Indicators of People’s Well-being

Abstract

This paper provides some thoughts on Alex Michalos and Ken Land’s manuscript entitled Fifty years after the Social Indicators Movement: Has the promise been fulfilled? An assessment and an agenda for the future. The paper is structured on the basis of a retrospective exercise, a prospective exercise, and a main consideration. The retrospective exercise states that there is substantial value in knowing and recognizing the important work developed by previous scholars in the field of Social Indicators. The prospective exercise states that adjustments need to be implemented in order to enhance the policy relevance of the Social Indicators Movement. The main consideration states that we must never forget that the final aim is not about indicators but about people’s well-being; thus, it warns about the risk of making of the construction and monitoring of indicators an end in itself, and it argues in favor of judging the relevance of indicators on the basis of their ability to provide information about people’s experience of being well and about the design and implementation of policies to enhance this experience.