Better Life Index measures well-being across countries

OECD, with the help of Moritz Stefaner and Raureif, promote a well-being index beyond GDP in the Better Life Initiative:

There is more to life than the cold numbers of GDP and economic statistics — This index allows you to compare well-being across countries, based on 11 tpoics the OECD has identified as essential, in the areas of material living conditions and quality of life.

Based on topics such as health, housing, and education, each country is represented with a flower, and each petal on a flower represents a metric. The higher the index, the higher the flower appears on the vertical axis, and if the flower metaphor is too abstract for you, roll over each flower to see the breakdown by bar graph.

The strength of the tool is in the level of interaction it allows you and the ability to create your own index by weighting factors how you see fit. For example, do you value health over all other factors? Weigh that more, and the flowers update accordingly.

You can also explore the details of specific countries simply by clicking on a flower. You get something like the image above, plus a summary for all the metrics and how the selected country compares to the rest.

Finally, you can focus on specific topics such as housing to see how countries rank in each area and information on what indicators were used to compute each sub-index. The environment index, for example, is based solely on air pollution levels, whereas the education index takes educational attainment and reading skills into account.

So whether you’re interested in a specific country, topic, or a group of topics, the interactive tools lets you see world data from plenty of angles. How does your country compare?

[OECD Better Life Index | Thanks, Moritz & Jerome]