What is the Canadian Index of Wellbeing (CIW)?
The CIW is a framework and metrics for measuring changes in our quality of life - overall, and in eight specific categories including: our standard of living, our health, the quality of our environment, education, time use, community vitality, democratic engagement, and the state of leisure and culture. It provides a much more complete picture than narrow economic measures like GDP.
Who is behind the Canadian Index of Wellbeing?
The CIW is a non-partisan research group, based at the University of Waterloo within the Faculty of Applied Health Sciences. It operates under the rules and regulations of the University, is led by a tenured professor, and is guided by an advisory board of accomplished Canadians. The CIW works with other leading researchers (Research Associates) to advance research and knowledge about the wellbeing of Canadians. The CIW's work is promoted globally through an International Advisory Network.
What does the CIW do?
The CIW shows if our overall quality of life is going up or down, which categories are making it go up or down, and within those categories, which factors (headline indicators) are making it go up or down. So, for example, the first CIW composite index shows that our overall quality of life improved by a modest 11% in the 15-year period from 1994 to 2008. One of the reasons it went up was because our living standards improved by about 26%. One of the reasons why it didn't go up more is because our environment deteriorated. Why did our environment deteriorate? Mostly because our greenhouse emissions soared.
The CIW network also produces detailed reports (and user-friendly versions) for each of the important categories of wellbeing. They show us where we're making progress, where we're falling behind, and what we can do–both as a society and as individuals to improve the situation.
Why is this important?
Over the past couple of decades there has been a global movement, led by the OECD, to adopt more comprehensive and integrated ways of measuring the progress of a country. Canada has been a leader in that movement and we are one of the first countries to develop a tool for measuring the wellbeing of its people in all of its dimensions. Now, for the first time in our country's history we have a way of using hard data to judge whether we're moving closer to, or further away from, our vision of ourselves as a people and a country.
What do you mean by "wellbeing"? Is it the same as "health"?
We define wellbeing as the presence of the highest possible quality of life in its full breadth of expression. This includes: good living standards, robust health, a sustainable environment, vital communities, an educated populace, balanced time use, high levels of democratic participation, and access to and participation in leisure and culture. It's a much broader definition than just health.
Is the CIW like an index of happiness?
No. Happiness is a very subjective quality–some people can feel happy in a flood while other may be unhappy in the midst of luxury. It can also be very transient; you can feel happy after buying a new pair of shoes and unhappy 10 minutes later when you find out that they pinch your feet. The CIW mostly collects hard evidence on the status of Canadians' quality of life in various dimensions – the gap between rich and poor, life expectancy and rates of diabetes, the quality of jobs and housing, number of childcare spaces, amount of leisure time, quality of air and greenhouse gas emissions, and so on.
Who is the target audience for the CIW?
One of the goals of the CIW is to create a public dialogue. The CIW will target a wide variety of opinion leaders, policy shapers, decision makers and potential users, including: all levels of government (both elected officials and civil servants); a wide variety of NGOs and community groups; electronic and print media; corporate and labour audiences; researchers and indicator experts; and the general public.
How often will the composite index be released?
Will the CIW research reports be made available for free?
Yes. Reports will be posted on the CIW website.
What do you hope to accomplish with the CIW?
Our overall goal – the big picture – is to improve the quality of life for all Canadians. We have a number of objectives for achieving it. We want to create a greater awareness of what wellbeing really means, beyond just economic wellbeing. We want to connect the dots among all of the factors that shape our wellbeing – economic determinants, health determinants, social determinants environmental determinants…and many others.
We want to provide a clear, detailed and fact-based picture of our wellbeing and how it's changing over time so that those who shape policies and make decisions can do so based on evidence, instead of ideology, or political pressure, or whatever happens to be at the top news story that day.
Most of all, we want to empower Canadians to hold their leaders accountable for the choices they make, and for whether or not we are making progress toward or moving further away from the kind of Canada we want for ourselves and our children. You could say that the CIW is a tool for re-engaging Canadians in their democracy. It's a way to involve people in the decisions that will shape their lives. We need to change the dialogue in this country and focus on the things that matter to Canadians. The CIW gives us a way to re-think what we mean by a good quality of life and how we can track whether or not we're doing the right things to get there.
There are a number of existing indicator systems in Canada. Why do we need a new index?
Indices are powerful. What we measure counts. It says a lot about what we value as a society. As legendary Canadian economist, John Kenneth Galbraith once said, "If you don't count it, it doesn't count." What we count helps shape the dialogue in this country – on the factory floor, around the water cooler, in the media and in the corridors of power. What we count often influences the policy agendas and decisions of governments.
For nearly a century, the most frequently cited measure of progress used around the world has been GDP. But GDP is just a narrow measurement of economic consumption. Because GDP has been so prominent, much of our country's time has been consumed with how to increase economic growth. This is especially true now that we are facing a global economic crisis. Of course that is critical, but we want to use the CIW to refocus the discussion onto the many areas that Canadians tell us matters just as much to their wellbeing.
Canada lacks a single, national instrument that shows whether our quality of life, in all of its dimensions, is getting better or worse. The CIW, measuring at the national level, links up with the work of many organizations that are striving to improve quality of life at the neighbourhood, community, municipal, provincial, and regional levels. This collective action can indeed generate a powerful force - refocusing the political discourse in Canada, helping to reshape the direction of public policy that will genuinely improve the quality of life of Canadians, and holding decision makers to account for whether things are getting better or worse.
Are you saying that the economy is not important?
No. The economy is very important. But we look at it differently than GDP does. We don't just focus on how much wealth our country produces. We examine things like who is benefiting from growth and at whose expense. The CIW shows, for example, that during Canada's biggest economic boom, the lion's share of benefits went to the wealthiest 20% of Canadians. Meanwhile the gap between them and the bottom 20% grew even larger. And corporate profits grew at a much faster rate than workers' wages. We also focus on unemployment/employment rates, the quality of jobs and housing, and a number of other factors – things that really make a difference to the quality of life of Canadians, but GDP doesn't track.
Do you want to get rid of Gross Domestic Product (GDP)?
No. GDP is well-known, widely used, and isn't likely to go anywhere anytime soon. It's also pretty good at measuring what it measures – economic consumption. We see the CIW as more of a complement to GDP, a new tool that provides a fuller picture of Canadians' quality of life in all of its many dimensions; a tool that shows where we're making progress, where we're falling behind and why, and how we can catch up. We believe that over time Canadians will come to appreciate the value of this fuller picture and the CIW will eventually be seen as just as important as GDP.
Why can't we assume when the GDP is rising that everything else is going well?
GDP was never meant to be a measurement of a society's progress. Even the "father" of GDP, Simon Kuznets, said "The welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income as defined by GDP."
GDP simply totals how much money we receive, what we buy with it and how much we pay for it. It doesn't make any distinction between spending that is beneficial to our country and spending that is harmful. Spending on tobacco, natural and human-made disasters, crime and accidents, all make GDP go up. Conversely, the value of unpaid housework, child care, volunteer work and leisure time are not included in GDP because they take place outside of the formal marketplace.
GDP doesn't subtract activities that heat up our planet, pollute our air and waterways, or destroy farmlands, wetlands and old-growth forests. The notion of sustainability – ensuring that precious resources are preserved for future generations – doesn't even enter the equation. Theoretically, we could cut down all of our forests, fish-out all our rivers and oceans, exhaust all our energy supplies, and GDP would never even send out an alarm that there was trouble brewing. Quite the opposite, it would just keep going up.
What is the relationship between the CIW and the GDP?
Indicators are powerful and the GDP cannot be our only reference for wellbeing. Most Canadians realize that our wellbeing is about more than the narrow economic indicators of the GDP.
The GDP was not designed nor intended to be used as a surrogate for wellbeing - although it is often viewed in that light and its meaning misinterpreted. It is simply a measure of national income. Its objective is, by definition, to measure the size of the market economy, and to that extent it provides important information about Canadian consumption. But, because of this focus, it misses out on capturing many of the things that really matter to Canadians. The GDP is based on a paradigm that says "more is better". More crime (and the cost of dealing with it), more cigarette sales, and more coal-powered plants, propel the GDP upward because they involve greater consumption.
The CIW adopts a completely different paradigm. It distinguishes between economic activities that are beneficial and those that are harmful to overall wellbeing. It treats beneficial activities as assets and harmful ones as deficits - providing a true and accurate accounting of the wellbeing of Canadians.
Does the federal government's Indicators of Canadian Well-being accomplish the same thing as the CIW?
No. The Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC) project is a website that provides a useful, publicly accessible database, with factual information on various aspects of Canadian wellbeing. This kind of electronic information is helpful as a statistical description of the "what of Canadian wellbeing", e.g. what is the unemployment rate or health status of Canadians. This is useful as background and can complement the work of the Canadian Index of Wellbeing. The CIW welcomes the creation of the website. Our project has taken part in the HRSDC's public consultation and we plan to continue to jointly identify ways of working together in the future.
Aren't there other reports on wellbeing in Canada, like Canada's Vital Signs and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Better Life Index?
These initiatives share the same goal: to develop ways of measuring progress that go beyond simple economic measures. Each of them makes a valuable contribution to the discussion. But they each have a different focus: The OECD's Better Life Index provides an international perspective, the CIW mainly looks at the Canadian national picture, while Vital Signs primarily operates at the community level.
The CIW is the most comprehensive of the three. We track 64 indicators – 8 in each of 8 categories of wellbeing. Vital Signs tracks 11 indicators – 1 in each of 11 categories – and the Better Life Index tracks 20 indicators with anywhere from 1-3 indicators in each category.
The CIW's analysis is more detailed. We issue comprehensive technical research reports for each category, tracking each of 64 indicators over the same 15-year time period from 1994 to 2008. We also offer user-friendly executive summaries and highlights. All of this makes it very easy to identify both short- and long-term trends, and see where we're making progress and where we're falling behind. Vital Signs uses different starting and end points in each of the categories, and may only look at 2 or 3 years for each of its 22 communities or just list the data for 1 year. OECD's Better Life Index only gives data for one year.
The CIW is also offers a composite index– a single number that goes up and down and gives a snapshot of whether our overall quality of life is getting better or worse. We compare the change in each wellbeing category so that, for example, we can see that our health has gone up by 6.6% over 15 years, but our participation in leisure and culture activities has gone down by 3%.
In addition, the CIW is part of the OECD's Measuring the Progress of Societies project that strives to promote international comparisons of societal wellbeing.
What is a composite index?
A composite index combines a number of different measurements into a single number that goes up or down over time and gives a quick picture of whether things are getting better or worse.
The TSX and DOW Jones are composite indices. They blend the changes taking place in a number of different stocks and give a quick picture of whether the stock market is going up or down and by how much. They also measure the changes in different categories of stocks so you can see if financial stocks are doing better or worse than natural resource stocks or if science and technology stocks are doing better than forestry stocks. It's the same with the CIW. We give an overview of whether our overall quality of life is improving or deteriorating, and how our living standards are doing compared with our health, or if our time use is improving or deteriorating, and if we are better or worse in these respects than our environmental performance.
Why use a composite index instead of the individual indicators?
We do show for each of our 64 indicators whether they've gone up or down and by how much. But a composite index offers a number of advantages. It distils a very complex picture into a relatively simple one that everyone can relate to and understand. People know that if a composite index goes up, it's good, and if it goes down, it's bad. There's a simple elegance to it. It connects the dots between individual elements to provide a more complete picture. It makes it very easy to communicate– to government, to media, to the public– in a way that is clear and easy to understand.
For some people, it may be all that they ever want to know about Canadian wellbeing. For others, it will be an entry point through which they can start thinking about which elements of progress matter most to them.
Beyond that entry point lies a more nuanced world. There they can discover if our democratic engagement or community vitality is getting better or worse. They may want to know which quality of life categories have improved the most and which have deteriorated the most. They may want to know what factors are propelling our living standards forward and which are holding them back. The CIW will tell them that.
What do you mean by "Connect the dots"?
As a society we like to put things in neat little silos. But our lives don't unfold in tight little compartments. Polluted air can cause lung problems. A serious disease can affect not just our health, but our living standards. More hours at work can limit the time we have to read to our kids and that can affect their performance in school.
The CIW tries to identify how the determinants of our wellbeing dynamically interact. Here's a good example. Our research shows that the health of Canadians is still very much related to their income and education levels. People with higher incomes and education tend to live longer, are less likely to have diabetes and other chronic conditions, and are consistently more likely to report excellent or very good health.
If we want to improve the health of Canadians we can't just focus on building a better health-care system. We also have to look to solutions that boost employment, elevate incomes, and provide direct support for people in difficult circumstances.
We also try to connect how changes in government policies affect peoples' quality of life. For example, the expansion of child benefits through the Canada Child Tax Benefit (CCTB) and the National Child Tax Supplement (NCBS) has resulted in some progress in reducing the incidence and depth of poverty. On the other hand, changes in Employment Insurance have made this program less generous in terms of required qualification period, coverage, and duration of benefits. These changes have, in turn, increased financial risks for Canadian families.
Why are there eight (8) categories and sixty-four (64) indicators?
Before we launched the CIW we spent several years thinking about what components make up "quality of life" and how we could measure them. We began with consultations with experts – both Canadian and international experts in measurement and experts in wellbeing. We asked them to construct a model for measuring Canadian wellbeing. We also involved citizens and stakeholders in three rounds of public consultations, asking them to share with us what they believed really contributed to their quality of life. It became kind of a cycle: citizens gave us input, the experts shaped it into a model, citizens gave us feedback on the model, the experts further refined it, and so on.
Our experts also spend a lot of time doing research: investigating the relevant literature, discussing key issues with other experts, assessing the type of data available – was the data good enough? Does it come out frequently enough to be useful for an index?
When we got to the state where we were happy with the model, we sent it out to independent experts not connected to the CIW to review and validate it, and did the same with each of our reports on the eight categories of wellbeing. Following this independent validation exercise, we made further refinements.
This is how we ended up with the current 8 categories and 64 headline indicators. But the CIW model isn't carved in stone. There were a number of other indicators that we would have liked to include, but the data just wasn't available. One of our goals is to encourage the collection of more extensive data by various agencies such as Statistics Canada. We also know that circumstances change over time as do attitudes and perceptions about what is important to a good quality of life. The CIW will continue to grow and evolve as more becomes known about how to measure changes in our wellbeing, and as more sources of high quality data become available.
How are Canadians really doing?
We're doing somewhat better than we were 15 years ago, but not as well as we should be. Our big-picture finding is that from 1994 to 2008, GDP went up a robust 31%, but the CIW only increased by a more modest 11%. What that means is that that much of our economic growth in one of Canada's biggest boom periods did not translate into improvements in our quality of life. Where did the difference go?
While our overall living standards have increased, the lion's share of growth in family incomes went to the richest 20% of families. Meanwhile, the gap down to the poorest 20% grew larger than ever. And increases in real wages grew considerably more slowly than increases in corporate profits. The income gap is much greater even though family incomes did increase overall on average. This is a troubling trend.
Something else that the gap between GDP and the CIW tells us is that when you subtract economic activities that are harmful to our wellbeing– like consumption of tobacco, over-harvesting of natural resources and an over-reliance on fossil fuels –as the CIW does, instead of adding them like GDP, you get a much lower number. In other words, you get a much more realistic picture of how Canadians are doing in their everyday lives.
What else did you find?
Our wellbeing improved in five areas: Living Standards, Community Vitality, Democratic Engagement, Education, and Healthy Populations; but declined in Environment, Time Use, and Leisure and Culture.
Can you be more specific about the findings?
The one bit of unqualified good news is that our community vitality has improved in every respect. Both violent and property crime are down. Canadians are more compassionate than ever – we are providing more unpaid help to others and more of us are concerned about the needs of others, in spite of whatever challenges we have in our own lives. Otherwise, it's a very mixed picture. The quality of jobs in Canada hasn't improved but rather gone down, though housing has become somewhat more affordable. Our life expectancy is among the best in the world and getting longer, but we're spending a greater percentage of our life in poor health thanks to increases in obesity and incidence of chronic diseases like diabetes. Our air is getting cleaner but our greenhouse-gas emissions are soaring.
Many Canadians are finding themselves caught in a time crunch that is robbing them of peace of mind, keeping them from spending quality time with their family and friends, and leaving them with less time for leisure and arts and culture activities. Our participation in education is rising, especially high school and university graduation rates, but testing shows that our kids' basic knowledge and skills, and emotional competencies are falling.
How can you possibly say that democratic engagement is up by nearly 20%, when everyone knows that people are feeling more alienated from their government than ever?
This is a good example of why we need several indicators to get a complete picture of our wellbeing in each category. Fewer Canadians are showing up to vote, even though more of us are saying we have a duty to vote. More Canadians report feeling that the government's policies are making them better off, yet they are also increasingly concerned about Canada's declining contributions of development aid to the world. Just looking at one of these trends doesn't tell us the whole story about democratic engagement. By combining all of these trends, we get a more complete picture of Canadians' feelings about our democracy, and consequently, a better idea of how those feelings contribute to our wellbeing.
How do you expect to change the national dialogue with data that comes out once a year? How do you expect to surpass GDP which releases results monthly, quarterly and annually?
That we are sitting here having this conversation is evidence that we are beginning to shift the discussion away from solely the economy. Even though the full composite index will be released once a year, we expect to release reports on specific aspects of wellbeing regularly. We will report on how overall wellbeing differs for certain groups in Canada, especially those that are marginalised by the economy. These reports will serve to remind people about the many parts of their lives that are important to their wellbeing and keep the dialogue going.
Which policy issues do the findings suggest require attention?
One of the key goals of the CIW is to connect the dots among the many factors that influence wellbeing. The intention is to go beyond the traditional "silo approach" that has too often shaped public policy decisions, toward more comprehensive solutions that improve the lives of all Canadians.
It is clear that despite the availability of universal health care services, with which a large majority of Canadians are satisfied, persistent health gaps continue to exist among different social groups. This suggests that while improvements in the various provincial healthcare systems may be badly needed and highly desirable, they alone will not eliminate or significantly reduce these disparities.
There is a need for both public policy interventions tailored to socially excluded groups, as well as initiatives outside the health field. Progressive policies are needed to reduce income inequality; to provide national Early Childhood Education (ECE) programming to create a more equitable playing field in the formative years of children's development and gender equality for women by offering mothers an equal opportunity to pursue full-time work; to reduce our dependence on non-renewable energy reserves; and to provide opportunities for access to leisure and cultural activities for all Canadians regardless of socioeconomic status.
What's next for the CIW?
With the release of the first CIW composite index, there are a number of areas where we intend to expand our efforts in the coming years. First is our commitment to update the CIW on an annual basis. There is also scope for research to expand on weaving together the eight CIW domains to gain a more in-depth understanding of the inter-relationships among wellbeing measures. And, to explore how different sub-populations within Canada, such as youth, older adults, lower income groups, racialized groups, and Aboriginal Peoples, or people in different regions of our country, fare on various indicators of wellbeing relative to the rest of the population. And most importantly, that knowledge is transferred to the public in an accessible fashion. That is why we have a website with a short video, an infographic, and user-friendly reports, so that all Canadians will have access to information that will help them start conversations about the things that matter to their quality of life. It is our hope that a more informed and engaged public will bring about the social and political changes that will enhance the wellbeing of all Canadians.
Why did you pick 1994 as your starting point and 2008 as your end point?
Most of our health statistics were drawn from the various cycles of the National Population Health Survey, which began in 1994, so it was reasonable to pick 1994 as our base year. We chose 2008 as the end year for our first composite index because it is the most recent year for which we have a full set of data across all eight categories.
Why did you focus on the national population instead of including various sub-groups whose quality of life may be different and likely worse than the national average?
We knew that we had to start a new dialogue on quality of life as quickly as possible, or the main national focus would stay on economic productivity, largely ignoring what really matters to most Canadians. So for the first CIW composite, our priority was to focus on a national model, with some provincial results where they were readily available. That's where most of the data exists that is reliable, accessible and frequently published.
But we also acknowledge that some population sub-groups live in much different circumstances than the national average. In our very first CIW domain report that we released in June 2009, we noted that people with lower incomes and education levels tend to live shorter lives, are more likely to have diabetes and other chronic conditions, and are consistently less likely to report excellent or very good health. We also noted that some groups are more likely to be poor, including lone parents, recent immigrants, persons with work-limiting disabilities, and Aboriginal people living off-reserve.
Looking ahead, we believe that there will be opportunity to explore how different sub-populations within Canada, such as youth, older adults, lower income groups, racialized groups, and Aboriginal Peoples fare on various indicators of wellbeing relative to the rest of the population.
Why is each category and indicator weighted equally?
We know that there are many reasons for treating one indicator as more important in some way than another. What is missing is a good reason for assigning any particular indicator a particular numerical value greater or less than that of any other indicator. In other words, should we treat healthy populations as 30% of the composite index and time use as 10%, or should the split be 25% and 15%, or 21% and 19%? At the moment there just isn’t a strong enough basis on which to make that choice.
Without such a reason, we feel it’s appropriate to treat all indicators as equal at the current time. As we, and others around the world who are also giving thought to this issue, develop a greater understanding of the relationships among all indicators, it’s possible that sufficient reasons for diverse weights may appear. Or we may just consult Canadians again and ask them how much importance they attach to each aspect of the quality of their lives. We’re not ruling out any options for the future, but at this early point in our history we’ve decided to use equal weighting. It also has the benefit of making the message clearer and easier to grasp.
Why can't you gather data and update the CIW more frequently?
The CIW doesn't collect its own primary data. We rely on data collected by other agencies like Statistics Canada.
How will you ensure that the Canadian Index of Wellbeing does not duplicate work that is already being done?
The CIW is working with many groups/organizations (e.g., the Community Foundations of Canada's Vital Signs, United Way of Canada/Centraide Canada's Action for Neighbourhood Change, and the Canadian Council on Learning. We have built links to a Pan-Canadian network of researchers, practitioners and groups involved in wellbeing measurement. These partnerships increase collaboration on measurement and reporting, facilitate shared learning and permit collaboration on purchase of data.