Saamah Abdallah is a researcher at nef‘s Centre for Well-being.

It’s been rumbling for almost three years and it may well still rumble on for a little longer, but a little volcano may soon erupt in the tiny nation of… well, Luxembourg.  The European Statistics Agency Eurostat last week declared public the outputs of a project we and others have been carrying out for them for two years on how to measure the well-being of people in Europe. The project will form the basis of a new set of well-being indicators to be published by Eurostat on a regular basis, alongside drier indicators on R&D expenditure, fishing boat stocks and, of course, GDP.

This might not seem like a volcano, but it could potentially be a huge fillip to the case for measuring progress differently – Eurostat have the resources and wherewithal to collect robust regular data across Europe. Collecting data obviously won’t change the world alone, but it’s a prerequisite to actually using data, and to supporting well-being as a public policy goal.

Over the next few months, Eurostat will be busying itself making sure well-being data meets their demanding standards and, implementing changes in conjunction with other parts of the European apparatus, member states and survey teams. A geeky success, but an important one nevertheless…


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