Donato Speroni - Centro Italo Tedesco 2011 1
Problems in Going Beyond GDP Communicating Dashboards and Indicators
to Measure Progress
Donato Speroni Istituto per la Formazione al Giornalismo
Università di Urbino
Introducing myself: - I am a journalist, currently writing on global themes for the bimonthly magazine East – Europe and Asia strategies - and teaching economics and statistics at the Urbino school of journalism. - I had some years of experience in statistical communication (Istat, Paris 21, World Bank, Oxford Policy Management). - In June 2010 I wrote the book “I numeri della felicità – dal Pil alla misura del benessere” about the world research to measure progress “beyond Gdp”.
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Going “beyond Gdp” is an old story. But the political interest is new We all remember Bob Kennedy’s famous speech
in 1968. But on the political side things really started to move in 2009 with: The Stiglitz Report The European Report “Gdp and beyond” The G20 recommendations in Pittsburgh The Oecd Conference in Busan on measuring
progress. Economic crisis and environmental changes
transformed Bob’s vision in political action – after more than 40 years!!!
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2010/2011: everybody is working to “measure happiness”. Examples: In Uk, Cameron announced the intention to measure
happiness – and National Statistics is working on it. Even in China, premier Wen Jiabao announced the
intention to build a “happy society”. In Italy, Istat and Cnel announced in December that a
first report on “benessere equo e solidale” will be produced in 18 months.
A Franco-German official report suggests how to implement nationally the Stiglitz recommendations proposing a dashboard, from p.c. Gdp to a “bird index”
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Should we talk about happiness, well-being or standard of living? Happiness “sells” more to the media and to
the public Politicians, from Cameron to Wen Jiabao,
prefer to talk about happiness “Only a happiness indicator has a universal
value and can take the place of Gdp, changing political priorities” (Richard Layard)
But statisticians prefer to talk of “swb”.
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But are happiness indicators an effective substitute to Gdp? Very few believe it The happiness perception…
varies in different cultures – even the word has different meanings
can be influenced by governments ignores future generations.
Some political thinkers also fear that the State will not only “measure happiness” but will tell us “how to be happy”. Remember “Brave new world”?
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In any case, life satisfaction can be an important political tool China is already using a happiness indicator
(16 variables) in some provinces to evaluate local party leaders. Of course this is more difficult in a democracy
The Australian Personal Well Being Index is used to spot problems in local communities (when it abruptly goes down). But to do this we need big samples.
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If “happiness” or swb is not enough, how should we measure progress? Three areas of research, according to the Stiglitz Rpt:
Improve national accounts Measure well-being – perceived and objective Put sustainability (human, social, not only economic and
environmental) into the picture A combined indicator that includes all these values
would be useless, “as an indicator on your car putting together speed and gasoline left in the tank” (Stiglitz): measuring progress requires a “dashboard”
But dashboards get less attention, as the “Measures of Australian Progress” experience shows
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Can all this process be explained to the media and to the public? In many cases ideology prevails: for the “no global”
culture, Gdp is a capitalistic instrument that has to be “scrapped”
On the other hand, many economists defend Gdp unconditionally, suspecting that measures of well-being are just a way to hide the economic crisis
The public likes rankings; but geographical comparisons of well being become less significant, as the “Bhutan Gdh” shows, with questions like: “how many hours do you spend every day in meditation”?
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To go politically beyond Gdp… Political consensus is required on which data are really
important. Is it possible to find an agreement? Possible errors from sampling should be clearly stated Probably we also need “risk assessments” that tell us not
only the immediate effects of a policy, but also how it changes the risks for the future (“We need a theory of social revolutions” – Giovannini)
Communicating good statistics is already harder than in the past – because of Google, that changed the way to get data on the web, ignoring metadata
Understanding the new “dashboards” can be done only with more statistical culture
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