Working Paper
Social and Political Indicators of Human Well-being

A plethora of what are loosely described as social and political indicators of well-being exist. Both the range and country coverage of these indicators has increased appreciably in recent years. In this paper we ask what contribution these indicators can make towards our understanding of human well-being. There is currently a vast array of political and social indicators of development. These measures include information on access to services, housing, environmental degradation, income, social participation, inequalities, and time use; while political indicators include measures of political participation, civil liberties, and human and labour rights. While some of these indicators reflect the progress countries are making towards attaining fundamental developmental goals, with several being used to assess progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (in particular measures of income, health, and education status) others act as more intermediate indicators of progress. This paper critically surveys the range of social and political indicators of development currently available focusing particularly on non-income based social and political indicators of well-being. While many of these indicators exhibit wide variations across countries, the interpretation of these differences is not always clear. Here sources of cross-country variations are examined, with differences in data availability and measurement being examined. Finally the paper examines the links and correlations between these various indicators of development across countries and their interpretation as measures of development.