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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

Work-Life Balance

Work-Life Balance is about being able to combine family commitments, leisure and work – including both paid and unpaid work. Across OECD countries, the average time spent on leisure and personal care by full-time employed people ranges from around 14 to 16.5 hours per day. Full-time employed men enjoy 30 minutes more leisure and personal care time relative to women, while the young and old spend 50 and 25 minutes more than the middle-aged, respectively. In the 13 OECD countries with available data, the share of the population working long hours in unpaid work ranges from 7% to 17%. When considering both paid and unpaid working time together, women work, on average, 25 minutes longer per day than men do. Average satisfaction with time use, measured on a 0-10 scale, never exceeds 8 and can be as low as 5.6. Middle-aged people are consistently the least satisfied with their time use.

English Also available in: French

Graphs

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