The Wellbeing of Nations

List of tables and figures viii
 
Preface ix
 
1 What is national wellbeing and why measure it? 1
 
1.1 Motivation: Why measure wellbeing? 3
 
1.2 What is individual wellbeing? 8
 
1.3 Aspects of individual wellbeing 11
 
1.4 How to measure individual wellbeing? 16
 
1.4.1 Basics of measurement 16
 
1.4.2 What is measured matters 18
 
1.5 Properties of measurements 21
 
1.5.1 Validity 21
 
1.5.2 Reliability 22
 
1.6 Objective or subjective? 22
 
1.7 Combining multiple aspects 23
 
1.8 What is national wellbeing? 26
 
1.9 And how to measure national wellbeing? 27
 
1.10 Structure of the book 30
 
References 31
 
2 A short history of national wellbeing and its measurement 35
 
2.1 The good society and philosophies of the role of government, from ancient times 36
 
2.2 Utilitarianism 39
 
2.3 The American constitution 41
 
2.4 Official statistics - statistics about the state and about the state of society 42
 
2.5 National accounts and GDP 44
 
2.6 More to life than GDP 51
 
2.7 Social indicator movement and measuring quality of life 53
 
2.8 Health and wellbeing 56
 
2.9 Rise of measurement of psychological wellbeing (life satisfaction, happiness, worthwhile lives) 58
 
2.10 The Easterlin paradox 61
 
2.11 Taking note of the change in the quality of the goods and services we use 62
 
2.12 Capability approach to quality of life (Sen) and the human development index 63
 
2.13 Social capital and public value 65
 
2.14 Limits to growth and sustainable development indicators 67
 
2.14.1 Sustainable development indicators 69
 
2.14.2 Green growth indicators 72
 
2.14.3 Natural resource accounting 73
 
2.15 Commentary 75
 
References 77
 
3 Recent developments: Towards economic, social and environmental accounts

David Hand is Professor of Statistics at Imperial College, London, where he is head of the Statistics Section in the Mathematics Department and head of the Mathematics in Banking and Finance Programme of the Institute for Mathematical Sciences. He launched the journal Statistics and Computing, and has been elected President of the Royal Statistical Society for 2008 and 2009. He was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries in 1999 and a Fellow of the British Academy in 2003. He has received various awards and prizes for his research, and acts as a consultant to a wide range of organisations, including governments, banks, pharmaceutical companies, manufacturing industry, and health service providers.