Measuring well-being and progress

Frequent, timely and high-quality data on well-being is essential to inform policy decisions. The OECD is advancing the statistical agenda by supporting data producers with methodological guidance on new frontiers of well-being measurement, including subjective well-being, trust, mental health and social connectedness. Although more work remains to be done, this has helped to close data gaps, especially in dimensions of life where internationally harmonised well-being data is most scarce.

The OECD is continuing to update its advice to reflect the latest evidence. For instance, the Guidelines on Measuring Subjective Well-being  (2025 Update) were expanded to include more globally inclusive measures. 

Mental health affects every aspect of life and is influenced by people’s economic, social and environmental living conditions. However, despite mental health’s strong interactions with factors such as income, education, employment and the environment, integrated approaches across government departments remain limited or small-scale. Reasons include inter-departmental task forces often being time-limited and without decision-making power and resource constraints remain a challenge.

The OECD uses a well-being lens to underscore the reciprocal relationships between mental health and socio-economic outcomes and shows how policies to promote mental health can contribute to achieving other social, economic and environmental policy goals.

The real pressure test for well-being initiatives is whether they will be able to graduate from “yet another report” to tangibly influencing government decision-making, and ultimately, people’s quality of life. Multidimensional well-being frameworks and concepts are increasingly being employed by OECD countries in budgeting, policy appraisal and evaluation, strategic coordination, and performance management. Mainstreaming well-being in policy is not a simple add-on to existing practice: it requires and supports new ways of thinking and acting that are more people-focused, more long-term and more joined-up across economic, social, and environmental policy objectives.

In 2023, the OECD launched the Knowledge Exchange Platform on Well-being Metrics and Policy Practice to provide a space for sharing experiences and solutions and to support governments interested in developing policy-focused well-being initiatives.