ONS confirms introduction of new economic well-being release

8 Oct 2014 04:38 PM

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) confirmed at its Economic Forum in London that it would introduce a new release bringing together a set of indicators of economic well-being for the UK.

From December this year, ONS will publish a regular set of indicators of economic well-being that supplement more traditional measures such as GDP and give a more rounded and comprehensive basis for assessing changes in material well-being.

 “While it’s right that GDP plays a central role in monetary and fiscal policy, it has long been recognised as presenting an incomplete picture of how our society is doing,” says ONS Chief Economic Adviser Joe Grice. “The UK will be one of the first countries to bring together official statistics on other measures that will tell us, for example, how households are doing, including how well off people are feeling.  This can help inform important decisions by people businesses and policy makers."

ONS will provide more detail on the framework and indicators being used to monitor economic well-being in November, prior to the first statistics being published on 23 December 2014.

 

Background notes

  1. The UK’s Measuring National Well-being programme was launched in November 2010 to give additional economic, social and environmental measures to complement GDP as measures of how society is doing. For more information about the Measuring National Well-being Programme go to www.ons.gov.uk/well-being
  2. In April this year, ONS published a paper looking at possible ways of measuring economic well-being, and the indicators that might provide this: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/wellbeing/measuring-national-well-being/economic-well-being/measuring-national-well-being---economic-well-being.html
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