Building a Multidimensional Wellbeing Index for Rural Populations in Northeastern Namibia

Abstract

Growing awareness of the limitations of conventional development indicators to adequately capture the full human experience provides an opportunity to adopt more holistic concepts such as wellbeing. However, operational and quantification challenges must be addressed to propose measures that can guide and monitor the impacts of development policies. We developed a multidimensional wellbeing index based on existing research and participatory methods to understand and quantify wellbeing in the context of rural northeastern Namibia. We present our index to provide a practical tool for policy-makers and analysts in the region and in other developing countries. We interviewed a random sample (n = 395) in five communities and built a multidimensional wellbeing index comprised of sub-indices for subjective wellbeing, health, wealth, education, and surrounding economic, social, political and infrastructural contexts. We improve upon existing measures by incorporating local preferences of different life domains and by the ability to disaggregate wellbeing assessments at different scales.