E-Frame Conference on Measuring Well-being and Fostering the Progress of Societies 27 June 2012

1. Measuring Well-beingwhere it Matters Giovanni A. Barbieri (Istat), Monica Brezzi (OECD) E-Frame Conference on Measuring Well-being and Fostering the Progress of Societies 27 June 2012

2. Towards a Place-based Well-being • People need to measure progress and well-being where it happens, i. e. where they work and live • GDP is unfit to measure progress and well-being in a place-based approach • Economic growth implies division of labour and trade between localities • The fundamentals of national accounts do not hold at the local scale • Thus: • Regional accounts are but a disaggregation of national figures • A top-down approach is unavoidable

3. What does place-based mean, anyway? • Place vs. Space: • Space: • A grid for measurement (phenomena happen in space) and analysis (interpretive models) • Place: • Where society self-organizes; • Where policies are decided and implemented (democracy, supply of services, administration, multilevel governance) • Shifting the paradigm: the example of gender statistics

4. Different actors with different needs Central policy makers need to articulate national policies at a local scale → top-down approach → disaggregation of national statistics → loss of definition and focus Local policy makers need to decide and implement specific policies for place-based growth and development → bottom-up approach → specific measurements and indicators → possible problems with consistency Citizens need the information for evaluation and accountability (at both national and local level)

5. How’s life in your region? Measuring local and regional well-being for policymaking Project aims at: • Clarifying a common methodological framework • Identifying a set of indicators for which the regional dimension is particularly important, and provide support for producing data at different scales. • Creating a knowledge base to support countries and local authorities in the use of outcome indicators expressed in terms of people’s well-being to enhance their policies.

6. 1. Common methodological framework • Common set of well-being indicators or a common set of domains (and indicators specific to places?) • Inequalities within regions and not only among regions • Perception of objective conditions

7. 2. Indicators at different scales Co2 carbon in metropolitan areas of different sizes and regions

8. 3. Links between metrics and policy results • Learning from the many national, regional, local experiences already in place. Case studies from Denmark, France, Italy, Mexico, United Kingdom, United States (create network and knowledge spillover). • Guidance for citizens and policy-makers – national and local – on indicators selection and choices of baselines; connect users to the relevant resources to measure their progress; accountability of results that depend on the actions of many actors and different institutions; citizens engagement and how best to reflect their preferences in the choice of well-being dimensions. • On the governance aspects of systems of indicators, such approach would require balancing top-down approaches and bottom-up ones

9. What needs to be done • Measuring “different” places • Synthesis, not aggregation • Need for methodological advancements • Externalities and spillovers between places • Need to build a shared conceptual framework • Measuring outcomes • Policy co-ordination and multi-level governance • A set of indicators for: • Planning and ex ante evaluation (multi-objective) • Implementation and monitoring • Accountability and ex post evaluation (outcomes)