The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) officially introduced on Tuesday its Live Better Index, an interactive tool allowing everyone to measure and compare their own quality of life beyond the classic Statistics Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
This index provides citizens with the OECD to compare the well-being among 34 countries on the basis of eleven criteria that the organization has identified housing, income, work, community, education, environment, governance, health, Satisfaction of the existence, security, balance between work and family life.
The first three criteria are the material conditions of existence and others are designed to reflect the quality of life.
“We do not propose to the OECD to create a composite index of welfare that would replace or would the GDP index of the OECD,” said Martine Durand, Chief Statistician of OECD.
“What we propose to make is that each person who will visit the OECD website to choose the weight it gives to each of these dimensions according to its own preferences and may build its own index, and according to its own preferences, she can see how the countries are on a scale from 0 to 10, “Ms. Durand said during a telephone interview with Xinhua.
“This is a very important tool, you can play with him, but this is not a game,” said Secretary General of OECD, Angel Gurria, adding that the index “is intended to determine the level satisfaction not only an individual but a public, company, and a great country. ”
“On the one hand, we can know better what people want, and the other, we can know better what the government can and should offer, and finally, the two units may converge better. And the quality of policies public could be improved significantly, “said Mr. Gurria.
According to Mr. Gurria, the organization has worked for ten years on the issue of measuring the progress of society, going beyond the purely economic indicator, and examining what is important for the quality of citizens’ lives beyond the GDP.
Better Living initiative of the OECD follows the work of the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, led by American economist Joseph Stiglitz.
To create the index Better Living, “we also relied on the conclusions of the Stiglitz Commission, which submitted a report in late 2009,” then “we worked very closely with national statistical institutes “said Ms. Durand.
According to the OECD, the index is not published the final version. The research work will continue and several indicators could be added.
The index is the moment for the 34 OECD member countries, and could expand to countries in emerging markets in the future, “said Ms. Finch.
“A successful company must also be a happy society, otherwise we will lose the vitality or the economy,” said Tuesday the president of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, at the opening of a forum of the OECD .
Citing “a happier life filled with meaning and confidence in the future,” Mr. Van Rompuy called for the consolidation of the “foundations for sustainable long term.”
