© Crown copyright 2012. Reproduced with the permission of the Controller of Her Majesty’s StationeryOffice and the Office for National Statistics 0964–1998/12/175813

J. R. Statist. Soc. A (2012)175, Part 3, pp. 813–814

Correspondence

We welcome the recent editorial by Anand et al. (2011) which uses Amartya Sen’s capabilities approachas a framework to examine recent developments in measuring wellbeing including the Office for NationalStatistics’s (ONS’s) ‘Measuring national wellbeing’ programme. The editorial calls for the developmentof a balanced portfolio of wellbeing indicators and their integration into policy evaluations, raises somedifficulties that may be encountered and makes a prediction about imminent major developments in thefield. We would like to outline the ways in which the ONS programme will realize the authors’ suggestions,describe how we shall address the difficulties that they raise and comment on their prediction.

The overall aim of the programme is to develop

‘an accepted and trusted set of National Statistics which people turn to first to understand and monitornational wellbeing’

(Office for National Statistics, 2011a). This objective is inherently multi-dimensional in that it attemptsto create a set (or ‘portfolio’) of indicators and also recognizes the ONS’s duty to produce data sets thatbalance the needs of a range of users including, but not limited to, those pursuing capabilities approaches.As our national debate showed, the potential users of wellbeing indicators are a large and diverse groupwhose needs and ways of talking about wellbeing differ significantly.

The obvious danger of our eclectic and pragmatic approach is that we produce an incoherent ragbag.Our strategy for avoiding this risk is to attempt to develop a clear conceptual framework for our indicatorset (Office for National Statistics, 2011b) and to consult widely on the domains that should be includedin this data set and the indicators that should go into them (Office for National Statistics, 2011c). Ourview, based on the history of past efforts to develop progress indicators—see for example Scrivens andIasiello (2010)—is that such consultations are in themselves a significant contribution to the establishmentof an accepted set of measures of progress. We also share the perception of Anand and his colleaguesof a significant commonality between users’ ideas about domains and hope that our National Statisticsdomains, classifications and definitions may come to serve as a standard that will facilitate communicationbetween the various users and analysts working with wellbeing indicators.

Facilitating connections in a wider sense is one important way in which our programme aims to respondto the call of Anand and his colleagues for the integration of wellbeing analysis into policy evaluation.Our work has brought us into contact with practical policy initiatives ranging from the government’sSocial Impacts Task Force and its offspring (see for example Campbell and Fujiwara (2011)) to non-governmental organizations attempting to develop wellbeing measures to monitor their own programmes(e.g. Southwark Circle (2010)). What they require, in almost every case, is not just a measure of overallwellbeing but an understanding of how a particular policy or programme affects a particular aspect ofwellbeing and through that overall wellbeing. Achieving an understanding of these links requires the inte-gration of findings and information from many studies and the use of common classifications and commondata can play an important role in promoting such integration. This is on top of the powerful stimulusthat will be given to such research by the size, consistency and, we hope, accessibility of the subjectivewellbeing data sets that the ONS is developing through its integrated household survey programme.

Anand et al. (2011) raise two particular difficulties faced by wellbeing research: the lack of commonlyaccepted aggregate or summary measures of wellbeing and the consequent pressure for empirical research-ers to use either subjective household survey data or objective measures. Here again we believe that large,integrated, easily accessible data sets of subjective and objective indicators will assist in overcoming theseobstacles. As Anand et al. (2011) point out, technology can help in this area and the development of toolssuch as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s better life index and dashboardswhich users can drill down into easily is very promising. Anand et al. (2011) also raise only to dismissone difficulty that is specific to the capabilities approach: the measurement of opportunities or the lackof them as well as activities actually undertaken or not. Although we cannot follow Anand and his col-leagues in regarding this as a completely solved problem we draw researchers’ attention to the availability

814 Correspondence

of the ONS’s opportunities survey which asks a large panel of disabled people and a control group aboutwhether or not they engage in particular activities and the reasons why they do or do not participate inthem.

Finally we would like to remark briefly on the prediction of Anand and his colleagues that the next majordevelopment in the field will focus on sets of progress indicators that are sensitive to wellbeing variationover the life course. Although we agree that this is an important issue it is interesting that the referencesthat they cite are all concerned with the acquisition of skills, which are often referred to as human capital.We suggest that the real concern here is an issue that is not raised explicitly by Anand et al. (2011) butof great concern to participants in our national debate, namely the sustainability of the physical, human,environmental and other capitals that are required to provide wellbeing in the future. We believe that boththe sustainability and distributional equity of all wellbeing measures are issues that must be addressed andwe shall be attempting to incorporate them into all areas of our data set.

ReferencesAnand, P., Durand, M. and Heckman, J. (2011) The measurement of progress—some achievements and chal-

lenges, J. R. Statist. Soc. A, 174, 851–855.Campbell, R. and Fujiwara, D. (2011) Valuation techniques for social cost-benefit analysis. Her Majesty’s

Treasury, London. (Available from http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/green-book-valuationtechniques-250711.pdf.)

Office for National Statistics (2011a) National Statistician’s reflections on the National Debate on measur-ing national well-being. Office for National Statistics, London. (Available from http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/user-guidance/well-being/index.html.)

Office for National Statistics (2011b) Developing a framework for understanding and measuring national wellbeing. Office for National Statistics, London. (Available from http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/user-guidance/well-being/index.html.)

Office for National Statistics (2011c) Measuring national well-being: discussion paper on domains andmeasures. Office for National Statistics, London. (Available from http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/wellbeing/measuring-national-well-being/discussion-paper-on-domains-and-measures/index.html.)

Scrivens, K. and Iasiello, B. (2010) Indicators of societal progress: lessons from international experience. WorkingPaper 2010/4. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Paris.

Southwark Circle (2010) Southwark Circle one year review. Southwark Circle, London. (Available fromhttp://moderngov.southwarksites.com/mgConvert2PDF.aspx?ID=14589.)

Matthew Powell, Paul Allin and Joe GriceOffice for National Statistics

Cardiff RoadNewport

NP10 8XGUK

E-mail: nationalwell-being@ons.gsi.gov.uk[Received November 2011. Revised March 2012]