The UK Office for National Statistics has launched a National Well-being Programme to measure national well-being beyond traditional economic indicators like GDP. The programme aims to establish an accepted set of national statistics on well-being across ten domains, including health, relationships, education, and the environment. So far, the programme has conducted public consultations, published initial annual reports, and added questions to household surveys on life satisfaction, feelings of worthwhileness, happiness and anxiety. Future work includes further developing measures, analyzing drivers of well-being, and providing local area well-being data. The goal is to better understand and monitor societal progress over time.

1. Measuring National Well-being in
the UK
Glenn Everett, Director
Measuring National Well-being Programme, ONS
22 April 2013 www.ons.gov.uk/well-being
London Well-being Conference 2013:
Creating Communities

2. Presentation
• Background to MNW programme
• Programme aims
• Achievements so far
• Some results
• What’s next

3. Background
1970 - ONS has been reporting on developments in society
in the UK for over 40 years in the Social Trends publication
2007 - ONS started looking in more depth at existing
datasets and how these could be used to help build a clear
picture of societal well-being
2010 – The National Statistician launched the ONS
National Well-being Programme.
“We must measure what matters - the key elements of
national well-being. We want to develop measures
based on what people tell us matters most.”
Nov 2010 – Prime Minister David Cameron asked
National Statistician Jil Matheson to take forward work
to measure national well-being

4. Consultation on domains and measures
• We’ve listened…
…to initially nearly 34,000 responses to ‘what matters to you?’
• We have….
…revised some of the measures in light of almost 1,800
responses to the consultation on domains and measures
• We propose…
…10 domains with 3 to 5 headline measures each
• We received...
,,, broad support for approach taken and are continuing to
evaluate feasibility of other suggestions

5. Domains of National Well-being
Sustainability Issues over time
Equality/Fairness
More contextual domains
The Economy
Governance
Education and skills
Natural Environment
Factors directly affecting individual well-
being
Personal Finance
Our relationships What we do
Where we live
Health
Individual Well-Being
People’s own Assessment of their
own well-being (SWB)

6. What are we trying to achieve?
Social
Environment &
Sustainability
The ‘triple bottom line’
Economy
An accepted and trusted set of National Statistics to help
people understand and monitor national well-being.

7. What we are doing..
Added 4 questions to household surveys:
• Overall, how satisfies are you with your life
nowadays?
• Overall, to what extent do you feel the things
you do in your life are worthwhile?
• Overall, how happy did you feel yesterday?
• Overall, how anxious did you feel yesterday?
Findings analysed alongside other information
from 21 sources to help understand what
strengthens or weakens well-being

8. What’s been published to date..
Reports on consultation.
List of 10 domains and measures.
First annual report.
Analysis of first annual experimental subjective
well-being dataset from the APS, 4/11 – 3/12
Interactive wheel, bar charts and maps
highlighting distributions & sub-regional
estimates
Articles covering each of the domains – health,
economy, where we live, personal finance, etc.

9. National Well-being wheel

10. Maps

11. Local area results

12. Local area results

13. Local area results
Anxious yesterday:
• London 45% high vs UK 40%
• Inner London vs Outer 46% vs 43%
Life satisfaction:
• London 73% high vs UK 76%
Worthwhile:
• London 78% high vs South East 82%
Why?

14. Not just subjective well-being...
Social
• Experimental subjective well-being data
• Consultation on domains and measures
• Cross-cutting analyses – Population, Children
and Young People
Environment &
Sustainability
• UK Env Accts – Blue book
• Contributions to development of international
standards for international accounting
• Consultation on measuring natural capital and
ecosystems
• Human Capital stock estimates
• Economic position of households
• Developing non-market estimates
Economy

15. What’s next...
May 2013:
• Update domains and measures – update the ‘wheel’
• First results of regression analysis = drivers of well-being
July:
• 2nd year of SWB data – national
September:
• Next update of domains and measures – update the ‘wheel’
• Consult on measuring change – getting better/worse
October:
• Local area SWB data
March 2014:
• Update domains and measures – update the ‘wheel’
• 2nd annual report – ‘Life in the UK’

16. Key messages
• NOT a ‘happiness index’
• Importance of distributions not just the averages
• Not a single measure – need both objective and
subjective data
• Supplements – not supplants GDP
• Use for ‘Better policies for better lives’ (OECD) –
help target scarce resources
• Long-term development project