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

2. 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
Eurostat

3. 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
Eurostat

4. 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
Eurostat

5. 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
Eurostat

6. 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
Eurostat

7. 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
Eurostat

8. 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
Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union
ESDS Working Group
Eurostat

9. 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
Eurostat

10. 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
Eurostat

11. 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
Eurostat

12. 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 ( ) and it consists of 14 indicators covering the 9 dimensions
Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union
ESDS Working Group
Eurostat

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

14. 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
Eurostat

15. 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
Eurostat

16. 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
Eurostat

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

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

19. 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
Eurostat

20. 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
Eurostat

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

22. 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
Eurostat

23. 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
Eurostat

24. 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
Eurostat

25. 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
Eurostat

26. 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
Eurostat

27. 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
Eurostat

28. 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
Eurostat

29. 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
Eurostat

30. Thank you for your attention! Questions? Comments? Suggestions?
Measuring Quality of life and Well-Being in the European Union
ESDS Working Group
Eurostat