As the world strives to achieve sustainable development, an urgent question arises: should we rethink the criteria/measures of human well-being? This is what the Director of the Gender, Poverty Alleviation and Social Policies Division at the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), Sweta Saxena, thinks. It calls on African countries to move beyond Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as the benchmark for measuring well-being.
GDP measures in monetary terms the value of goods and services that a country produces over a given period by capturing the level of economic production. It does not measure quality of life, social well-being, inequalities and differences in human experience. For example, a country’s GDP may increase, but the health or environmental quality of its citizens may deteriorate.
Speaking at a side event on the theme, “Beyond GDP Growth: Quality of Life Matters,” during the Ninth African Statistical Commission, Ms. Saxena said that when we think When it comes to quality of life, GDP does not come to mind as the most appropriate measure.
“We need to go beyond GDP to capture the aspects of our lives that are most important and the factors that matter most to the quality of life of 1.4 billion people living in Africa,” Saxena said, emphasizing that the true meaning of quality of life must be understood.
In an effort to promote an overhaul of the measurement of human well-being, the United Nations Human Settlements Program (UN-Habitat) has launched an ambitious project known as the Quality of Life (QoL) Initiative , focused on what is essential for people and has value to their lives.
The CEA is part of the QoL Initiative, which aims to develop a comprehensive and human-centered concept of quality of life, including objective and subjective factors, and to promote it as the main objective of urban development. Human well-being has been identified as one of the key transformative changes needed to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Quality of life will contribute to this by helping subnational governments in urban areas move towards prosperous and fulfilling lives for individuals and communities.
The Quality of Life Initiative helps local authorities and policymakers understand how their current investments and policy priorities improve the well-being and quality of life of the individuals and communities they serve and how to make tangible and meaningful improvements. in the long term to the lives of urban populations.
To better internalize these issues, the ECA launched an experimental survey focused on the criteria taken into account by ECA staff as quality of life. The survey found that identities related to gender, age, race, nationality, education and origin pale in comparison to human identity.
“We all have the same basic needs and yes, the needs are few and the wants are unlimited,” Saxena said, adding that “the most human aspect that emerged from our survey is that we need few to have a good life. Much of what is counted in GDP doesn’t matter to us humans on a larger scale. »
The Economic Affairs Officer of the Urbanization and Development Section at the ECA, Giuseppe Tesoriere, said the impetus for conducting the survey was to go beyond the traditional measure of GDP to focus on subjective measures to try to understand how people live and what GDP does not take into account.
“Quality of life is linked to basic human needs and to have quality of life we need to look at basic human needs and these can serve as a basis for establishing a new measure,” Mr Tesoriere said commenting on the results of the investigation. He added that “the perception of quality of life boils down to the fact that income does not matter and that priorities are always the same across income brackets because most people prioritize and link the perception of quality of life to service infrastructure and social environmental factors.”
UN-Habitat Statistician Wandia Riunga said UN-Habitat developed the Quality of Life Index which measures quality of life in several areas at the national and global levels with indicators focused on governance , public satisfaction, housing, mental health and social cohesion.
“Almost half of the SDGs are lagging behind and the QoL Initiative is intended to align quality of life with the SDGs by looking at the work being done in cities,” said Riunga, explaining that the Index will help decision-makers politicians to make decisions and cities to appropriate local indicators to better serve communities.
