C19. 140-guruh talabasi: Abdukarimov Oyatillo what is economics? Wellbeing and welfare plan

The importance of the Economy of Well-Being
The Economy of Well-Being is defined as the ‘capacity to create a virtuous circle in which citizens’ well-being drives economic prosperity, stability and resilience, and vice-versa, that those good macroeconomic outcomes allow to sustain well-being investments over time’. It specifically highlights the need for putting people at the centre of policy and moving away from an attitude of “grow first, redistribute and clean up later”, towards a growth model that is equitable and sustainable from the outset.

Recognising its importance, the OECD has been working on the measurement of well-being beyond GDP since the 1970s. Over the past 50 years, we have seen the concept of well-being develop from an interesting side-note into a well-established agenda for policy.

The OECD’s Well-Being Framework has further developed the concept by providing us with a clear definition and a rigorous analytical basis. More than half of all OECD countries have now developed dashboards of well-being indicators, and I know that in Iceland – a leader in well-being policy – you are hard at work creating your own as we speak.

Since publishing our first How’s Life? report in 2011, we have been systematically looking beyond the average, to document inequalities – from gender differences in work-life balance, to age differences in unemployment, regional differences in air pollution, to educational differences in health outcomes. And we are also monitoring the sustainability of well-being over time, to know if actions taken today are putting the well-being of future generations at risk.

Moreover, the SDGs have given an important push to measuring progress “beyond GDP”, although there is significant room for improvement here. For example, it is shocking that we can’t measure about 40% of the 169 SDG targets for OECD countries – meaning we can’t tell whether we are on track to meet them by 2030 or not.

Significant challenges persist

As much as we strive to promote more economic growth, our efforts do not automatically translate into higher and more sustainable well-being for all. What we are witnessing today are some of the deepest fault lines ever that divide our societies. Let me provide some stark examples:
Since the mid-1980s, the rate of income growth for households in the top 10% has been nearly four times greater than for those in the bottom 10%. Nearly 50% of middle-income households reported experiencing difficulties making ends meet in 2016. In EU countries, this ranges from under 10% to over 70% . And since 2005, average life satisfaction in OECD countries has fallen by 3%.

We are also in dire straits when it comes to our planet. July was the hottest month ever on record. We are staring down the barrel at the earth’s sixth mass extinction of biodiversity.

Take air pollution: we calculated that the burden of ambient air pollution stood at around 3.2 million deaths in 2015. Yes, this is huge. The economic cost is also mind-blowing! USD 5.1 trillion. Combatting air pollution is win-win: we can save lives, while also combatting climate change.