Measuring Welfare Beyond GDP

Abstract

This article analyses a series of negotiations on how to measure welfare and quality of life in Sweden beyond economic indicators. It departs from a 2015 Government Official Report that advanced a strong recommendation to measure only 'objective indicators' of quality of life, rather than relying on what is referred to as 'subjective indicators' such as life satisfaction and happiness. The assertion of strictly 'objective' indicators falls back on a sociological perspective developed in the 1970s, which conceived of welfare as being measurable as 'levels of living', a framework that came to be called 'the Scandinavian model of welfare research'. However, in the mid-2000s, objective indicators were challenged scientifically by the emerging field of happiness studies, which also found political advocates in Sweden who argued that subjective indicators should become an integral part of measuring welfare. This tension between 'subjective' and 'objective' measurements resulted in a controversy between several actors about what should count as a valuable measurement of welfare. As a consequence, we argue that the creation of such value meters is closely intertwined with how welfare is defined, and by what measures welfare should be carried through.

« Après la croissance – Controverses autour de la production et de l’usage des indicateurs alternatifs au PIB »

“…La question des opérations de valorisation a déjà été traitée de diverses manières par les Science and Technology Studies, attirant l'attention sur l'importance des dispositifs matériels de calcul qui sont les courroies de transmission, et même les actants, de telles opérations (Muniesa et al 2000). Une telle analyse des dispositifs matériels peut également s'appliquer à un objet tel que le PIB (Nelhans et Kullenberg 2017). L'idée sous-jacente d'un tel cadre théorique est que les objets offrent des « prises » auxquelles peuvent s'accrocher les acteurs en charge de l'évaluation (Chateauraynaud et Bessy 1995).…”

The Emergence of the Academic Candidate: Evaluation as textual dramaturgy

“…We therefore turn our attention to the role of written documents as a neglected aspect of agency in valuation studies. The field of valuation studies has become increasingly interested in the evaluative agency of non-human actors such as indicators (Hammarfelt and Rushforth 2017;Kullenberg and Nelhans 2017), infrastructures (Krüger and Petersohn 2022), algorithms (Baka 2015), and rankings (Espeland and Sauder 2007;Brankovic et al 2022). In most of these cases, things with agency are conceptualized as "devices" (Muniesa et al 2007;Hamann et al 2023).…”

Social inequality A neglected topic in Studies of Valuation and Evaluation?

“…6 There were several fringe cases that required qualitative judgment regarding their focus on social inequality. For example, one study published in Valuation Studies examines debates on how to measure welfare and quality of life in Sweden beyond economic indicators (Kullenberg and Nelhans 2017). The article contains several references to social inequality, yet, we did not deem it to be concerned with social inequality per se, but rather with indicators and measures.…”