Measuring Equitable and Sustainable Wellbeing in Italy

Abstract

Throughout history, various notions of wellbeing have been discussed depending on cultural influences and prevailing political regimes. In the 20th century, wellbeing was often equated with economic welfare. After the Great Depression and World War II, national accounting, and in particular Gross Domestic Product, came to be seen by many as the main way of measuring development. Although several alternative measures of wellbeing and societal progress were developed by researchers during the 1970s and the 1980s (for example, the ones grouped under the so-called ‘social indicators movement’), it is only in the 1990s that initiatives concerned with sustainable development and measuring human development (such as the UNDP Human Development Index, and the UN’s Millennium Development Goals) have captured the attention of media and have played a role in political debates. More recently, thanks to initiatives carried out by (some) national and local political authorities, to the research on the measurement of quality-of-life and happiness, and to initiatives undertaken by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on measuring and fostering societal progress, a new movement aiming at measuring wellbeing is emerging.