This is the second edition of Society at a Glance: Asia/Pacific, the biennial OECD overview of social indicators. This report addresses the growing demand for quantitative evidence on the state of and trends in social well-being. It updates some indicators included in the first edition and adds some new ones. Additionally, this edition makes a considerable effort to return to the roots of the publication with its “At a Glance” overview. It reduces the number of indicators to 25. There is a strong focus on simple language and a shorter text. Charts and boxes are direct and simple and reflect a higher degree of standardisation. We believe that such an approach is essential in this increasingly information-rich age.

The Joint OECD/Korea Policy Centre (www.oecdkorea.org) is an international co-operation organisation established by a Memorandum of Understanding between the OECD and the Government of the Republic of Korea. The Centre – officially opened on 7 July 2008 – results from the integration of four pre-existing OECD/Korea Centres, one of which was the Regional Centre on Health and Social Policy (RCHSP), established in 2005.

This special chapter considers time-use patterns across Asia/Pacific countries and economies and compares these to OECD patterns. It focuses particularly on unpaid work and free-time. Unpaid work within the home includes cooking, cleaning, shopping and raising children. Unpaid work contributes significantly to the well-being of families and others. Focussing solely on market income measures, rather than also considering unpaid work, may lead to incorrect inferences about levels and changes in well-being. Since women typically do much of the unpaid work, considering unpaid work acknowledges the importance of a major female contribution to well-being. In addition to unpaid work within the household, people carry out vital unremunerated work for relatives who live outside the household and for the wider community. Voluntary work, such as helping out neighbours, caring for older people and people with disabilities, aiding charities, assisting new immigrants, training sports teams and administering schools, also contributes to societal well-being but is not included in traditional economic measures. Traditional income-based measures of well-being also neglect the measurement of the amount of free time and leisure time that people have available to them. Leisure time is self-evidently an important component of people’s well-being.

Society at a Glance: Asia/Pacific 2011 uses the 25 social indicators presented below. There is obvious value in providing a short summary – hence Society at a Glance: An Overview. In Society at a Glance 2009, a summary was provided through a table that selected two indicators per domain, chosen on the basis of their a priori importance and through consultation with member countries, and assigned “green circle” for performance in the top two deciles, “yellow triangle” for performance in the middle six deciles and “red diamond” for the bottom two deciles.