How is Ireland doing?
The Central Statistics Office has launched an interactive Well-being Information Hub which attempts to provide overarching real-time answers to this question.
Keith McSweeney, Senior Statistician said the CSO can no longer rely solely on traditional economic indicators to capture the variety and richness of life and the experiences of people.
"A broader based set of indicators is needed to tell the story of Ireland and the lived reality of its people. The experience of living through a pandemic has highlighted the importance of a range of social indicators – a sense of social connectedness or mental health to name just two – and this Well-being Information Hub brings that 'softer' data together with ‘harder’ economic indicators to ensure a balanced presentation of the story of life in Ireland," he said.
There are many ways to assess how Ireland is doing – seeing changes over time, comparing Ireland internationally and also looking more deeply at intergenerational differences and differences by sex within Ireland.
The Hub pulls all this important information for Ireland together into one location. A key feature of the Information Hub is that it is interactive – the Hub is linked to the primary data source which underpins it, and so will automatically update when the primary data source is updated. This innovation ensures that the Hub will remain up to date and will provide real-time insight into how our country is doing.
"The Hub is targeted at those who quickly want to get a sense of how our country is doing. More extensive data and related analysis is still available for those users that require more in-depth data," Mr McSweeney said.
More about the Well-being Information Hub
The Well-being Hub is a part of broader cross-Government work to develop and promote a Well-being approach to policy-making and analysis. An overarching Well-being Framework for Ireland has been developed by Government, which defines all the important elements for collective Well-being in Ireland.
The CSO’s Well-being Information Hub flows from this framework. The Well-being Information Hub is located on the main CSO’s website. It encompasses a range of objective and subjective measures:
Subjective Well-being
Mental and Physical Health
Income and Wealth
Knowledge and Skills
Housing and Local Area
Environment, Climate and Biodiversity
Safety and Security
Work and Job Quality
Time Use
Community, Social Connections and Cultural Participation
Civic Engagement and Cultural Expression
Mr McSweeney said, "One of the aims of the Hub is to more easily provide a way for users to examine areas for themselves and to draw out their own understanding of how Ireland is doing in a particular area and to perhaps consider the trade-offs which can sometimes be inherent in how we live our lives. For example, if one’s income is increasing due to working longer hours this could have implications for the time available for leisure and voluntary activities.
"Looking at some of the indicators, we can see that some areas are improving over time in Ireland and a number of areas compare favourably internationally, such as healthy life years and some labour market and income indicators.
"In contrast, some environmental indicators show a dis-improvement over time, and within some of the indicators there are differences in the lived experience for different groups of the population, for example we can see that unemployed persons are experiencing higher levels of mental ill-health. The story of Ireland is a complex one if it is to be told in a balanced way, and this Hub provides a gateway into the key factors which influence the quality of our lives."
