Measuring Well-being: What Role for Social Indicators? Dr. Jongwook Won Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs

How to measure well-being Quantitative macro-economic measures per capita GNP GDP GNI Final Consumption Expenditure Qualitative aspects of the well-being Green GNP, Welfare GNP, and Sustainable Economic Welfare

Where do the Indicators(Index) Stand? qualitative indicators & Index quantitativ e

Limitation of quantitative macro- economic measures Size of economy in terms of Production activities Pollution, Depletion of Natural resource, Crime, Congestion, Size of consumption does not reflect actual distribution of income/consumption, still does not account negative externalities

Limitation of qualitative aspects of the well-being Green GNP, SEW Cross-country comparison is impossible Use too many assumptions Each country use different assumptions Assumptions are too subjective ( aesthetic value of wet-land, discomfort of noise into monetary value)

Cross-country correlations between per capita GDP and social indicators

Increase in GDP per capita and Improvement of Basic Social Indicators ( )

Level of Life Satisfaction with GDP per capita Across Asian Countries

Advantages of Social Indicators Cross Country Comparison is possible It derives policy implications It is relatively easy and inexpensive to produce

Limitation of Social Indicators It is too simple to account for the whole dimension of the society It covers only published data Need to modify to fit in less developed countries More empahsis on poverty reduction We added a special chapter