OECD Better Life Index
The OECD Better Life Index is an interactive web-based tool launched by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 2011 as part of its Better Life Initiative to measure and compare well-being across its 38 member countries and select partner economies, extending evaluation beyond gross domestic product (GDP) to encompass material conditions, quality of life, and social connections.[1][2] It aggregates empirical indicators across eleven dimensions—housing, disposable income, jobs, work-life balance, education and skills, social connections, environmental quality, civic engagement and governance, health status, subjective well-being, and safety—using data primarily from OECD statistical harmonization efforts and national sources.[1][3] The index's core innovation lies in its user-customizable aggregation, where individuals assign weights to the dimensions reflecting personal values, yielding tailored country rankings that highlight trade-offs in well-being outcomes; for instance, equal weighting often ranks Nordic countries like Norway and Denmark highly due to strong performances in health, safety, and work-life balance, while the United States excels in income but lags in community and environmental metrics.[1][4] This approach supports first-principles assessment by decoupling well-being from aggregate economic growth, informing policies like those in the OECD's periodic How's Life? reports, which track trends and inequalities since 2011.[2][5] Notable achievements include fostering global discourse on multidimensional progress, with over 5 million user interactions by 2018 revealing preferences skewed toward jobs, health, and education, and influencing national dashboards in countries adapting the framework for domestic use.[4] However, the index has drawn methodological scrutiny for its equal sub-indicator weighting within dimensions, which may obscure causal disparities, and for embedding effects where default presentations bias user choices away from objective data-driven evaluations.[6][7] Critics argue that subjective weighting undermines comparability and that gaps in non-OECD data limit universality, though its empirical foundation from harmonized statistics provides a robust baseline for causal analysis of policy impacts on life outcomes.[8][9]History and Development
Origins and Launch in 2011
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) launched the Better Life Initiative in 2011 as part of its renewed strategic agenda, "Better Policies for Better Lives," to shift focus from GDP-centric metrics toward multidimensional assessments of well-being that incorporate aspects of life valued by individuals beyond economic output.[10] This effort responded to longstanding critiques of GDP's limitations in reflecting non-market factors such as health, education, and environmental quality, aligning with broader international discussions on "beyond GDP" measurement while emphasizing policy relevance for OECD's 34 member countries at the time.[11] Central to the initiative was the release of the Your Better Life Index in May 2011, an interactive online tool hosted at www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org, designed to engage users by enabling them to customize comparisons of countries across 11 well-being dimensions—including housing, income, jobs, community, education, environment, governance, health, life satisfaction, safety, and work-life balance—through adjustable weights rather than fixed aggregates.[12] The tool drew on harmonized data from national statistical offices and OECD databases, presenting normalized scores (0-10 scale) for each dimension to facilitate subjective prioritization, thereby fostering public involvement in defining progress.[13] The launch coincided with the publication of the inaugural How's Life? report in 2011, which provided empirical underpinnings through detailed indicators of current well-being outcomes and resources for future sustainability, highlighting average improvements in OECD well-being over the prior 15 years alongside persistent inequalities.[14] Initial reception was strong, with the Your Better Life Index website attracting over 500,000 visitors by the end of July 2011, demonstrating public interest in personalized well-being metrics.[11]Subsequent Updates and How's Life? Reports
Following the 2011 launch, the OECD Better Life Index has undergone periodic updates to incorporate new data, expand coverage to additional countries, and refine indicators for greater accuracy and relevance. By 2012, enhancements included supplementary metrics on topics such as environmental quality and civic engagement, reflecting user feedback and evolving data availability.[1] Subsequent iterations, aligned with biennial or triennial data refreshes, integrated over 80 indicators by the 2020s, extending analysis to partner economies beyond the core 38 OECD members and emphasizing inequalities in well-being distribution.[13] These updates maintain the index's interactive framework, allowing users to adjust weights across 11 dimensions while drawing from harmonized sources like national statistics and OECD databases to ensure comparability.[15] The How's Life? report series serves as the analytical backbone for the Better Life Index, providing detailed evidence on well-being trends since the inaugural 2011 edition, which coincided with the index's debut.[16] Subsequent editions—2013, 2015, 2017, 2020 (fifth edition), and 2024 (sixth edition)—have tracked progress across current outcomes, distributional aspects, and resources for future sustainability, using an expanded indicator set exceeding 80 metrics by 2020.[15][17] For instance, the 2020 report highlighted uneven post-2010 gains, with improvements in life expectancy but stagnation in social connections amid rising inequalities, while the 2024 edition incorporated post-pandemic data to assess resilience in dimensions like health and work-life balance.[15][17] These reports prioritize empirical measurement over GDP-centric views, critiquing aggregate growth for overlooking causal factors like policy-induced disparities, though OECD analyses note limitations in data gaps for non-OECD contexts.[18]Methodology and Indicators
Core Dimensions and Data Sources
The OECD Better Life Index evaluates well-being across 11 core dimensions, selected to capture aspects of life beyond economic output such as GDP, focusing on material conditions, quality of life, and sustainability. These dimensions—housing, income, jobs, community, education, environment, civic engagement, health, life satisfaction, safety, and work-life balance—each rely on 1–3 headline indicators, drawn from over 80 supporting metrics in the underlying framework. This structure originates from the OECD's multidimensional approach to measuring progress, emphasizing empirical outcomes rather than inputs or policy intentions.[1][19] The following table outlines the core dimensions, their key indicators, and primary data sources, based on the latest available harmonized data as of the 2024 How's Life? report:| Dimension | Key Indicators | Primary Data Sources |
|---|---|---|
| Housing | Housing affordability (e.g., housing costs relative to income); dwellings without basic facilities | OECD Affordable Housing Database; OECD National Accounts; Eurostat EU-SILC; national statistical offices[19] |
| Income | Household disposable income per capita; household net adjusted disposable income (accounting for inequality) | OECD National Accounts; OECD Income Distribution Database; Eurostat EU-SILC[19] |
| Jobs | Employment rate (ages 15–64); time spent in unemployment or underemployment | OECD Annual Labour Force Statistics; OECD Employment Database; Eurostat Labour Force Survey[19] |
| Community (Social Connections) | Social support network size; frequency of social interactions | Gallup World Poll; Eurostat EU-SILC; national household surveys[19] |
| Education (Knowledge and Skills) | Educational attainment (tertiary level); average scores in reading, math, science (PISA/PIAAC) | OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA); OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC)[19] |
| Environment (Environmental Quality) | Air pollution exposure (PM2.5 levels); access to green spaces or water quality | OECD Environment Database; European Environment Agency; national environmental agencies[19] |
| Civic Engagement (Governance) | Voter turnout in national elections; stakeholder engagement in policy-making | International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance; OECD Government at a Glance; national election authorities[19] |
| Health | Life expectancy at birth; self-reported health status (share reporting good/very good health) | OECD Health Statistics Database; WHO Mortality Database; Eurostat European Health Interview Survey[19] |
| Life Satisfaction (Subjective Well-being) | Average self-reported life satisfaction (0–10 scale, Cantril ladder) | Gallup World Poll; Eurostat EU-SILC; national well-being surveys[19] |
| Safety | Homicide rate per 100,000 people; share feeling safe walking alone at night | OECD Causes of Mortality Database; Gallup World Poll; UN Office on Drugs and Crime[19] |
| Work-Life Balance | Share of employees working very long hours; time devoted to personal care and leisure | OECD Time Use Database; Eurostat Harmonised European Time Use Surveys; national time-use surveys[19] |
Calculation Process and User-Defined Weights
The OECD Better Life Index computes country-level well-being scores through a multi-step process involving indicator normalization, topic-level aggregation, and user-specified weighting across 11 topics such as housing, income, and work-life balance. Individual indicators, drawn from OECD datasets, are first normalized to a common 0-10 scale using min-max scaling, where the score for a given country is calculated as $10 \times \frac{\text{value} - \text{minimum observed}}{\text{maximum observed} - \text{minimum observed}} across OECD members, ensuring higher values reflect better performance and enabling cross-country comparability.[20] [1] For topics comprising multiple indicators—typically one to three per topic—the topic score is derived as the arithmetic mean of the normalized indicator scores, applying equal weights within each topic to account for variations like gender or income disparities where data permit.[20] This step yields a single score per topic for each country, standardized on the 0-10 scale.[1] User-defined weights introduce customization, allowing individuals to prioritize topics via an interactive slider interface on the OECD platform, where inputs (often ranging from 0 to a fixed maximum, such as 5) reflect relative importance. These inputs are normalized to sum to unity using the formula w_i = \frac{s_i}{\sum_{j=1}^{11} s_j}, where s_i denotes the user-assigned value for topic i, preventing dominance by any single input and ensuring the weights form a convex combination.[1] The composite index score for a country is then the weighted average \sum_{i=1}^{11} w_i \times t_i, where t_i is the normalized topic score; countries are ranked by these scores, with equal weights (w_i = \frac{1}{11}) applied by default for non-customized comparisons.[4] This approach emphasizes subjective valuation while grounding aggregation in empirical data, though it assumes linear additivity across dimensions without compensating for trade-offs beyond user intent.[20]Rankings and Comparative Analysis
Latest 2024 Rankings Under Equal Weights
In the OECD Better Life Index, rankings under equal weights assign identical importance to each of the 11 well-being dimensions: housing, income, jobs, community, education, environment, governance, health, life satisfaction, safety, and work-life balance. Using the most recent data available as of 2024 from the OECD's updated dataset, Norway tops the rankings, achieving balanced strengths across multiple dimensions, including high life expectancy, low homicide rates, and strong civic engagement.[1][17] Australia secures second place, driven by superior performance in income, jobs, and environmental quality, though it lags in some social connection metrics compared to Nordic peers.[1] Iceland ranks third, excelling particularly in safety and health outcomes, with near-universal access to quality healthcare and low environmental risks. Canada follows in fourth, benefiting from robust education systems and community ties, while Denmark rounds out the top five with advantages in work-life balance and life satisfaction.[1]| Rank | Country |
|---|---|
| 1 | Norway |
| 2 | Australia |
| 3 | Iceland |
| 4 | Canada |
| 5 | Denmark |
| 6 | Switzerland |
| 7 | Sweden |
| 8 | Finland |
| 9 | Netherlands |
| 10 | New Zealand |