To understand the progress of societies and to design effective public policies to improve well-being and to build resilience to crises, governments need to take an integrated approach to a range of economic, social and environmental outcomes that matter to people’s lives. This short chapter introduces the OECD Well-being Framework as a basis to assess whether life as a whole is getting better for people, the planet and future generations. It illustrates the components of the Framework by presenting the latest available data on the headline indicators that span material conditions, quality of life, community relations – and inequalities in these – as well as on the natural, economic and social resources needed to maintain well-being in the future.
How's Life? 2024
Abstract
In recent years, people around the globe have been hit by a series of multiple interacting shocks, sometimes referred to as “polycrises”. The COVID-19 pandemic’s far-reaching consequences for people’s lives has been followed by a cost-of-living crisis, alongside new geopolitical risks and conflicts. These shocks are occurring at the same time as policy makers grapple with major societal shifts, including population ageing, the deep structural transformation of digitalisation and AI, and the already very real impacts of climate change. In the face of these events, it is crucial to monitor whether the economic system and current policies are fit for purpose and future-proof. Delivering better lives for people, the planet and future generations not only is essential for well-being but can also boost public support for policy reforms and increase trust in the institutions that represent and serve citizens.
The How’s Life? publication series provides a compass to understand whether economies and societies are successfully navigating these broad challenges. The series pieces together statistics on whether life is indeed getting better for people living in OECD countries, and whether progress has been inclusive and sustainable. Building on the OECD’s pioneering Well-being Framework (Box 1.1), How’s Life? benchmarks countries’ performance across multiple dimensions that reflect people’s diverse experiences and circumstances today, including income, health, life satisfaction, safety and social connections, as well as the systemic resources needed to sustain standards of living in the future. The importance of such a comprehensive view of what progress entails is now widely recognised – today, more than two-thirds of OECD countries have developed national frameworks, development plans or surveys with a multidimensional well-being focus, and many governments are increasingly using well-being evidence to inform policy processes, including via strategic goal-setting, assessing trade-offs and synergies in policy appraisal and impact evaluation, and informing resource allocation (Barahona et al., 2023[1]). Considerable efforts over the past decade have been made to improve the international harmonisation of well-being indicators, including in areas such as subjective well-being and trust, and the System of National Accounts will be updated in 2025 with a view to include important well-being factors such as unpaid household work, the distribution of income and the depletion of natural capital (Barahona et al., 2023[1]). At the level of the United Nations and the European Parliament, there have also been renewed calls to develop measures of progress (and policy goals) “beyond GDP” in recognition of the multiple and interconnected challenges societies are facing today (United Nations, 2023[2]; UNECE, 2023[3]; European Parliament, 2023[4]).
How’s Life? 2024 shines a light on well-being in OECD countries from different angles. The present (first) chapter briefly introduces the OECD Well-being Framework and illustrates its different components by showcasing what the latest available data tells us about the state of well-being today. The second chapter identifies areas of well-being that require policy attention, either because progress in the years after 2019 (and hence during the adverse shocks of the COVID-19 pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis) has slowed down, or because signs are emerging that progress might reverse unless action is taken. The third chapter examines differences in well-being outcomes between population groups to assess where gaps have narrowed or widened over the past decade. Readers interested in trends in well-being in different OECD countries since 2010 are invited to turn to Chapter 4 for a summary of these. More detailed well-being statistics for each OECD country are available in the online country profiles accompanying this report.
The first three chapters thus generally focus on overall patterns for the OECD average (although many figures also show country-specific results). In the spirit of concise and effective communication, Chapters 1 and 4 in most cases rely on the headline indicator set described in the Reader’s Guide. Chapters 2 and 3 draw on the full dashboard of the OECD How’s Life? Well-being Database.
The OECD Well-being Framework, first launched in 2011, guides the OECD’s work to assess whether life as a whole is getting better for people living in OECD countries (Figure 1.1). It includes current well-being outcomes, their distribution across the population, and the systemic resources that help to sustain outcomes over time and for future generations. This ensures a comprehensive approach to well-being, inclusion and sustainability (spanning economic, social, relational and environmental aspects).
Current well-being data focus on living conditions at the individual, household and community levels and describe how people experience their lives “here and now”. These data are complemented by statistics on the resources that help to sustain well-being over time: specifically, via four types of capital, countries’ investments in (or depletions of) these, and risk and resilience factors that will shape future changes in well-being. Separating the reporting of current well-being and its sustainability helps to assess whether maximising the former comes at the cost of compromising the latter (or vice versa), which can inform intertemporal trade-offs in policy design and indicate the intergenerational outlook for a country’s well-being.1
Source: OECD (2020[5]) How’s Life? 2020: Measuring Well-being, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/23089679.
Current well-being is comprised of 11 dimensions. These dimensions relate to material conditions that shape people’s economic options (income and wealth, work and job quality, housing) and quality-of-life factors that encompass how well people are (and how well they feel they are), what they know and can do, and how healthy and safe their places of living are (health, knowledge and skills, environmental quality, subjective well-being, safety). Quality of life also encompasses community relationships, or how connected and engaged people are, and how and with whom they spend their time (work-life balance, social connections, civic engagement).
As national averages often mask large inequalities in how different parts of the population are doing, the distribution of current well-being is taken into account by looking at three types of inequality: gaps between population groups (e.g. between men and women, old and young people, etc., collectively described as horizontal inequalities); gaps between those at the top and those at the bottom of the achievement scale in each dimension (e.g. the income of the richest 20% of individuals compared to that of the poorest 20%), referred to as vertical inequalities; and deprivations (i.e. the share of the population falling below a given threshold, such as a minimum level of skills or health).
The systemic resources that support future well-being over time are expressed in terms of four types of capital, i.e. stocks that last over time but are also affected by decisions taken (or not taken) today. Economic capital includes both man-made and financial assets; natural capital encompasses naturally occurring assets and ecosystems, from tradable items such as minerals and timbers through to oceans and the atmosphere; human capital refers to the skills and future health of individuals; and social capital refers to the social norms, shared values and institutional arrangements that foster co-operation. Many of these capital stocks stretch well beyond those “owned” by private agents and are, effectively, public goods: for example, an individual’s beliefs in how much others can be trusted contributes to the overall atmosphere of interpersonal trust in a country or community, while greenhouse gas emissions in one country influence the world’s overall climate. In addition to considering capital stocks and flows, the How’s Life? Well-being dashboard also includes some key risk and resilience factors that might affect the well-being value of those stocks and flows in future. For example, high levels of household debt can pose risks to future economic prospects, while the inclusiveness of decision-making in politics can be a protective factor for well-being.
Note:
1. People's perceptions of the ability of government to make fair decisions towards different generations has been found to be an impactful driver of trust in public institutions (OECD, 2024[6]).
The following sections present the latest available data, for the OECD average, on the range of aspects that make up current well-being and resources for future well-being in the OECD Well-being Framework (Box 1.2). More recent trends in well-being during the pandemic and cost-of-living crisis and country-specific results are discussed in Chapters 2 and 4.
Effective policy formulation and evaluation relies on up-to-date information that can ideally be benchmarked against baseline values. Furthermore, assessing how well-being has fared during recent crises (and whether it has recovered) requires data that were collected before as well as during or after these specific events occurred. The majority of headline indicators used in this report fulfil these criteria well and can be analysed for the period of the ongoing recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and the onset of the cost-of-living crisis. Indeed, almost all the headline indicators capturing people’s material conditions and quality of life (under current well-being) and six out of the nine headline indicators capturing resources for future well-being are available from 2022 or later. However, when it comes to assessing the state of community relationships, half of the six respective headline indicators rely on time use surveys, which are unfortunately conducted very infrequently. With a few exceptions (e.g. Austria and the United States for which time use data is available up to 2022), relevant information for most countries was collected before 2018, and in some cases the most recent data point goes back as far as 2006.
Current well-being: Material conditions
The average household in OECD countries had about USD 35 200 per capita available to spend (after taxes and transfers) in 2022 and USD 163 900 annual median household net wealth in 2019 (Figure 1.2).1 In 2023, 78% of those aged 25-64 were employed (Figure 1.2).2 Around one in 14 employees in OECD countries routinely worked long hours (50 or more) each week in 2022, potentially impinging on their leisure time, personal care, and ability to contribute to unpaid work within a household (Figure 1.2). In the same year, on average, almost 12% of OECD households were living in overcrowded conditions, and on average they had 79% of their disposable income left after housing rents and maintenance costs (Figure 1.2). When it comes to inequalities in material conditions, men earned about 12% more than women in OECD countries, and the richest 20% (of the income distribution) received on average 5.6 times more income than the poorest 20% in 2022 (Figure 1.2).
Headline indicators for the dimensions of income and wealth, work and job quality, and housing, OECD average, latest available year
Note: ** denotes indicators for which the latest available year falls between 2016 and 2019.
Source: OECD calculations based on the OECD How’s Life? Well-being Database (n.d.[7]), http://data-explorer.oecd.org/s/fu.
Current well-being: Quality of life
A newborn in 2022 could expect to live 80.7 years, on average, across all OECD countries. In the same year, approximately one out of every six 15-year-old students in OECD countries had skills below “baseline” levels, meaning they scored low in all three subjects of maths, reading and science, as assessed by the OECD’s PISA survey (Figure 1.3). Deaths of despair (i.e. fatalities from suicide, acute alcohol abuse and drug overdose) averaged 23.6 deaths per 100 000 population in 2021 – more than sixfold the number of average homicides (3.5 deaths per 100 000 population) (Figure 1.3). On average in the OECD, men report feeling safer than women: 82% of men compared with 67% of women in 2022-23 said they feel safe when walking alone at night in the neighbourhoods where they live.
Headline indicators for the dimensions of health, knowledge and skills, environmental quality, subjective well-being and safety, OECD average, latest available year
Note: * denotes indicators for which values are pooled over multiyear periods (due to sample size) and for which only the latest year is displayed. Exposure to extreme temperatures refers to the OECD total.
Source: OECD calculations based on the OECD How’s Life? Well-being Database (n.d.[7]), http://data-explorer.oecd.org/s/fu.
When people were asked how satisfied they are with their lives on a scale from 0 (not at all satisfied) to 10 (completely satisfied), the average evaluation in OECD countries in 2023 was 7.3. Meanwhile, approximately one in eight people experienced more negative feelings (anger, sadness, worry) than positive ones (enjoyment, laughing or smiling a lot, well-rested) in a typical day (Figure 1.3). Finally, indicators of environmental quality point to worrying patterns: nearly the entire population across OECD countries were exposed to harmful levels of air pollution in 2020.3 And in 2023, almost 15% of the population experienced at least two weeks of days with a maximum temperature of over 35°C per year (Figure 1.3).
Current well-being: Community relationships
Depending on the country, the community relationships indicators relying on time use surveys mostly mainly refer to the period between 2012 and 2018, before the most recent crises.4 According to these older estimates, people across OECD countries spend on average about 14.5 hours per day on leisure and personal care (including sleep), and around 6 hours per week in social interactions (such as talking with family members or going out with friends). If both paid and unpaid work are taken into account, women work longer hours than men in almost every OECD country, on average by 24 minutes per day, or 12 hours per month (Figure 1.4). More recently collected data indicate that almost one in 10 people across OECD countries said they had no friends or relatives to count on in time of trouble in 2022-23 (Figure 1.4). In parliamentary or presidential elections between 2019-24, on average 70% of people registered to vote turned up to cast a ballot; however, in 2023 more than half of the population in the OECD felt they do not have a say in what the government does (Figure 1.4).
Headline indicators for the dimensions of work-life balance, social connections and civic engagement, OECD average, latest available year
Note: * denotes indicators for which values are pooled over multiyear periods (due to sample size) and for which only the latest year is displayed. *** denotes indicators for which the latest available year falls between 2006 and 2022.
Source: OECD calculations based on the OECD How’s Life? Well-being Database (n.d.[7]), http://data-explorer.oecd.org/s/fu.
Resources for future well-being
Sufficient material conditions, good quality of life and strong community relationships for all parts of the population can last over time only if the resources that sustain well-being today are maintained and if risks to the economic, natural and societal systems are detected and appropriately managed. Accordingly, the OECD Well-being Framework includes sustainability in the form of natural, social, economic and human capital.
Natural capital concerns both natural assets (e.g. natural land cover, biodiversity) and ecosystems and their services (e.g. oceans, forests, soil and the atmosphere). According to the most recent headline indicators, average greenhouse gas emissions (CO2 equivalent) were at around 10 900 kilograms per capita across OECD countries and 12% of the total primary energy supply came from renewable sources in 2021 (Figure 1.5). The average Red List Index (which considers the overall extinction risk for species including birds, mammals, amphibians, cycads and corals) for OECD countries stood at 0.886 in 2024 (on a scale of 1 to 0, where 1 means that all species fall into the least concern category and 0 means all species are extinct) (Figure 1.5).
Headline indicators for natural and economic capitals, OECD average, latest year available
Note: Greenhouse gas emissions and renewable energy refer to the OECD total.
Source: OECD calculations based on the OECD How’s Life? Well-being Database (n.d.[7]), http://data-explorer.oecd.org/s/fu.
Economic capital consists of the different produced and financial capital stocks of countries. Across OECD countries, government financial liabilities exceeded financial assets by about 20% of GDP in 2023 (Figure 1.5). In the same year, at the household level, average household debt equated to around 120% of household disposable income across the OECD (Figure 1.5). The OECD average stock of produced fixed assets per person stood at USD 149 600 in 2022 (Figure 1.5).
Human capital refers to the skills, competencies and health of people in an economy, with a view to their future contributions to well-being. On average more than 86% of young adults in OECD countries had completed at least upper secondary education in 2022 (Figure 1.6). About one in eight individuals in the labour force were unemployed, discouraged from seeking work or underemployed (e.g. involuntarily working part-time), indicating their unrealised potential and the risk of skills degradation (Figure 1.6).In 2021, estimates of average premature mortality for the OECD pointed to 5 130 potential years of life lost per 100 000 population due to a range of medical conditions and fatal accidents (Figure 1.6).
Social capital is about a society’s networks, norms and shared values that foster co-operation among different groups. When people across OECD countries are asked whether they trust others in general (on a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 means “not at all” and 10 means “completely”) the average mean score was 6.1 in 2023 (Figure 1.6). In the same year, close to half of the population (48%) said they trusted their national government (Figure 1.6). For the OECD as whole, gender parity in public decision-making has not yet been reached in 2023: on average, women held just over a third of parliamentary seats (Figure 1.6).
Headline indicators for human and social capitals, OECD average, latest available year
Note: * denotes indicators for which values are pooled over multiyear periods (due to sample size) and for which only the latest year is displayed.
Source: OECD calculations based on the OECD How’s Life? Well-being Database (n.d.[7]), http://data-explorer.oecd.org/s/fu.
References
[1] Barahona, S. et al. (2023), Economic Policy Making to Pursue Economic Welfare, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/ccc5634c-en.
[4] European Parliament (2023), Beyond Growth 2023 Conference, https://www.beyond-growth-2023.eu/ (accessed on 7 May 2024).
[6] OECD (2024), OECD Trust Survey Design and Technical Documentation: Annex to the OECD Survey on Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions - 2024 Result, https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/support-materials/2024/07/oecd-survey-on-drivers-of-trust-in-public-institutions-2024-results_eeb36452/2023%20Trust%20Survey%20-%20Technical%20annex.pdf (accessed on 7 August 2024).
[5] OECD (2020), How’s Life? 2020 - Measuring Well-being, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/9870c393-en.
[7] OECD (n.d.), How’s Life? Well-being Database, http://data-explorer.oecd.org/s/fu (accessed on 3 May 2024).
[3] UNECE (2023), Terms of reference for the Task Force on measurement of well-being, https://unece.org/statistics/documents/2023/11/working-documents/terms-reference-task-force-measurement-well-being (accessed on 7 May 2024).
[2] United Nations (2023), “Valuing What Counts: Framework to Progress Beyond Gross Domestic Product”, https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/our-common-agenda-policy-brief-beyond-gross-domestic-product-en.pdf (accessed on 7 May 2024).
[8] WHO (2021), WHO global air quality guidelines. Particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10), ozone, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide, World Health Organization, Geneva, https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240034228 (accessed on 7 May 2024).
← 1. More recent quarterly data show that the average household in OECD countries had about USD 7 350 per capita available to spend (after taxes and transfers, excluding transfers in kind) in the first quarter of 2024. Quarterly and annual household income statistics are not directly comparable.
← 2. More recent quarterly data show that the employment rate of the entire working age population (aged 15 to 64) was at an all-time high of 70.2% in the first quarter of 2024. Quarterly and annual employment statistics as used in this report are not directly comparable, as they refer to different age ranges.
← 3. Following the newly updated World Health Organisation’s 2021 guidelines for air quality which recognise the increasing evidence that air pollution affects negatively impacts human health at even lower concentrations than previously understood (WHO, 2021[8]).
← 4. Only Austria, Japan and the United States have time use data after 2021 that were able to be incorporated into this report.