Measuring and Assessing Well-being in Israel
Measuring and Assessing Well-being in Israel provides a description of the level, distribution, and sustainability of well-being in Israel. Drawing on the methodology developed in the bi-annual report on well-being in OECD countries – How's Life? – this report extends the methodology to provide in an-depth examination of well-being in a single OECD country. The report examines well-being in Israel in the context of the Israeli government's recent initiative to develop indicators of well-being, resilience, and sustainability, and provides a complementary account of well-being in Israel with a stronger focus on international comparisons.
Going beyond a simple statistical description of the level and distribution of well-being in Israel, the report also uses Israel as a case study of how well-being measures can be used to identify areas of high policy relevance. In particular, the report analyses the preferences of Israeli citizens across the different dimensions of the OECD well-being framework. Finally, the report reviews the Israeli statistical system from the perspective of measuring well-being, and notes the key areas where further statistical development is desirable.
Measuring and Assessing Well-being in Israel is part of the OECD Better Life Initiative, which features a series of publications on measuring well-being, as well as the Better Life Index, an interactive website that aims to involve citizens in the debate about what a better life means to them.
Well-being in Israel: Putting the pieces together
Understanding what well-being means to Israeli citizens, and in particular how the importance of different outcome domains varies across the population, has important implications for informing policy decisions. This chapter puts all the pieces presented in the previous chapters together to examine what well-being means to Israeli citizens and illustrates how information on well-being in multiple domains can be brought together to provide a picture of overall well-being in Israel. An analysis based on the Israeli Social Survey suggests that the level and distribution of income is of crucial importance to the well-being of Israeli citizens as are social connections, environmental quality and health. A particular tension here is that the well-being of the Haredi population appears to be only marginally affected by income, jobs, or the secular aspects of education. In contrast, Arab Israeli preferences mirror those of mainstream Jews relatively closely, suggesting that if the social and economic causes of poor Arab outcomes are addressed, there is scope for relatively rapid convergence.
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