1. Main recommendations and Impact on Social Statistics
Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress
Main recommendations and Impact on Social Statistics
24/09/2009
S. Lollivier - Insee

2. Recommendations 1 & 2: -When evaluating material well-being, look at income and consumption rather than production -Emphasise the household perspective
Focused on national accounts
Upgrading households’ disposable income and final consumption aggregates
More specifically:
Net adjusted disposable income (including public non market services such as health and education)
Final consumption, including public non market services such as health and education
24/09/2009
S. Lollivier - Insee

3. Recommendation 3: Consider income and consumption jointly with wealth
Income and consumption should be complemented with information on wealth
Construction of balance sheet accounts for households should be promoted
24/09/2009
S. Lollivier - Insee

4. Recommendation 4: Give more prominence to the distribution of income, consumption and wealth
Average measures of income, consumption and wealth should be accompanied by indicators that reflect their distribution, e.g. median and quintiles
This will require stronger linkages between household surveys and national accounts figures
24/09/2009
S. Lollivier - Insee

5. Recommendation 5: Broaden income measures to non-market activities
Many services that households produce for themselves are not recognised in official income and production measures
Comprehensive and periodic accounts of household activity as satellites to the core national accounts should complement the picture
Time-use surveys are a major source for these data
Comparisons of living standards over time and across countries need to also take into account the amount of leisure that people enjoy
24/09/2009
S. Lollivier - Insee

6. Recommendation6: Quality of life depends on people’s objective conditions and capabilities. Steps should be taken to improve measures of people’ s health, education, personal activities, and environmental conditions. In particular, substantial effort should be devoted to developing and implementing robust, reliable measures of social connections, political voice, and insecurity that can be shown to predict life satisfaction
24/09/2009
S. Lollivier - Insee

7. Recommendation 6 (continued)
Measuring all these features of quality of life requires both objective and subjective data
The challenge is to improve existing statistical sources, to identify gaps, and to invest in statistical capacity in areas where available indicators remain deficient
24/09/2009
S. Lollivier - Insee

8. Recommendation 7: Quality of life indicators should assess inequalities in a comprehensive way
Inequalities in quality of life should be assessed across people, socio-economic groups, gender and generations, with special attention to more recent sources of inequalities, such as those liked to immigration
24/09/2009
S. Lollivier - Insee

9. Recommendation 8: Surveys should be designed to assess the links between various quality-of-life domains for each person, and this information should be used when designing policies in various fields
The consequences for quality of life of having multiple disadvantages far exceed the sum of their individual effects
Information on the “joint distribution” of the most salient features of quality of life should be based on dedicated surveys
Including in all surveys some standard questions that allow classifying respondents based on a limited set of characteristics
24/09/2009
S. Lollivier - Insee

10. Recommendation 9: Statistical offices should provide information needed to aggregate across quality-of-life dimensions, allowing the construction of different indexes
A strong demand to develop a single summary measure
Some are already being used:
Average levels of life-satisfaction for a country
Composite indices such as the Human Development index
Others could be implemented:
Proportion of one’s time in which the strongest reported feeling is a negative one
Counting the occurrence and severity of various objective features of people’ s lives
Equivalent-income measures based on people’s state s and preferences
24/09/2009
S. Lollivier - Insee

11. Recommendation 10: Measures of both objective and subjective well-being provide key information about people’s quality of life. Statistical offices should incorporate questions to capture people’s life evaluations, hedonic experiences and priorities in their surveys
Each aspect of subjective well-being should be measured separately: cognitive evaluation of one’s life, positive emotions, negative emotions
The types of questions that have proved their value within small-scale and unofficial surveys should be included in larger-scale surveys of official statistical offices
24/09/2009
S. Lollivier - Insee

12. Recommendations 11 and 12: Sustainable development and environment
The assessment of sustainability is complementary to current well-being or economic performance, and must be examined separately
Sustainability requires the simultaneous preservation or increase in quantity and quality of natural resources, and of human, social and physical capital
24/09/2009
S. Lollivier - Insee

13. Sustainable development and environment (continued)
Is it possible to have an aggregate view of all stocks, using a monetary equivalent? No, it is not possible at the time being.
A more modest approach:
Focusing the monetary aggregation on physical capital, human capital, and some natural resources
Using separate sets of physical indicators to monitor the state of the environment, identified with the help of the scientific community
24/09/2009
S. Lollivier - Insee

14. The report is opening a discussion rather than closing it
What is next ?
The report is opening a discussion rather than closing it
National and international bodies should discuss the recommendations in this report
The discussion on recommendations should identify their limits and see how best national and international bodies can contribute to this broad agenda
24/09/2009
S. Lollivier - Insee