Are governments considering the well-being of their citizens?

Governments around the world, at all levels of economic growth, are improving the well-being of their citizens. This is the result revealed by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) report, Building Well-Being into National Strategies: the 2014 Sustainable Economic Development Assessment, released on 17 February 2014.

BCG’s sustainable economic development assessment (SEDA) assessed 149 countries across ten dimensions of well-being, including: (1) income, (2) education, (3) health, (4) civil society, and (5) the environment. The study examined each country’s GDP growth from 2007 to 2012. It also examined whether governments were taking steps to fully integrate the goal of improving well-being into the development of national strategies.

SEDA (conducted annually since 2012) reveals that even low economic growth does not necessarily limit a country’s success in efforts to include well-being as a national strategy. For example, Mexico produced improvements in well-being above expectations given the country’s relatively slow economic growth. Similarly, Turkey, with moderate economic growth, generated gains in citizen well-being above the average for countries with a similar growth trajectory, the report revealed. China’s well-being results kept pace with it rapid economic growth, but below average when compared with countries experiencing similar rates of economic growth.

The report revealed some common patterns of success among countries with varying growth levels but with advances in strategies for improving the well-being of their citizens. These included improvements in infrastructure and health, particularly for high-growth countries. Low-growth countries increased citizen well-being predominantly through improvements in the environment and civil society.

For some countries, such as Norway and Bhutan, well-being strategies have been included in national government policies for a long time. For other countries, such as Malaysia and the United Kingdom, improvements to integrate well-being measures into government policy are well under way. Therefore, the majority of governments are increasingly considering well-being as a critical factor in their national policies, in addition to their aims for economic growth.

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