 Eurostat

What matters more for life satisfaction? Health or income? EU-SILC 2013 Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union ESDS Working Group 29.04.2015 Eurostat

What matters more for life satisfaction? Social relations or jobs? Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union ESDS Working Group 29.04.2015 Eurostat

What matters more for our quality of life? Social relations Average life satisfaction by social support (ability to get help when needed) Average life satisfaction by household type Yes No EU-SILC 2013 Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union ESDS Working Group 29.04.2015 Eurostat

What matters more for our quality of life? Having a (good) job Average life satisfaction by bad working conditions (employed population) Average life satisfaction by employment status Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union ESDS Working Group 29.04.2015 Eurostat

Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union Health, income, (good) jobs and social relations are all very important for our well-being Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union ESDS Working Group 29.04.2015 Eurostat

Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union Average life satisfaction 2013 (or what we would like the media not to focus on at first) Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union ESDS Working Group 29.04.2015 Eurostat

Yes, it is correlated with GDP per capita… imperfectly For you to judge...On this graph we plotted log of GDP per capita in PPS on X and average life satisfaction on Y. The thing that I struggle with is for instance the satisfaction levels in Poland and the UK. The satisfactions levels are the same but for significantly different GDP levels. I really wonder why the immigration flows are directed the way they are... (SC) So from this chart I see that we could identify which countries have the highest level of life satisfaction, and which have the lowest. Do you have any charts which show how countries rank in terms of their life satisfaction? (AL): We knew you are going to ask us this…That’s what usually the media wants to know. Journalists love rankings. The matter is more complex than a simple ranking. We have tried to show that there are many elements to be considered at the same time. But ok, here is the graph everybody is waiting for… EU-SILC 2013 Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union ESDS Working Group 29.04.2015 Eurostat

Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union Average overall life satisfaction 2013 How about inequalities? Differences in average well-being between the richest 20% and the poorest 20% Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union ESDS Working Group 29.04.2015 Eurostat

Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union Why measuring Quality of life matters Could you guess which indicator is presented in this graph? Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union ESDS Working Group 29.04.2015 Eurostat

Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union Conclusions Indicators beyond GDP can make a relevant contribution to policy Subjective and objective indicators provide complementary information Using a set of indicators can give a more complete picture, as opposed to focusing on one (which could also be an index), on which countries can be more easily ranked Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union ESDS Working Group 29.04.2015 Eurostat

Thank you for your attention! Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Aurelia-Georgiana.IVAN@ec.europa.eu Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union ESDS Working Group 29.04.2015 Eurostat