Italian economist Enrico Giovannini was Chief Statistician of the Parisbased Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) for eight years, orchestrating global efforts to statistically quantify and explain national progress. He introduced the socalled “Statistics of the 21st century” and with Joseph Stiglitz participated in an advisory panel to French President Nicholas Sarkozy to measure “economic performance and social progress” and seek alternatives to GDP as the sole indicator for national quality-of-life and wellness. Nowpresident of ISTAT, Italy’s statistical bureau, Giovannini hopes to bring his OECD experience to bear.
Italian economist Enrico Giovannini was Chief Statistician of the Parisbased Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) for eight years, orchestrating global efforts to statistically quantify and explain national progress. He introduced the socalled “Statistics of the 21st century” and with Joseph Stiglitz participated in an advisory panel to French President Nicholas Sarkozy to measure “economic performance and social progress” and seek alternatives to GDP as the sole indicator for national quality-of-life and wellness. Nowpresident of ISTAT, Italy’s statistical bureau, Giovannini hopes to bring his OECD experience to bear.
The OECD Measuring Progress plan was a major success, culminating in the Busan meetings. But how do you move from statement of principle statistical implementation.
The implementation phase starts at the national level, through round tables that identify the fundamental dimensions of progress that need to be considered on a country-by-country basis. Each nation needs to discover its most suitable indicators. To do this it must involve different parts of society and attract attention from politicians.
Let’s focus for a moment on the international side Will the OECD to maintain its leadership in the project, despite the fact that many major countries don’t belong to the organization?
The OECD has already set out the broad directions of future commitment through the road map it presented in Busan. The G20 has entrusted some key mandates to the OECD, recognizing its importance, in much the same way as the G8 did.
So future progress will depend primarily on impetus from the G20?
Yes, and we’ll also have to see how developing and emerging respond to Sarkozy’s efforts regarding social progress indicators. The next two G20 meetings will be held in Canada and South Korea, two countries committed to new-look measures. Canada has its Index of Well-being and South Korea is undertaking its quality of life surveys. Under the aegis of the G20, this could lead to the development of a project, a “progress framework,” to help assess national progress. It would be similar to the “legal framework” that the G20 already asked the OECD to develop to help measure economic activity.
What about the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which are scheduled to expire in 2015, to be replaced by new indicators? How can they work in harmony the OECD “progress framework”?
The UN General Assembly will take up the future of the MDGs in September 2010. There are two schools of thought on the matter. The first says that the MDGs never really had a conceptual framework, but were instead a summing up of particulars noted at various conferences (on gender issues, education, hunger, and so on), and that the existing eight goals fail to factor in some critical domestic issues, including governance and political participation, which also need to be taken into account.
No doubt some nations would see a widening in scope of the MDGs as a threat, fearing they might stimulate ideas that are dangerous at a domestic level.
This is among the arguments of the second school, which would prefer to avoid major changes to the indicators, which were designed primarily to measure the progress in developing countries and not so much emerging or developing ones. But nothing impedes harmonizing the MDGs with the wellbeing indicators that the OECD is working on.
In terms of Italian national efforts what do you foresee in?
Antonio Marzano, the president of National Economic and Labor Council (Consiglio Nazionale dell’Economia e del Lavoro) says his organization is ready to host a roundtable on progress in Italy. In technical terms, ISTAT has already started considering what steps to take, even just in terms of better spreading data that we already have in hand. It’s important to bear in mind that state statisticians already measure a multiplicity of factors, including many of the subjective ones proposed by the Stiglitz Commission. For example, the multipurpose annual survey we produce provides an overview of the country’s overall social situation. Among the questions we’ll be adding will be ones concerning the subjective perception of life’s satisfactions, which seems to be the one that’s gaining in importance in other nations.
In national accounting terms, what exactly does it mean to go “beyond GDP”?
Like other national institutions, ISTAT is involved in revising national accounting based on the demands of European harmonization. In this context we must add data on poverty and on income distribution. It needs to be delivered in a more timely fashion so we can better “photograph” families and arrive at a Social Accounting Matrix (SAM). But it’s obvious that doing this also poses a problem of resources.
What about environmental data?
The Stiglitz Commission mentioned the need to link possible environmental damage to the production of wealth. We have some data on this, regarding emissions, for example. But its introduction must be made timelier. Environmental data must also be made consistent with economic and social data. We need to reach an integrated economic, social and environmental accounting system.
To define the sustainability of development isn’t also necessary to examine “stock,” capital that’s consumed at the cost of destroying forests and wildlife?
Precisely. The field has seen significant inroads in natural capital and human capital, the latter depending on variation in levels of education. The UN, OECD and Eurostat are all working on developing social capital, which is to say the relationship set (interpersonal relations, institutional trust, participation in the community) that is an essential component of the wealth of a country.
