This chapter provides an introduction to, and summary of, the contents of this book. It outlines the aim of the project and provides an overview of the indicators covered, comparing them with those used in the OECD Better Life Initiative. The chapter also presents the criteria used throughout the report to assess the quality of the indicators used, and discusses practical issues concerning country and period coverage and calculation of regional trends. Finally, the chapter summarises the content of each chapter and their main highlights.
This paper presents some of the main features of recent OECD work on people's well‐being and societies' progress. After discussing the main limitations of GDP as a measure of ‘welfare’, the paper presents the multidimensional framework and rationale underpinning the OECD Better Life Initiative, and describes how this framework aims to overcome the limitations of GDP. The paper also presents some of the evidence from the OECD ‘Better Life Index’, an interactive tool that allows citizens to compare countries according to their own views and preferences on the relative importance of the different aspects of human well‐being.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.