Chapter 06 · Governance & regulationDevelopment, Impact & Global Frameworks
Better Life Index
Definition
An interactive index published by the OECD since 2011 that compares countries on 11 dimensions of current well-being — including income, jobs, housing, health, education, environment, safety, work-life balance, social connections and life satisfaction — allowing users to weight dimensions according to their own priorities. It operationalises the OECD Well-being Framework, which also tracks four types of resources (economic, natural, social, human capital) for future well-being.
References
11 dimensions of current well-being; four future-well-being resources; 80+ indicators; user weighting; 2011 origin.
Overview
What it means
The Index's distinctive feature is user-determined weighting: rather than imposing a single composite score, it shows how country rankings shift depending on what people value. Behind it sits the OECD Well-being Database of more than 80 indicators, updated quarterly.
The framework deliberately separates current well-being from the capital stocks that sustain it — embedding sustainability in the measurement architecture.
How it is used
Policymakers use the framework to design national well-being initiatives (adopted in various forms by numerous OECD countries); researchers and media use the Index for cross-country comparison; it is a standard reference in "beyond GDP" debates, including the UN High-Level Expert Group process.
Why it matters
The BLI demonstrated that multidimensional, people-centred progress measurement is practical at national scale — paving the way for well-being budgets and the current UN beyond-GDP dashboard effort.