Resources for future well-being

Choices and decisions that are made today can have important consequences for well-being tomorrow. To provide a first glimpse of future well-being prospects, this chapter focuses on some of the key resources that are likely to shape well-being outcomes over time. It provides a small set of measures to illustrate elements of the natural, human, social and economic “capital stocks” that exist today, and that provide a store of wealth for later well-being. It also considers some of the risk factors that can have a bearing on those stocks. The indicators range from forest area through to trust in public institutions, and from educational attainment in young adults, to household debt. While there is considerable work to be done to further develop this indicator set, this chapter shows the wide range of evidence that is already available today, and highlights some of the gaps that need to be filled in order to have a more complete dashboard of measures in the future. In the longer term, the goal is to be able to evaluate current well-being outcomes in the context of the resources left for future generations.