7th OECD World Forum on Well-Being

More than two-thirds of OECD governments have developed national frameworks, development plans or strategies with a multidimensional well-being focus, with this activity having proliferated in recent years. While the precise definition of well-being and associated policy goals can vary from country to country, well-being approaches at the national and sub-national level tend to have more commonalities than differences. These include:

• a broad, multidimensional vision of what matters for people’s lives in the short- and long-term
• a commitment to evidence gathering and policy practice that better addresses this multidimensionality
• an emphasis on equity and inclusion that gives distributional, household-level outcomes (e.g. inequalities, poverty) as much weight as aggregate economic outcomes (e.g. GDP)
• and a focus on sustainability and preventive action and investment, that takes into account the needs of both current and future generations.

Rather than being a simple add-on to existing economic policy practice, the implementation of well-being approaches typically aims to overcome traditional policy silos and encourage more collaborative and effective ways of working across government, and across society.

The Forum will provide an opportunity to showcase examples of well-being policy practice, including policy analysis, appraisal and evaluation; performance monitoring and management; and programme implementation.

Related sessions

More information on relevant Forum sessions and speakers will be added as details are confirmed. Provisional example sessions related to this theme include:

• Plenary Roundtable on “Strengthening well-being approaches to economic policy making”
• Plenary on “Next steps for strengthening well-being approaches in a rapidly changing world”
• Parallel Session on “Embedding and implementing well-being policy approaches”
• Parallel Session on “Centering social connections and community well-being in policy”
• Parallel Session on “Technical advances in well-being policy appraisal, design, and evaluation”
• Parallel session on “Social investment decision making and impact valuation”
• Parallel session on “Ensuring safe, fair and inclusive AI development”
• Parallel session on “Population ageing, demographic change and well-being”