Societal Wellbeing Indicators in National Policy Development: Learning from Civil Servants | A UK Case Study

Journal Paper by Christine Corlet Walker, Angela Druckman and Claudio Cattaneo
Social Indicators Research | May 2020

Summary

Gross Domestic Product is often used as a proxy for societal well-being in the context of policy development. Its shortcomings in this context are, however, well documented, and numerous alternative indicator sets have been developed. Despite this, there is limited evidence of widespread use of these alternative indicator sets by people working in policy areas relevant to societal wellbeing. Civil servants are an important group of indicator end-users. Better understanding their views concerning measuring societal wellbeing can support wider discussions about what factors determine indicator use and influence in policy decision-making.

Taking the UK as a case study, we ask what views exist among civil servants in the UK about measuring societal well-being? To answer this question, we used a bootstrapped Q methodology, interviewing 20 civil servants to elicit their views about measuring societal well-being. Three distinct discourses emerged from our analysis: one that was concerned about the consequences of ignoring natural, social and human capital in decision making; one that emphasised opportunity and autonomy as key determinants of well-being; and one that focused on the technical aspects of measuring societal well-being. Each of these discourses has direct implications for the way that we integrate societal wellbeing into policy making and highlights the potential benefits of including end-users in indicator development and strategy.

Introduction

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has been adopted by many national and international bodies over the last century as a proxy for the health and progress of a society (Kubiszewski et al. 2013; Van den Bergh 2009). However, it is widely acknowledged that this was never the intended purpose of the GDP indicator (Kubiszewski et al. 2013) and there have been countless efforts to devise better suited measures, which capture not only the economic, but the social and environmental components of our well-being too. Notably, initiatives like the OECD’s ‘Better life’ initiative (OECD 2018), and the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress (Stiglitz et al. 2009) have made large strides towards identifying, articulating and measuring what makes society prosperous, equitable and sustainable (Jackson 2010). Although there is no universally agreed definition of societal wellbeing, we situate our understanding of ‘indicators of societal wellbeing’ in the context of these initiatives. This, therefore, captures both objective and subjective notions of wellbeing and encompasses all those indicators that attempt to measure the progress of our societies and the health of our ecosystems. These indicators take a wide range of forms and foci, with ongoing debates in the literature focusing on the monetisation of nature and wellbeing, the use of objective versus subjective measures of wellbeing, and whether and how to aggregate fundamentally incommensurable measures (Barrington-Leigh and Escande 2018; Yang 2014). However, there is often an over focus in the literature on the technical characteristics of these new indicators, without due attention being paid to the ecosystem surrounding the indicator, including who the end-users are, how they interpret the indicators, and the role that the indicator and its end-user ultimately play in the policy-making process.