Wellbeing: the key to Global Britain’s contribution to international development

We all know that there is more to life than wealth. Albert Einstein said “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

Yet public debate about UK aid continues to obsess over narrow economic measurements. When discussing UK aid contributions worldwide, we tend to focus on the impact we’ve had on poverty and economic development – certainly important, but also presenting a very narrow perspective in the public debate.

What makes this even more unusual is that we’re increasingly moving away from this way of thinking at home. In the UK we recognise the importance of improving our national wellbeing. We live in a society where knowing that there’s more to life than money isn’t just recognised as a healthy way to live – it’s also seen as a legitimate policy goal for government; indeed, the government has ministers for both loneliness and suicide prevention.

This view is spreading internationally. The UN, the OECD and many national governments all measure wellbeing in some way; the UN’s World Happiness Report, published annually for over a decade, has helped to spread this way of thinking.

All of this presents an opportunity for Global Britain to show real international leadership. Britain should work to embed wellbeing indicators into international development and take the lead on applying the lessons we learn here at home to the poorest countries in the world.

Yet while we certainly don’t suffer from a lack of data when it comes to measuring wellbeing, we have yet to truly work out exactly how to apply this data to improve people’s lives in the real world. Measurements are one thing, practical application is another.

There are substantial benefits to incorporating wellbeing into policy application. The What Works Centre for Wellbeing argues that a ‘wellbeing lens’ can help to pinpoint spending priorities and evaluate the effectiveness of policy interventions.

So why has this taken so long and been so difficult to implement? Even here in the UK, a world leader in this area, we have more to do on this front. The answer can be found in a 2020 House of Lords report. Citing the What Works Centre for Wellbeing, it explains that it all comes down to what you’re aiming for; objectives matter.

Policies involve trade-offs. Reducing commuting times by spending money on better road infrastructure could also lead to worse air quality, which has consequences over the longer term. Ranking these choices depends on a clear understanding of your objectives.

In his recent book “Wellbeing: Science and Policy”, the Labour peer Lord Richard Layard argues that governments and NGOs should aim to maximise wellbeing over a person’s lifetime.

This should be the explicit aim of UK development aid. We should assist countries to incorporate the practical application of wellbeing indicators in their own government policies, while we simultaneously do so at home. UK development aid should be measured on its impact on wellbeing in the countries we spend it in.

In developing countries, particularly those that experience multiple changes of government over a person’s lifetime, incorporating this kind of long term thinking would make a substantial difference.

In 2016 the Boston Consulting Group measured 163 countries on nearly 50,000 data points relating to economics, investment and sustainability. Their report, the Sustainable Economic Development Assessment (SEDA), showed that countries with high levels of wellbeing scored well on a range of other development indicators; unsurprisingly the top rankings went to the usual suspects like Norway, while countries in sub-saharan Africa cluster at the bottom.

Public interest in this across the rich world is accelerating, and Western countries are pioneering in this area; New Zealand already has an annual Wellbeing Budget. Now we need to apply this to how we think about getting the most bang for our buck in some of the world’s poorest countries, particularly at a time that aid budgets are being pared back.

Across the West, we’ve rightly recognised that understanding and enhancing wellbeing is critical for social progress. Now the UK must lead the way in applying the same thinking to our understanding of aid and development, demonstrating another way in which Global Britain acts as a force for good in the world.