How's Life? 2020
Measuring Well-being
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How’s Life? charts whether life is getting better for people in 37 OECD countries and 4 partner countries. This fifth edition presents the latest evidence from an updated set of over 80 indicators, covering current well-being outcomes, inequalities, and resources for future well-being. Since 2010, people’s well-being has improved in many respects, but progress has been slow or deteriorated in others, including how people connect with each other and their government. Large gaps by gender, age and education persist across most well-being outcomes. Generally, OECD countries that do better on average also feature greater equality between population groups and fewer people living in deprivation. Many OECD countries with poorer well-being in 2010 have since experienced the greatest gains. However, advances in current well-being have not always been matched by improvements in the resources that sustain well-being over time, with warning signs emerging across natural, human, economic and social capital. Beyond an overall analysis of well-being trends since 2010, this report explores in detail the 15 dimensions of the OECD Better Life Initiative, including health, subjective well-being, social connections, natural capital, and more, and looks at each country’s performance in dedicated country profiles.
Also available in: French
Social Connections
Social Connections address both the quantity and quality of time spent with others, and how much support people feel they have. Despite differences in the amount of time spent socialising, people’s own evaluations of their social connections are mostly positive and fairly similar across OECD countries. On average, people are highly satisfied with their social relationships (8.1 on a 0-10 scale), and 90% feel that they have someone they can count on in times of need. Even though men spend, on average, 40 minutes less than women in social interactions per week, gender differences in satisfaction with social relationships are negligible. Older people spend less time in social interactions and have less social support, but their satisfaction with social relationships is not significantly lower than for younger people. People with lower educational attainment are more likely than their more educated peers to lack social support.
Also available in: French
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