Mr. Ma Jiantang Participated the 4th OECD World Forum and Introduced China's Practice in Measuring Well-Being
The 4th OECD World Forum on Statistics, Knowledge and Policy
16-19 October 2012,
Round Table I: Measuring Well-Being Initiatives in Individual Countries
17 October 2012
Ma Jiantang, Commissioner
National Bureau of Statistics of
Distinguished Ms. Chair, and Friends,
Good morning.
It is my honour to be here to say some words about the well-being measurement in
To my regret, my simultaneous interpreters did not get their visas, so I have to speak English by myself.
Now, I want to talk about
At the national level, the NBS China has not formally done well-being measurement. However, the
The first one is to make the
The second is the Guangdong Well-being Satisfaction Survey. The survey has 7 first-level indicators and 36 second-level indicators. The survey asks people to answer questions. Each question in the survey has 5 optional answers: very happy; fairly happy; happy; unhappy; and very unhappy. This survey was done in 2011, and selected nearly 7000 households in the province.
Although the NBS has not officially done the well-being measurement, it has made efforts to do some similar work.
The first is the Xiaokang Society Measurement.
Xiaokang is a very Chinese concept. It means that people live a comfortable life and do not worry about their food, clothing and housing. The Xiaokang Society is regarded as a development stage in between just adequacy in food and clothing on the one hand and rich stage on the other.
The Xiaokang Society Measurement is to measure the progress that
The measurement shows that
The Second is to set up the Development and Life Index.
This index is to evaluate the development and life of the people in
The NBS calculated the Development and Life Index for
Last, I want to make two points:
First, if we have GDP only, we may not be happy enough. But if we do not have enough GDP, we cannot feel happy. We need to go beyond GDP, but we cannot give up GDP. We statisticians and economists may have to refuse the extremes of GDP and happiness.
Second, to a large extent, happiness is a matter of philosophy, and a matter of perception. A good measurement is big challenge. We statisticians and economist have to be aware of it.
Thank you.