Abstract
Although most social scientists have long rejected relying solely on economic indicators to understand development, growth, and wellbeing, in many places the United Nations Development Program’s (UNDP) Human Development Index (HDI) is the only measure used to counter or complement reductionist economic figures like the GDP, which is a popular tool for measuring national growth. Yet even the UNDP’s HDI offers only minimal insights into the complexities of development, as only three indicators are used: education, life expectancy, and income. This figure paints equally scant images in developed and developing regions alike. Perhaps for that reason, the HDI is mainly used for comparing countries, not for understanding situations and changes within countries. The need for more nuanced measures of within-country differences seems obvious; yet few have been developed, and those that have are not well known. In Wellbeing in the Netherlands: The SCP Life Situation Index since 1974, Jeroen Boelhouwer introduces us to the tool (Sustainable Consumption and Production [SCP]) used in the Netherlands to reveal the relationships between wellbeing and prosperity via the life situation index.
Boelhouwer begins with a discussion of existing debates about terminology related to what the Dutch call the ‘life situation’ but are referred to in other indices as ‘wellbeing,’ ‘happiness,’ ‘quality of life,’ ‘human development,’ among others. The operationalization of ‘life situation’ in the Netherlands is based on a combination of different indicators grouped into what the author refers to as eight ‘domains’ of wellbeing: health, housing, mobility, holidays, ownership of durable consumer goods, social-cultural leisure activities, social participation/isolation, and sports.
For someone who is new to the life situation index of the Netherlands, as most likely are, the author spends a great deal of time explaining the history and components of the index with well-achieved clarity and careful attention to the literature on indices of wellbeing and/or prosperity. The book reads like an expanded journal article, though the length feels appropriate for the amount of material Boelhouwer covers. The data chapters rely heavily on charts and graphs of the statistical analyses of the index results, and in some ways this might make the book a bit inaccessible to less quantitative-oriented readers. However, the writing is clear and the book is well organized. Boelhouwer has made what could seem like an exceptionally specific tool relevant beyond the Netherlands Institute for Social Research, which is commendable.
Although the Netherlands is no longer unique in its commitment to gathering such a specific data set for the purpose of a more comprehensive development index (France and the UK have recently undertaken similar initiatives), most other nations have not been reporting on indicators like sports, holidays, and social participation since the 1970s, and although Boelhouwer suggests the creation of a comparative international index that could be used around the world, the life situation index seems specifically Dutch in ways that make such a proposal hard to imagine. It seems worth noting that he only briefly mentions his own involvement as the lead researcher and writer on the project since 1996 in the book’s foreword; a relevant piece of information when we consider his assessment of the index’s logic and efficacy, as well as his expertise in the subject.
That said, his critiques are that, as with any index, it does not – or perhaps more accurately, cannot –tell the whole story and is by extension unable to illustrate affect or the more subjective realms of wellbeing, e.g., happiness. He also briefly laments that the life situation index is unable to reveal the complexity of individual decision making, something that sociologists would see as an important action for balancing what often reads as a very prescriptive, normative approach to understanding social experiences and behaviors. For example, when suggesting the importance of exploring the relationship among values, preferences, and life situation, Boelhouwer writes:
People occasionally make different decisions on the basis of their preferences and values than those made within the life situation index: someone can choose not to engage in sports or to not own a computer. This is indicated by the fact that there is a group of (albeit small) people that have many resources at their disposal but do not have a good life situation. (p. 166)
Although Boelhouwer was trained as a political scientist, and it seems clear that his interest is in how social policies can respond to information provided by the life situation index, the index and even the writing itself seem more reflective of a social psychology approach than a sociological or political science perspective, given that the index (and therefore the book) is structured around a ‘focus . . . on the individual’ with attention to ‘microdata . . . analysed on the microlevel’ (p. 96). In a similar vein, perhaps more attention to neoliberalism would have given new meaning to statements like ‘the government can’t do everything by itself anymore, or no longer wants to be able to do everything by itself’ (p. 164) and ‘for [the contents of] the index itself, decentralisation or privatisation do not have any consequences’ (p. 165).
Returning to his own assessment of the index, after reviewing the history and capacity of the domains, Boelhouwer concludes that there is no need to revise them, and that the indicators ‘offer a comprehensive picture of the life situation of the Dutch public’ (p. 161). He ultimately praises the index for its ability to track the life situation of the Dutch people over time (the index shows an improvement in life situation over the last 30 years); for its ability to show different levels of improvements for different groups; and for its policy relevance (seeing which groups are lagging in what could be an opportunity for policy development).
Boelhouwer’s thinly veiled defense of the life situation index does not detract from the extensive research that has gone into the development and application of the index. Furthermore, Boelhouwer’s detailed attention to the index as an object of study renders it appealing as not only a measurement worth understanding, but one even worth implementing (with country-specific adaptations, of course).