Better Life Index methodology

Over the last decade there has been a drive globally to move away from purely economic measures, such as GDP, as the indicators of a nation’s well-being and progress. Approaches which draw on social and environmental, as well as economic, factors are now a common international objective.

In this context, a widely-used framework is the “Better Life Index” developed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The OECD is an international organisation, comprising 38 member countries and several partners, which has the mission of promoting policies to improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world.

As well as presenting an overall headline measure, this framework enables comparison of Jersey with OECD member countries and partners in terms of 11 topics (“dimensions”) relating to material conditions and quality of life.

Dimensions and indicators

The framework for the OECD Better Life Index considers data in 11 “dimensions” of well-being. The following table lists the indicators in the OECD Better Life Index at the national and regional levels. Most indicators have been included in the Jersey Better Life Index. However, there are additional OECD indicators not used due to a lack of comparable data currently available for Jersey, which are highlighted in red italics in the table. Hence, scores published in Jersey's Better Life Index statistics may vary compared to those published by the OECD.

Dimension	National well-being indicators	Regional well-being indicators
Income	Household net adjusted disposable income Household net financial wealth	Household disposable income
Jobs	Employment rate Long-term unemployment rate Average annual earnings per employee Labour market insecurity	Employment rate Unemployment rate
Housing	Number of rooms per person Housing expenditure Dwellings without basic facilities	Number of rooms per person
Health status	Life expectancy at birth Self-reported health status	Life expectancy at birth Age adjusted mortality rate
Education and skills	Educational attainment Students’ cognitive skills (PISA) Years in education	Educational attainment
Environment quality	Air quality Satisfaction with water quality	Air quality
Personal safety	Homicide rate Feeling safe walking alone at night	Homicide rate
Civic engagement and governance	Voter turnout Consultation on stakeholder engagement	Voter turnout
Accessibility of services	N/A	Broadband connection Internet download speed
Work-life balance	Employees working very long hours Time devoted to leisure and personal care	N/A
Community	Social network support	Social network support
Subjective well-being	Life satisfaction	Life satisfaction

National level methodology

The overall Better Life Index for each jurisdiction is calculated as follows:

for each indicator, a normalised score is calculated - see step a) below
for each dimension, a normalised score is calculated as the unweighted arithmetic mean of the normalised scores of the indicators comprising the dimension – see step b)
finally, the Better Life Index is calculated as the unweighted arithmetic mean of all 11 dimension scores – see step c)

For each jurisdiction, the indicator-level normalised scores are calculated relative to all OECD countries on a scale of between 0 (low) and 1 (high), through the following approach:

for an indicator with a positive tendency (high value implying “good”), the normalised score for each jurisdiction is calculated from the maximum (MAX) and minimum (MIN) values of the OECD countries as:
Normalised score =
Jurisdiction - OECD MIN

OECD MAX - OECD MIN

for an indicator with a negative tendency (high value implying “poor”), the normalised score for each jurisdiction is calculated as:

Normalised score = 1 -
Jurisdiction - OECD MIN

OECD MAX - OECD MIN
for each of the 11 dimensions, a normalised score on a scale of between 0 (low) and 10 (high) is calculated as:
the unweighted arithmetic mean of (10 times the normalised score for each indicator comprising the dimension)
the overall composite Better Life Index is calculated on a scale of 0 to 10 as the unweighted arithmetic mean of the normalised scores (0 to 10) of the 11 dimensions.

Regional level methodology

The OECD defines regions as the first tier of sub-national government (for example, states in the USA, provinces in Canada, or “régions” in France).

Following the OECD regional-level methodology, Jersey’s performance may be compared under each dimension with that of regions across the OECD and an overall regional well-being score constructed.

All scores calculated for each region are relative measures, calculated following a similar approach to that applied at the national level. However, due to considerable variations in some countries at a regional level, the OECD applies thresholds to eliminate extreme values, defined as below the 4th percentile and above the 96th percentile. In the case of homicide rate, since several regions across the OECD have a very high value, the cut-offs are the 10th and 90th percentiles, respectively. This approach is adopted in order to obtain well-being scores that are more evenly distributed and avoids cases where (as in the case of homicides rate) almost all regions would be scored at between 9 and 10.

To determine the overall measure of regional well-being, normalised scores are calculated for each indicator which are then averaged (arithmetic mean, unweighted) to provide a score for the relevant dimension. Some regions of the OECD do not have data for all indicators; for these regions, the average score of the indicators that are available is used. The dimension scores are then averaged (arithmetic mean, unweighted) to give the overall regional well-being score.

Normalised score =	Jurisdiction - OECD MIN
Normalised score =	OECD MAX - OECD MIN

Normalised score = 1 -	Jurisdiction - OECD MIN
Normalised score = 1 -	OECD MAX - OECD MIN