18/05/2015 - Today the OECD unveils its Better Life Index (BLI) in Italian. The BLI is an interactive online platform that offers important insights into how people perceive their own well-being and quality of life. For the first time, Italians will be able to access this instrument in their own language and find out how Italy compares to 35 other countries around the world across 11 dimensions of well-being: housing, income and wealth, jobs and earnings, education and skills, environmental quality, civic engagement, health, subjective well-being, social connections, work-life balance and personal security.
They will see that, according to the latest data, Italian people generally enjoy a good work-life balance and have above average income and wealth compared with other OECD countries. Italy also ranks well in terms of health and social connections.
But, levels of education and skills in Italy are generally lower than the OECD average, as are employment rates. Italy also performs relatively poorly in environmental quality, housing and subjective well-being.
Italy ranks 13th in terms of work-life balance; 14th for income and wealth, but 31st for education and skills. Further details of the BLI results for Italy can be found here.
Through the Better Life Index, citizens can create their own unique country rankings based on the relative priority they give to each of the 11 well-being dimensions for achieving a good quality of life. To date nearly 92,000 people have shared their views with OECD.
Based on the views of the over 3600 Italians who have shared their indexes, health, education and life satisfaction are given most importance relative to aspects such as income. Italian users generally give a greater importance to the environment and to civic engagement than users in other countries. To add your voice, create your own Better Life Index here.
Launching the Index, OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría said: “In the wake of the crisis, we need to bridge the gap between the needs and aspirations of citizens, and the policies and priorities of governments. Thus, we need to have a better sense of what citizens want. This is the very essence of democracy. The OECD Better Life Index helps us to achieve this.”
An article by OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría on well-being in Italy and why measuring well-being should be a key component of governments’ economic and social policies is available here: Going beyond GDP – the OECD’s Better Life Index
The Better Life Index & Expo Milano 2015
The OECD is unveiling the Better Life Index in Italian as part of its involvement as an official partner of the EXPO Milano 2015, whose theme “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life” combines key elements of the Index’s vision of well-being with obvious connections to happiness and life satisfaction, human interaction and social connections, health, safety, environment, and culture. For a complete overview of the OECD’s involvement with EXPO Milano, see here: www.oecd.org/expo-milano.htm
Background:
The Index is part of the OECD’s Better Life Initiative, launched in 2011 to measure well-being and progress beyond traditional metrics such as GDP. The initiative produces regular reports, such as How’s Life?, which provide comprehensive studies of well-being and analyse trends and inequalities across population groups.
The OECD has also produced How’s Life in your Region accompanied by an interactive site which studies regional differences of quality of life within countries. The region of Lombardy can be viewed here.
The OECD report How Was Life? complements this body of work, providing a historical perspective on well-being trends since 1820 for 25 countries and eight regions.
For further information about the BLI, journalists are invited to contact Romina Boarini (+ 33 1 45 24 9291), or Stephen Di Biasio (+ 33 1 45 24 8103) in the OECD’s Media Division (+ 33 1 45 24 9700)
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