Authors: Joseph E. Stiglitz, Amartya Sen and Jean-Paul Fitoussi (European Comission)

The report distinguishes between an assessment of current well-being and an assessment of sustainability, whether this can last over time. Current well-being has to do with both economic resources, such as income, and with non-economic aspects of peoples’ life (what they do and what they can do, how they feel, and the natural environment they live in). Whether these levels of well-being can be sustained over time depends on whether stocks of capital that matter for our lives (natural, physical, human, social) are passed on to future generations. To organise its work, the Commission organized itself into three working groups, focusing respectively on: Classical GDP issues, Quality of life and Sustainability. The following main messages and recommendations arise from the report.

Author: The Centre for Well-being, nef

In November 2010, the UK Prime Minister asked the British Office for National Statistics to initiate a debate on national well-being and to start to measure it. If this is done well, the result will make a real difference to people's lives. This report by nef (the economics new fountation) looks at what is needed.

Author: The WHO Regional Office for Europe

A second expert meeting on measurement and target-setting for well-being was held in Paris, France in June 2012. Its overarching aim was to provide advice for the WHO Regional Director for Europe on how to assist in setting targets on well-being, which is one of the overarching targets of the European Health 2020 policy. The meeting reviewed previously commissioned work on measuring well-being and on its definitions, concepts and domains; advised WHO on the definition and concept of well-being to be used in the context of Health 2020; and determined what work was required to develop well-being indicators and targets. The meeting also agreed a working definition: ‘Well-being exists in two dimensions, subjective and objective. It comprises an individual’s experience of their life as well as a comparison of life circumstances with social norms and values’.

Author: Office for National Statistics (ONS)

To measure national well-being it is important not just to rely on traditional indicators of economic progress, but also to collect information from people themselves about how they assess their own well-being. Individual or subjective well-being estimates are an important addition to existing official statistics and this research report presents experimental statistics from the ONS Opinions Survey (OPN) looking at the levels of subjective well-being in the British population during April to August 2011.

Author: OECD

"How’s Life?" is a first attempt at the international level to present the best set of comparable and comprehensive well-being indicators for advanced and emerging economies. These indicators feed into Your Better Life Index, the OECD's new interactive web-based tool that allows users to choose the weights they wish to attach to various dimensions of life according to their own preferences and to compare overall well-being across countries. Based on the experience of almost ten years of leading the reflection on better ways to measure progress, the OECD has identified key topics which are essential to well-being in terms of material living conditions (housing, income, jobs) and quality of life (community, education, environment, governance, health, life satisfaction, safety and work-life balance).