Session 1 - Implementing a well-being approach to policy and international partnerships in Latin America, 28-30 June 2022
Duration :
02:17:16
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Date : Jun 30, 2022
Session 1 of 3: From dashboards to decision-making: adapting complex information on well-being for policy use
For most countries, the first step to taking a well-being approach to policy is developing a comprehensive set (or dashboard) of indicators for monitoring current and future well-being, as well as its distribution across territories and population groups. The OECD well-being measurement framework – spanning material conditions, quality of life, resources for future well-being and inequalities of opportunity – provides one model that has been adapted by countries in the LAC region and around the world. Other countries have developed their own frameworks from the ground up, such as the Buen Vivir/Vivir Bien approaches in Ecuador and Bolivia, which were strongly informed by Andean Indigenous perspectives. In addition, the indicators associated with the UN 2030 Agenda Sustainable Development Goals provide a global and extensive measurement template which has been streamlined and adapted at national level to reflect countries’ specific well-being and development priorities, as well as at the regional level (through ECLAC’s Conference of Statisticians of the Americas).
Multidimensional well-being dashboards represent powerful sources of information for monitoring progress ‘beyond income’, giving a detailed view of economic, social, environmental and distributional outcomes that matter for well-being today and into the future. However, they also introduce a greater complexity into analytical processes, necessitating more sophisticated methods for comparing different priorities, evaluating trade-offs and synergies, and forecasting the impact of various policy options. While allowing for greater complexity and breadth in policy analysis is a step in the right direction – as most challenges and over-arching trends facing governments today are themselves complex and multidimensional, such as climate change, trenchant inequalities, rising migration, population ageing, and the digital transformation – well-being evidence and tools for informing decision-making need to minimise this complexity as much as possible.
This session will present the latest developments in well-being monitoring in the region, addressing some of the following key questions:
- What are the latest developments in well-being data dashboards, and what new information do they provide?
- What are the pros and cons of using composite indices on well-being or related aspects to inform policy decision-making?
- What other quantitative methods exist to evaluate policy from a well-being perspective?