How to measure the well-being of your country?

Financial, economic and social crises make the structural deficit in areas that determine well-being and quality of life, from education and the labour market to health and safety, more visible, reinforcing the fact that GDP and other macroeconomic indicators provide an essential perspective on the behaviour of an important set of factors that have a more concrete and direct influence on people's daily lives.

GDP is a macroeconomic indicator of the greatest relevance, comparable on a global scale and related to the generation of economic wealth produced in the country. It measures the value of the wealth generated in a given country, that is, the market value of the goods and services produced in a given country in a given year.

However, GDP is not the only reference for characterising well-being. Well-being is generally defined by the presence of the best standard of quality of life in the broadest sense of the term. Therefore, the concept of well-being encompasses not only the material conditions of life, but also other factors that explain the level of quality of life, namely those related to the environmental framework, health, educational level, balance in the use of time, particularly in the work-life balance, vitality of community life, level of democratic participation and access to and participation in cultural and leisure activities.