How's life in Colombia?

Figure 5.37 shows Colombia’s relative strengths and weaknesses in well-being, with reference to both the OECD average and the average outcomes of OECD partner countries considered in How’s Life? 2017 (i.e. Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Lithuania, the Russian Federation and South Africa).

Colombia has several areas of strength relative to both the OECD and partner countries. Housing affordability is good, and air quality (measured in terms of mean exposure to outdoor air pollution by fine particulate matter, PM_2.5) is better than both the OECD and partner country averages. In addition, the employment rate, at 67.2% in 2016, was higher than the average for both the OECD (67%) and the partner countries (63.9%), while the long-term unemployment rate (below 0.6%) was the lowest among partner countries and well below the OECD average.

In the case of social support, almost 89% of Colombians report having friends or relatives whom they can count on in times of trouble, in line with the average for both the OECD (89%) and the partner countries (90%).

In several outcomes Colombia is above the average for the partner countries but below the OECD average. Life expectancy at birth, at 74 years, is above the average level among partner countries (72) but below the OECD average (80). Satisfaction with local water quality is also higher in Colombia: around 74% of Colombians say that they are satisfied with their local water quality compared to only 66% on average among all partner countries. Finally, 45% of Colombia’s people report feeling safe walking alone at night in the area where they live, which is slightly higher than the partner country average (43%) but well below the OECD average (almost 69%).

Colombia has some areas of weakness compared to both the OECD and other partner countries. 28% of employees regularly worked very long hours in 2016, well above 13% in the OECD and 9% in partner countries, on average. The rates of both adults’ upper secondary educational attainment (52%) and students’ cognitive skills at age 15 are among the lowest in both the OECD and partner countries. Voter turnout (44% in 2014) is the lowest, and the homicide rate the highest, across all OECD and partner countries.

Change in Colombia’s average well-being over the past 10 years
Dimension	Description	Change
Income and wealth	[No time series data available]	..
Jobs and earnings	The employment rate increased by 6 percentage points between 2005 and 2016. The long-term unemployment rate has also improved over the past decade, falling from 3.3% in 2005 to 0.7% in 2016.	➚ ➚
Housing conditions	Housing has become more affordable since 2005, with the share of household disposable income spent on housing costs down by 1.7 percentage points. The average number of rooms per person has remained stable over the past decade, and remains below the OECD average.	➚ ↔
Work-life balance	The percentage of employees working 50 hours or more per week decreased from 37% in 2005 to 28% in 2016.	➚
Health status	Life expectancy at birth has increased by nearly 2 years since 2005, but stands almost 6 years below the OECD average.	➚
Education and skills	The 10-year change in upper secondary educational attainment cannot be assessed, due to missing data. However, the share of adults with at least an upper secondary level of education increased by 0.5% between 2014 and 2016.	➚
Social connections	Social support (measured as the share of people reporting that they have relatives or friends whom they can count on to help in case of need) has been relatively stable since 2005, in contrast with the slight fall recorded for the OECD average.	↔
Civic engagement	The percentage of votes cast among the population registered to vote has improved in the past decade, from 40.5% in the 2006 presidential elections to 43.6% in 2014.	➚
Environmental quality	Satisfaction with local water quality has fallen slightly in the last few years. On the other hand, air pollution levels remained broadly stable between 2005 and 2013.	➘ ↔
Personal security	The rate of deaths due to assault has fallen in recent years, from close to 48 deaths per 100 000 people in 2005 to 30 in 2013. However, the percentage of the population declaring that they feel safe when walking alone at night in the area where they live has also decreased, from 54% to 45%.	➚ ➘
Subjective well-being	Life satisfaction has improved slightly over the past decade and, at 6.4, is just below the OECD average of 6.5 (measured on a 0-10 scale).	➚
Note : For each indicator in every dimension: ➚ refers to an improvement; ↔ indicates little or no change; and ➘ signals deterioration. This is based on a comparison of the starting year (2005 in most cases) and the latest available year (usually 2015 or 2016). The order of the arrows shown in column three corresponds to that of the indicators mentioned in column two.

Colombia’s resources and risks for future well-being: Illustrative indicators