The following blog was written by Charlotte Österman (Social Value UK & Pax Tecum Global Consultancy) and Rebecca Harvey (Social Value International).  

As COP-26 draws to a close whilst all eyes may be focussed on the outcomes of the vital discussions around climate change and protection of the natural world, but in this blog, we wanted to instead discuss the interlinks between the SDGs and wellbeing. At Social Value International, we advocate for a change in the way we account for value because we know that this can lead to a change in decision making which will ultimately reduce inequality, environmental degradation and improve wellbeing, for all. 

 As we covered in another recently published SDG progress blog, the SDG’s agenda is to create peace and prosperity for all, stop climate change and end poverty and there’s a clear overlap to social value as we know it and to our mission to reduce inequality, degree environmental degradation and increase our aggregated wellbeing. That’s why we’ve chosen to use these areas of our mission as a basis for the blogs of this mini-series. We hope these will provide a few snapshot insights for you to know where we are at and what’s happening in Social Value International network relating to this agenda. 

When discussing wellbeing, what do we mean? 

Wellbeing is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “the state of being comfortable, healthy, or happy.” However, it is important to realise that wellbeing is a much broader concept than moment-to-moment happiness. While it does include happiness, it also includes other things, such as how satisfied people are with their life a whole, their sense of purpose, and how in control they feel. In this respect, the New Economics Foundation describes wellbeing as the following: 

“Wellbeing can be understood as how people feel and how they function, both on a personal and a social level, and how they evaluate their lives as a whole.” 

However, what one person feels enables and supports their wellbeing, may be completely to that of another and so it is important to consider the multi-dimensional nature of wellbeing.  

It is this multi-dimensional and subjective nature of wellbeing which makes it harder to measure, understand and make decisions upon – both at an organisational level, as well as at a policy level. However, the OECD Wellbeing Framework (below) is one of those that helps with this issue and is built around three‌ distinct components: current wellbeing, inequalities in wellbeing outcomes, and resources for future wellbeing. 

In this Framework, current wellbeing includes 11 dimensions, covering outcomes at the individual, household or community level, and relating to: 

• Material conditions that shape people’s economic options (Income and Wealth, Housing, Work and Job Quality) 

• Quality-of-life factors that encompass how well people are (and how well they feel they are), what they know and can do, and how healthy and safe their places of living are (Health, Knowledge and Skills, Environmental Quality, Subjective Wellbeing, Safety) 

• How connected and engaged people are, and how and with whom they spend their time (Work-Life Balance, Social Connections, Civic Engagement) 

The distribution of current wellbeing is taken into account by looking at three types of inequality: 

• Gaps between population groups (e.g., between men and women, old and young people, etc.)  

• Gaps between those at the top and bottom of the achievement scale in each dimension (e.g., the income of the richest 20% of individuals compared to that of the poorest 20%)  

• Deprivations (i.e., the share of the population falling below a given threshold of achievement, such as a minimum level of skills or health) 

Then finally the resources that underpin future wellbeing are grouped into four types of capital:   

• Economic Capital, which includes both man-made and financial assets  

• Natural Capital, encompassing natural assets (e.g., stocks of natural resources, land cover, species biodiversity) as well as ecosystems and their services (e.g., oceans, forests, soil and the atmosphere)  

• Human Capital, which refers to the skills and future health of individuals  

• Social Capital, addressing the social norms, shared values and institutional arrangements that foster co-operation 

How is wellbeing covered in the SDGs? 

Human wellbeing is at the core of the 2030 Agenda: the SDGs aim to ensure that "all human beings can fulfil their potential in dignity, equality and in a healthy environment" and wellbeing is even explicitly stated in SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being, where the official wording is: "To ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages." 

Therefore, due the nature of the SDGs, it is no surprise that a study by Jan-Emmanuel De Neve & Jeffrey D. Sachs (2020) found that “unpacking the SDGs by looking at how each SDG relates to well-being shows, in most cases, a strong positive correlation.” 

However, it is important to go understand that there can also be some SDGs that are negatively correlated with wellbeing e.g., SDG 12: Responsible production and consumption and SDG 13: Climate action 

They also found that whilst all SDGs are important to the wellbeing of global populations, some are more relevant to wellbeing than others, and that there are some inherent tensions that involve trade-offs between current and future wellbeing. 

What is the SDG progress on wellbeing? 

In the study De Neve & D. Sachs study, they found that countries "with a higher SDG Index score tend to do better in terms of subjective wellbeing, with the Nordic countries topping both rankings. Interestingly, the line of best fit is not linear but quadratic indicating that a higher SDG Index score correlates more strongly with higher levels of wellbeing, with higher scores on the SDG Index.  

The conclusion is that at the global level most SDGs correlate strongly and positively with higher wellbeing. However, all the SDGs influence (or is being influenced) to the same level and in fact, they find SDGs 14 Life below water, 15 Life on land, and 17 Partnerships for the goals to be generally insignificant. View the table here.  

An interesting reflection is what comes first? Higher wellbeing or higher SDG rating? But the answer to that question of causality we’ll leave to the reader to ponder upon. 

Also worth noting is that there is also a big financial gap to what is needed for the achievement of the SDGs and where we are at. One of the recent announcements to tackle part of this challenge is UNDP’s new Strategic Plan (2022-2025) for development financing that aims to promote the investment of over US$1 trillion public and private investment in the SDGs. Investment that is needed, urgently, and its success will inevitably have an effect on people’s wellbeing too. 

What is Social Value International doing to improve wellbeing? 

What's affecting one’s individual wellbeing, is similar to social value, not simply one standard set of measures and our activities can have wide ranging effects on people’s wellbeing. As a result, a lot of the learnings from our movement in how to understand stakeholders’ needs, priorities and how to account for the changes we’re create in these people’s lives, are also useful guidance to understand and manage changes in people’s wellbeing better. Take a look at Social Value Internationals resources area on our website for further guidance and standards.

Moreover, the UNDP Social Value International collaboration on the SDG Impact Standards is to help canalise investment towards the SDGs, which in effect is per the correlation also a mean to improve wellbeing overall. SVI is there for proud to be working alongside the UNDP and SDG Impact to promote the adoption of the SDG Impact Standards.  

And that’s important to us and as part of our mission, we are always working with and developing practice that will support this. From our national networks recent events include Social Value UK’s recent webinars on wellbeing valuation and surely more will come as the understanding of the wellbeing concept continues to develop.