Implementing the Stiglitz Report's Recommendations: The Insee Eurostat Sponsorship Proposals – Following the Publication of the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi (SSF) Report, One of the Task Forces Set up Was To Consider How These Recommendations Concerning Quality of Life (QoL) Could Be Implemented. The Stiglitz Commission Identified Its Key Conceptual Dimensions and Highlighted the Need To Improve Measures of QoL, Especially Those Relating to Social Connections, Polical Voice and Insecurity. Last September, the Sofia Memorandum Recognised That the European Survey on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) Should Be Developed as a Core Instrument and Be Complemented by Other European Statistical System (ESS) Data Sources When Necessary
Claire Plateau
Statistical Coordination, INSEE, Paris, France, Metropolitan

In line with the SSF recommendations, the task force has considered eight basic dimensions for measuring well-being. The first seven refer to drivers: living conditions, health, education, leisure and social interactions, personal insecurity, governance and basic rights, natural environment. They involve a mix of both subjective and objective items. The eight dimension refers to outcomes, and deals with exclusively subjective well-being. One important goal is to provide indicators of QoL for all possible social groups, in oder to improve economic governance. However, certain important indicators are only available for and relevant to a national level, or to comparisons between countries. It is proposed to complement the set of indicators based on micro data for comparisons between subpopulations, by other ones used especially to compare countries.

The task force proposes that a full report on QoL should be published every five years on the basis of all available sources in Europe, and that any source providing information on QoL should be considered, particularly those sources available in the ESS.

However, another important recommendation of the Stiglitz report is to establish correlations between the respective domains and characterize the social groups that accumulate indicators of low QoL. This is only possible with a single source. A limited yearly publication based exclusively on EU-SILC data would satisfy this goal by using a limited set of variables, and by describing the correlations between them. Moreover, the timeliness of this survey need to be improved.

The task force also proposes that the future regulation of the EU-SILC survey should integrate QoL core variables in its questionnaire, either in the yearly survey or in rolling modules. Other new task forces would also be useful to fully implement the recommendations of the Sponsorship.

Keywords: Implementing the Stiglitz report's recommendation; The Insee-Eurostat sponsorship proposals; Measuring well-being; Quality of life

Biography: Mrs Claire Plateau is the deputy head of the Statistical coordination department at INSEE. She is in charge of coordinating the follow up of the Stiglitz commission and of producing sustainable development indicators.