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How's Life? 2020

Measuring Well-being

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How’s Life? charts whether life is getting better for people in 37 OECD countries and 4 partner countries. This fifth edition presents the latest evidence from an updated set of over 80 indicators, covering current well-being outcomes, inequalities, and resources for future well-being. Since 2010, people’s well-being has improved in many respects, but progress has been slow or deteriorated in others, including how people connect with each other and their government. Large gaps by gender, age and education persist across most well-being outcomes. Generally, OECD countries that do better on average also feature greater equality between population groups and fewer people living in deprivation. Many OECD countries with poorer well-being in 2010 have since experienced the greatest gains. However, advances in current well-being have not always been matched by improvements in the resources that sustain well-being over time, with warning signs emerging across natural, human, economic and social capital. Beyond an overall analysis of well-being trends since 2010, this report explores in detail the 15 dimensions of the OECD Better Life Initiative, including health, subjective well-being, social connections, natural capital, and more, and looks at each country’s performance in dedicated country profiles.

English Also available in: French

Subjective Well-being

Subjective Well-being is about good mental states, and how people experience their lives. Average life satisfaction (measured on a 0-10 scale) ranges from below 6 to above 8 across OECD countries. Between 2013 and 2018, average levels of life satisfaction increased slightly, from 7.2 to 7.4 (based on data from 27 OECD countries). Nevertheless, a sizeable share of the population (around 7% on average) still report very low levels of life satisfaction, and around 1 in 8 people experience more negative than positive feelings in a typical day. Average life satisfaction is very similar for men and women, but in close to half of OECD countries the share of women reporting more negative than positive feelings is higher than the share of men. There are age- and education-related inequalities in Subjective Well-being, and countries with larger inequalities tend to also experience lower average scores.

English Also available in: French

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