OECD surveys measure wellbeing with 11 indicators: income and wealth, quality of work, housing, health, knowledge and skills, quality of the environment, subjective well-being, security, work-life balance, social connectivity, engagement with the public. In relation to the specific OECD indicators, there are several countries that are at the top, while others are in the middle or not at all.
The countries with the highest quality of life are the Scandinavian countries, Switzerland and New Zealand. What do these countries have in common? Smaller inequalities; That is, do you want a high quality of life as a country? Governments must then strengthen the equality of citizens. How? Improving the quality of public goods.
As the OECD report notes, most resources that contribute to quality of life (economic, physical, human and social capital equally) are public goods. Improving public goods requires public investment and high quality governance. An essential element of a holistic view of life is a meritocratic work environment, because that alone allows you to leave personally.
The mistake most rulers and voters make is that they usually think of themselves as well-to-do middle-class people who enjoy a higher quality of life than others and always have the opportunity to buy privately some of the most important goods like health, education, housing, security-is that they perceive the quality of life as a private good, while recognizing that this quality of life is composed of social values such as meritocracy and mold into a public institutions such as education.
If a government of a country wants to be consistent with its citizens as the guarantor of their high quality of life, it must reshape the ecosystem of values, as all these countries have done and they are at the top of the OECD’s wellbeing list.
