The Wellbeing Framework in the Republic of Ireland

By Caroline Whyte 

"We know that our existing measures of economic performance fail to measure matters such as damage to the environment and voluntary work. They also overlook equality of opportunity, distribution of wealth and income and only value public expenditure on the basis of the inputs used, not the outcomes achieved.…. 

We will develop…. a set of wellbeing indices to create a well-rounded, holistic view of how our society is faring."

 - “Programme for Government: Our Shared Future,” June 2020 

With these words, the Republic of Ireland’s newly-formed governing coalition joined the ranks of many other governments - along with the UN - which are developing Wellbeing Frameworks. Their aim is to achieve a deeper understanding of the context in which crucial policy decisions such as budgeting take place. 

At least 300 such frameworks are currently being produced worldwide, covering varied regions and ranging from to the local to the international level. 

Ireland’s Wellbeing Framework was primarily developed by the Department of An Taoiseach, in partnership with the Department of Finance and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. The National Economic and Social Council contributed by convening a Stakeholder and Expert Group with representatives of different economic sectors, and by producing a working paper on consultation on the Framework. 

Various well-trodden paths were followed in course of the Framework’s creation. Its design was heavily influenced by existing models elsewhere, in particular those of the OECD and New Zealand. 

A decision was taken to compile a ‘dashboard’ of different indicators of wellbeing, rather than to try and aggregate them into a single index. Indexes have the advantage of producing a single, easily comparable figure. GDP itself is an index, as is the Genuine Progress Index (GPI) developed by Clifford Cobb, and the Gross Domestic Wellbeing (GDWe) measure developed by Carnegie UK. Visual comparisons of GDP with GPI or GDWe can strikingly communicate the shortcomings of GDP that were aptly summed up in the coalition’s statement above. 

However, indexes oblige their creators to weight activities such as the environment and housework against each other, potentially generating confusion and false dilemmas. Arguably, they can also encourage inappropriate monetisation. For example, if environmental damage is judged to cost a certain amount, then one might assume that one can simply pay for the damage and then carry on with business as usual - when in fact the only way to prevent the damage from continuing, and indeed getting worse, is to change the underlying economic and political dynamics that are triggering it. 

A dashboard, if well-designed, can help to sidestep these risks. However, its multiple measurements make it much more complex to grasp, and it cannot be directly compared to GDP or other indexes. 

Since indexes and dashboards can each play a useful role in different contexts, a strong case could be made for producing both, and some countries have taken this path. In Ireland, independent preliminary research on developing a National Welfare Index was carried out in 2017 by Feasta and the German academic institute FEST. Their embryonic NWI diverged strikingly from GDP growth in the period between 2000 and 20141. The German NWI continues to be produced by FEST at both national and local levels (for some of the Bundeslaender). 

Meanwhile, on the dashboard side, the Irish government’s Wellbeing Framework was launched in 2021. It contains between two and four different indicators for each of eleven dimensions, including the environment, subjective wellbeing, health, educa- tion and wealth. Every year since 2021 a new report has been released in which each indicator is compared with itself five years ago and with the situation in other countries. Some indicators are also assessed in terms of equality and sustainability. 

The overall emphasis on improving wellbeing measurement and the broad range of dimensions is very welcome. However, some important areas - notably biodiversity - are not included the Framework at present. Moreover, the Framework’s evaluation methods can lead to misinterpretations. For example, the 2023 report states that “overall performance is positive across the indicators in 10 of the 11 dimensions. Only one dimension, the Environment, Climate and Biodiversity, shows a negative performance.” 

This framing - particularly the use of the word ‘only’ - implies that Ireland is doing well overall, and some politicians have echoed it. Yet, while a healthy environment is certainly not the only factor needed to achieve a wellbeing economy, there is no doubt that the environment’s current precarious state presents a grave danger to overall wellbeing. If you are driving a car which is running efficiently, has sturdy tyres and good suspension, but which is hurtling straight towards a cliff edge, it seems a little premature to deduce from this that you are ‘doing well’. 

Some analysts therefore call instead for an ‘economic doughnut’-based dashboard, which includes hard planetary boundaries that cannot be transgressed without undermining overall societal wellbeing. 

The comparison-based method for assessing each indicator in the Framework presents other problems, too - especially when the indicators concerned are themselves of questionable relevance. Overall, housing was coded green for progress in the 2022 Dashboard. However, there seems no doubt that in real life, Ireland actually has a housing crisis at present. To more accurately reflect this, a 2022 Social Justice Ireland survey on preferred indicators suggests the replacement of some of the existing housing ones with alternatives, based on what matters most to people who responded to the survey. 

Another dimension that generates controversy is wealth and income. Despite widespread acknowledgment worldwide that GDP growth is a poor measure of progress, ‘wealth expansion’ still appears to exert a gravitational pull on virtually all wellbeing frameworks worldwide, including the Irish one. Three out of the Irish Framework’s four indicators concerning wealth and income are based on the assumption that more is always better (even for those who are already well off), both on the household and the State level[1]. However, these assumptions are not borne out by empirical evidence concerning societal wellbeing[2]. Moreover, a large body of evidence indicates that it is not possible to decouple increased rates of resource consumption (which is closely linked to increased wealth and income) from dangerous environmental damage at the scale and speed necessary to avert catastrophe. 

These three income and wealth indicators could be replaced by indicators which emphasise the need to maximise economic and social security and stability within environmental limits. On the State level, an assessment of the role that Ireland plays in contributing to - or detracting from - the wellbeing of those living in other countries around the world would also be more beneficial than the current implied emphasis on maximising Ireland’s wealth compared to that of other countries. 

The Department of Finance was granted the remit of deciding which indicators in the Framework were to be particularly associated with sustainability. Again, if we are to escape the gravitational pull of ‘wealth expansion’, it seems important to invite other voices such as the Department of the Environment, the EPA, and academia into this discussion. 

In the context of an all-island approach, some alignment of indicators or framework development should be pursued between the two jurisdictions. 

Finally, a clearer connection between ‘bottom up’ Visions for community wellbeing, and assessments - such as those carried out by the Public Participation Networks in Ireland - and the ‘top-down’ Framework would be very beneficial, for both practical and ethical reasons. 

In the shorter term, as we have seen, the Wellbeing Framework’s development may well generate more questions than answers. Yet this could be no bad thing. An important step towards shifting to a different economic narrative and vision is identifying and challenging the hidden biases and assumptions in the existing one. The work on the Framework is welcome, in part, because it is helping to create a vital space for reflection about our assumed and actual societal goals. The resulting discussion is ongoing and vibrant.

[1] The fourth economic indicator, ‘Households making ends meet with great difficulty’, is clearly vital and should be retained.

[2] While some widely-publicised recent research appears to indicate that there is a direct correlation between income level and experienced wellbeing, a careful reading of this research makes it clear that that correlation is far from universal. It depends to a large extent on factors such as the degree of control that one has over one’s life and the degree to which one believesmoney to be important in life: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2016976118 Moreover, there is striking evidence that a number of countries with relatively low average incomes are nonetheless quite successful in achieving high levels of wellbeing among their residents - to the extent that they are outperforming some higher-income countries: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab842a

[3] With regard to State indebtedness, there is currently a lively debate at the EU level on the extent and specific circumstances in which this might be problematic. See for example https://meta.eeb.org/2022/11/09/enabling-the-eu-wellbeing-economy/.