Initial Well-being Dashboard of Indicators

Discover how the Well-being framework will measure Ireland’s progress as a country

Accompanying the Well-being Framework, which defines what elements make up overall well-being in Ireland, is a supporting dashboard hosted by the CSO - the Well-being Information Hub.

It measures life and progress in Ireland through a cohesive set of indicators. It provides information on trends or direction over time across these indicators and benchmarks Ireland’s position against the EU as a whole. Inequalities are drawn out through examining distributions, differences between groups of people and deprivations.

In order for the dashboard to be useable and not overly complex it does not cover every aspect of well-being captured in the conceptual framework. Instead, the chosen indicators within it should be seen collectively as a high-level indication of the overall progress towards collective well-being in Ireland.

The dashboard will serve to complement more detailed sets of micro indicators used by Departments, agencies and local Government, to drill down to sufficient depth to support comprehensive analysis of specific or bespoke policies and programmes.

An interactive dashboard for Ireland is hosted by the CSO and we encourage citizens, stakeholders and policymakers to use this valuable tool. The headline indicators are illustrated below.

Explore the CSO Well-being Information Hub

The indicators were chosen in consultation with the Central Statistics Office (CSO), based on clear criteria (as outlined in Government’s First Report on a Well-being Framework). The outputs (e.g. trends and international comparisons) had no influence on selection. The cohorts chosen for disaggregation are based on existing research, consultation across Government and with experts in the field, and data availability. The Dashboard will improve over time as data gaps are progressively addressed.

Overall, the initial dashboard reveals a positive picture of Ireland’s progress. Across the available set of 33 indicators, 13 have improved over the last 5 years and 9 have disimproved - in some cases very marginally (The full dashboard will have 34 indicators, with an additional indicator on housing affordability currently in development). 11 indicators have seen no change or only have one reference period. However, with many of these Ireland performs better than the EU average.

These 33 indicators are divided across 11 dimensions (approximately three per dimension). When reviewed in this way, there are clear positive indications (trend and comparison across countries) for knowledge and skills, income and wealth, time use, and mental and physical health dimensions in particular.

There are two dimensions that reveal a negative overall picture. In particular, there are significant and sustained issues across the environment, climate, and biodiversity dimension with increases in greenhouse gas emissions and reported pollution or grime, and decreases in water quality. However, there are some positive indications – for example, the amount of waste sent to landfill per capita is less than the EU average. There are also issues in the safety and security dimension with an increase in both the murder rate and those killed or injured on the roads (both of these increases, however, are marginal).

The housing and local area dimension is largely positive in terms of trend. However, available housing data can be difficult to interpret. Construction or new dwelling figures, in particular, are affected by economic cycles, and current indicators do not consider changes in demand resulting from population changes. Addressing this data gap is a priority. Part of this includes the development and inclusion of a new indicator on housing affordability, which will be incorporated into the Hub before the end of the year.

Other dimensions are largely positive, but in some cases do include indicators that are disimproving. For example, there are issues in the work and job quality dimension as the labour underutilisation rate has increased over the last two years. There have also been increases across all demographics in the proportion of people who have felt discriminated against in the civic engagement and cultural expression dimension. Finally, in the subjective well-being dimension, while adult well-being has improved over the last 5 years, overall happiness of school-aged children has reduced.

Many of the indicators within the dashboard have time lags, so the impact of the pandemic on well-being overall is not possible to assess at this point. Furthermore, some of the data/statistics (in particular those for the community, social connections and cultural participation, and the civic engagement and cultural expression dimensions) have only been collected once, and therefore progress – or lack thereof – cannot be assessed over time.

The Hub breaks down the headline indicators by different demographics in order to highlight where specific groups of people may experience inequality. Differences are visible across age cohorts, with specific issues facing younger and older populations. There are large differences in sex, with females facing issues across many dimensions, with males disadvantaged across others. Where the data is available, differences are highlighted by nationality (in particular, where inequality is experienced by non-Irish).

Single-parent households and, to a lesser extent, people who live alone, see disadvantages across several dimensions. There are also significant differences depending on household income and whether the household is owned by the occupier or rented. Finally, differences in location including region and whether the household is located in a rural or urban area are highlighted.

Further more detailed analysis on understanding Ireland’s performance will be available on here the Well-being Portal shortly.