Going for Growth was launched in 2005 as a new form of structural surveillance complementing the OECD’s long-standing country and sector-specific surveys. In line with the OECD’s 1960 founding Convention, the aim is to help promote vigorous sustainable economic growth and improve the well-being of OECD citizens.

This surveillance is based on a systematic and in-depth analysis of structural policies and their outcomes across OECD members, relying on a set of internationally comparable and regularly updated policy indicators with a well-established link to performance. Using these indicators, alongside the expertise of OECD committees and staff, policy priorities and recommendations are derived for each member and, progressively since the 2011 issue, several non-member countries (Argentina, Brazil, the People’s Republic of China, Colombia, Costa Rica, India, Indonesia, Lithuania, the Russian Federation and South Africa). From one issue to the next, Going for Growth follows up on these recommendations and priorities evolve, not least as a result of governments taking action on the identified policy priorities.

Underpinning this type of benchmarking is the observation that drawing lessons from mutual success and failure is a powerful avenue for progress. While allowance should be made for genuine differences in social preferences across OECD members, the uniqueness of national circumstances should not serve to justify inefficient policies. In gauging performance, the focus has traditionally been on average income, productivity and employment. In order to better reflect the multi-dimensional nature of well-being, the Going for Growth framework for selecting priorities now considers inclusiveness as a prime objective, alongside productivity and employment. For this purpose, inclusiveness encompasses dimensions such as inequality and poverty, job quantity and job quality, along with labour market inclusion of vulnerable groups, gender gaps and equity in education, and health outcomes.

Going for Growth is the fruit of a joint effort across a large number of OECD Departments.