Page 169 - Invited Paper Session (IPS) - Volume 2

IPS195 Peter van de Ven
It is proposed here to take all of this one step further, by developing a
broader accounting framework that supports the monitoring and analysis of
the interrelations between the various aspects of well-being, thus providing a
better understanding of the trade-offs and the win-wins between the various
domains. For example, what’s the relationship between on the one hand the
output of the medical industry and unpaid household activities on care for
(non-)household members, and on the other hand the health outcomes of
people, and how does this affect, for example employment and government
finance. How to improve health outcomes? Should we spend more money on
prevention, on development of pharmaceuticals, on improving medical
techniques, and how much money are we willing to spend? To answer this
type of questions and to provide a link with relevant outcome indicators, one
may consider supplementing the traditional set of national accounts data on
the production of medical goods and services and government finance, with
more detailed business statistics on the medical industry, granular
administrative data on medical treatments, and hours spent on relevant time
use categories. In the first stages of development, it may not be possible to
define a framework that covers all indicators, and for reasons of practical
feasibility, it is advisable to limit the framework to a subset of indicators; see
also below.
This way of thinking about linking various areas of statistics has been
developed and implemented in the area of environmental sustainability (see
e.g. the above on SEEA), but there are other promising initiatives as well. For
example, quite a number of countries have done work on health satellite
accounts, while more and more work is being done on exploiting
administrative data on medical treatments, to arrive, for example, at better
measures for the volume changes in the provision of health services.
Furthermore, in the area of education and training, a conceptual framework
2
for compiling satellite accounts for education, training and human capital has
been developed; see UNECE (2016). The same is true for satellite accounts on
unpaid household activities (see UNECE, 2017), where various attempts have
been made to integrate numbers from the time use surveys with the hours
worked in paid employment, and to value the services provided within
households. In respect of the latter, a framework, which combines the
traditional national accounts with more granular and more timely data on time
use, would provide an excellent tool for monitoring and analysing shifts in
time spent between paid activities, unpaid household activities and leisure
time. Such shifts are considered highly relevant for the measurement of
people’s well-being, whether this may concern activities benefiting people’s
own well-being (e.g., work-life balance, leisure), other people’s well-being
(e.g., childcare, eldercare, volunteering), or both (e.g., socialising).
Furthermore, it would be great to have additional information on e.g. digital

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