***This post is about measuring national wellbeing. I’ve posted many times about measuring personal wellbeing, but its more difficult gauging things from a national perspective. Though, I think, far more important in this day and age…which is why I’m going to try and write more about this topic.

Scotland has been tracking its national wellbeing since 2007. The National Performance Framework is useful for envisioning a society that prioritises wellbeing for everyone. We often use the Scottish framework at BIGGAR Economics Ltd to help clients in Scotland draw out their wider societal contributions, such as their cultural, community, human rights contributions, that might otherwise get overlooked.

However, despite the framework’s usefulness in framing what matters, it is not as easy to get a handle on how Scotland is doing as a nation. Although the framework is due an update soon, as it stands there are 81 indicators to measure 11 outcomes. Not only is it difficult to pay attention to all of the indicators at once, but many are out of date or undeveloped. This makes an overall “how are we doing” evaluation difficult.

What I’ve found more useful is homing in on some of the outcomes and what the indicators within each are broadly indicating. For example, at present (November 2024) things seem to be moving in the right direction for the environment with at least four of the indicators showing improvements – including energy from renewable sources, waste generated, sustainable fish stocks, and how much people visit the outdoors.

However, when it comes to fair work and business, we see declines in the number of businesses and, in particular, innovative business. There is also less contractually secure work and employees have less of a voice. This is worrying, because everyone needs to share in the prosperity of the nation. There are also concerns on the education outcome – despite there being improvements in workplace learning, there are both skill shortages and skills being underutilised.

Health is an interesting one to examine too – according to the latest data, health is generally getting better with, despite worsening mental wellbeing, improvements in physical activity, the quality of our care experience (GPs), and premature mortality. However, some of the health indicators are only getting better in the short-term, whereas in the long term they are actually worsening.

The question remains as to what should be done when key aspects of our societies are seen to be floundering, and how we balance them with areas that are improving. It is all too easy to ignore the indicators, especially if they aren’t measured well or are difficult to interpret. Traditional economic measures are sadly still taking centre stage in national debates about what should be done to improve our societies.

The point being that the economy is only one of many aspects that underpin national wellbeing. Scotland’s framework illustrates that there are another 10 essential aspects to wellbeing – to progress as a nation we need to continue making progress in the environment, but we also need to ensure that work is fair, that we have the skills to underpin our businesses, and that sacrifices are not made to people’s health.