* An extract from Issue 4 of the Newsletter on "Measuring the Progress of Societies".

[Beyond GDP: Building a QOL Index for Mexico]
By Dr. Jose de Jesus Garcia Vega, Universidad de Monterrey

Presumably, the objective of every society is to achieve progress. This term may imply several things for a community: more infrastructure, better quality of life, democracy, employment, etc. For an individual, progress means better health, more income, a better community, etc. Through the years, GDP has been one of the most popular measures of progress. And this is not undeserved: GDP is an understandable indicator and it is very widely used in every country, so it can be used as a basis of comparison among countries. However, using GDP as the only measure of progress has recently been discussed and frowned on of by several international experts and organizations.

We propose the quality of life of a community as an alternative measure of progress. The concept includes both, objective and subjective indicators, and goes beyond economic measures. Making a move in this direction, the Center of Well Being Studies of the University of Monterrey launched a proposal to create an index of quality of life for Mexico. The project was welcomed by the Center of Social Studies and Public Opinion of the Mexican Congress and together delineated a year-long set of activities looking to obtain results for the first stage of the project.

The first stage included building a national QOL index for the country as a whole allowing for comparisons among groups with different demographic characteristics. The second stage aims to measure different cities in Mexico, ideally the 30 largest and it is to be launched in 2009. The framework of the QOL index shows the different domains that are included in the index. Although a ranking may evolve from this exercise, the main objective is to provide basis for the decision making at the community level.

A national survey was conducted in October of 2008. The value of the first QOL index for Mexico in 2008 was 7.23. However, a single number may not say much. It is necessary to have a time series to evaluate the performance through time or cross sectional data to compare the number among the different actors. Preliminary results were drawn for the first stage in which comparisons were made across a few demographic characteristics. All of this has to be validated by the citizens before launching the second stage.

* For further information, please visit www.oecd.org/progress/newsletter.