Page 57 - Contributed Paper Session (CPS) - Volume 1

CPS877 Paula J.G. et al.
Nonetheless, the analysis of the growth path of the OECD countries based on
the “How’s Life” datasets unveiled a number of distinct progressions
associated to the different evolution of variables dependent on the policies
adopted by governments and authorities to address the critical financial
circumstances. The identification of different recovery trajectories and
variables’ evolution may provide valuable information for the processes of
business decision-making.
At the request of the President of France in 2010, a team led by Joseph
Stiglitz produced a report on the measurement of social and economic
progress. This seminal paper represented a breakthrough in relation to the
traditional and common way of gauging progress based on GDP alone, which
reinforced the OECD initiative related to the collection of data on multiple
types of variables linked to the quality and conditions of life. Since 2005, the
OECD “How’s Life” program has been gathering data and information in
relation to the member countries (currently 35) and some partner countries.
From 2011 onwards, the “How’s Life” program has been supporting the
“Better Life Index” initiative that permits the individual weighting of the
different variables to generate results that aretailored to meet the priorities of
each user. Although the OECD approach permits to depart from a narrow and
limited GDP perspective as discussed by various authors in several papers, the
evolution of the multiple variables in the 35 member countries (plus six
partners) permits to produce a space analysis over time. In addition to a global
and intra-country assessment, a multivariate three-way data analysis provides
trajectories for the evolution of the countries in the context of the selected
variables.
The available OECD data relates to the current well-being variables (25) in
the period from 2005 to 2015 (or 2016 in some cases) but presents several
gaps for a few countries and in some years. This secondary data is credible,
consistent, and reliable which permits to have confidence in the results
obtained through a multivariate spatial analysis. Even though the OECD
“How’s Life” reports are frequently used as an important reference for the 11
well-being dimensions, the datasets permit to develop a multivariate analysis
at three dimensions in order to characterize the evolution of the current well-
being variables and assess the recovery of the countries after the 2008 crisis.

2. Methodology
The STATIS (Structuration des Tableaux À Trois Indices de la Statistique)
(Escoufier, 1987; Lavit, 1988) method permits to analyze cubes of data and
obtain a joint assessment of a set of quantitative tables. In particular, this
technique is useful for the analysis of data evolution over time and so, it is
related to techniques such as DPCA (Double Principal Components Analysis)
and MFA (Multiple Factorial Analysis). The currently available computing

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