http://www.rabble.ca/news_full_story.shtml?sh_itm=4e92d60c2e9c28bcef9a2a818257104f&r=1
If the link is broken, go to:
http://www.rabble.ca/ and click on "Measuring the 'Good Life'"
EXCERPT
“There should be some place where we can all go to get a relatively reliable
and valid assessment of the world that we're living in,” says Alex Michalos,
director of the Institute for Social Research and Evaluation at the
University of Northern British Columbia. Michalos is working with a national
working group of about 20 researchers on the new Canadian Index of Wellbeing
(CIW).
The group includes representatives from Statistics Canada and Environment
Canada, and researchers from eight universities and six non-government
research organizations across Canada. The work is also part of a broader
international effort to measure the things that count: the CIW researchers
have been working closely with their counterparts in New Zealand, the United
Kingdom, Germany, the United States and elsewhere.
The CIW won't come up with the answer to everything, but its aim is still
ambitious. And the questions it asks are every bit as important as the
answers it offers. It aims to assess whether Canadians are better off or
worse off than they used to be — not just materially or based on how fast
the economy is growing, but in terms of their overall wellbeing. By doing
so, it will become Canada's core, central measure of progress, and it will
relegate the Gross Domestic Product to the function for which it was
originally designed and intended: measuring the overall size of the market
economy.
“The Canadian Index of Wellbeing is intended to be a measure of the quality
of life of all Canadians,” says Michalos. “You could think of an Index of
Wellbeing as a kind of index of people's life chances — that is the
probabilities of good or bad things happening to them as they go through
their lives.”
Measuring wellbeing in seven areas
Researchers working on the new Index are looking at seven specific areas or
“domains” that affect the lives of everyone.
* The Living Standards domain, for example, will measure incomes and
jobs; the gap between rich and poor; food and livelihood security; and
affordable housing.
* The Healthy Populations domain will assess the health status and
health outcomes of different groups of Canadians, as well as risk factors
and conditions that affect health and disease.
* The Community Vitality domain will assess social cohesion, personal
security and safety, and people's sense of social and cultural belonging.
Other domains will measure:
* The quality of the environment
* The educational attainment of the population
* The amount of free time that people can devote to social, family and
cultural pursuits and finally,
* The CIW will measure people's civic engagement, and how responsive
governing bodies are to citizens' needs and views.
The CIW will release its first report in the fall, on three core areas of
wellbeing that matter to Canadians: healthy populations, living standards
and time use.
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Chrystal Ocean, Coordinator
Wellbeing through Inclusion Socially & Economically
http://www.wise-bc.org/
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