How’s Life? in OECD countries

In many respects, people’s well-being has improved in OECD countries since 2010. However, progress has been slow or deteriorated in some dimensions of life, including how people connect with each other and with their government. Large gaps by gender, age and education persist across well-being outcomes. Generally, OECD countries that do better on average tend to have greater equality between population groups and fewer people living in deprivation. The greatest gains in current well-being have often been concentrated in countries that had weaker well-being at the start of the decade. While these gains have sometimes gone hand in hand with recent GDP growth, this has not always been so, underscoring the need to look beyond GDP when measuring progress. Gains in current well-being have often not been matched by improvements in the resources needed to sustain it over time, with systemic risks emerging across Natural, Human, Economic and Social Capital.