Society at a Glance 2009 is the fifth edition of the biennial compendium of social indicators by the Organisation for Co-operation and Development (OECD). It gives an overview of social trends and policy developments in OECD countries using indicators taken from OECD studies and other sources. The 2009 edition contains a special chapter on ‘Measuring leisure in OECD countries’ discussing the difficulties in defining meaningful and comparable indicators of leisure.
The fifth edition of the biennial compendium of social indicators – Society at a glance 2009 –compiled by the Organisation for Co-operation and Development (OECD), was published in May 2009. The report (available in English and French) is accompanied by a website which provides Microsoft Excel files of the main statistical data as well as notes on individual countries, including Austria (in German), France (English and French, 437Kb PDF), Germany (in German), Italy (163Kb PDF) and the United Kingdom (200Kb PDF).
Main social indicators
The 2009 report mainly presents updated results of the OECD social indicators that cover four social policy fields – self-sufficiency, equity, health status and social cohesion. All fields also contain social status indicators, describing the general conditions regarding a social policy field, and societal response indicators – that is, the measures taken to improve social conditions.
- Self-sufficiency relates to the social policy objective of ensuring active social and economic participation and autonomy in activities of daily life. This policy field is covered by indicators such as employment, unemployment, childcare, student performance, young people who are neither working nor in education or training, retirement age, and public and private spending on education.
- Equity comprises social indicators regarding social inequity and poverty, such as income inequity, the poverty rate, poverty among children, the adequacy of benefits of last resort, public social spending and total social spending.
- Health status is an important aspect of social welfare. OECD health indicators include life expectancy, perceived health status, infant health, obesity, height, mental health, long-term care recipients and healthcare expenditure.
- Social cohesion is an important social policy goal. However, identifying suitable indicators is especially difficult in this field. In its 2009 study, the OECD has chosen the following social cohesion indicators: life satisfaction, work satisfaction, crime victimisation, suicide, school bullying, and risky behaviour of teenagers such as drinking alcohol, smoking or having unprotected sex.
In addition, the compendium provides four general social context indicators which are considered to be preconditions of social policy: net national income per head of population, fertility rates, migration, as well as marriage and divorce.
In general, large differences exist between EU Member States regarding the social indicators. According to the OECD, data differ considerably with regard to social equality, poverty and other indicators. These differences not only exist between the older EU Member States and the new Member States that joined the EU in 2004 and 2007, but also within both groups of countries.
Furthermore, the OECD indicators show that income inequality and poverty rates have increased considerably in European countries. For instance, Austria, Germany, Luxembourg and Turkey have recorded by far the highest increases in child poverty rates of all OECD countries. Nevertheless, Austria still has the lowest child poverty rate after Denmark, Finland and Sweden.
Special focus on leisure in OECD countries
Data sources
The 2009 edition of Societies at a glance contains a special focus chapter (861Kb PDF) on ‘Measuring leisure in OECD countries’, discussing the difficulties in defining meaningful and comparable indicators of ‘leisure’. The European data for this comparison are mainly based on the Harmonised European time use survey carried out by Eurostat, a 2005 report from the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound) on Combining family and full-time work, and studies conducted by the Institute for the Study of Labour (Institut zur Zukunft der Arbeit, IZA) in Bonn, Germany.
Measuring leisure time
In order to measure leisure time, the chapter compares two kinds of factors. A first comparison relates to the residual of paid work time or the amount of time that is not spent in paid work. While a comparison of residual time between OECD countries is relatively easy to complete, this factor has clear limitations. For instance, it fails to consider unpaid work as well as time spent on commuting. Hence, as a second indicator, time-use surveys are used. These surveys, however, differ considerably between OECD countries in relation to categories of activities and the period of time considered (24 or 48 hours). Therefore, data from the national surveys should be harmonised.
Gender differences
Despite these difficulties, a comparison of time-use surveys shows some interesting results for European countries, particularly with regard to gender differences. According to time-use surveys for 18 OECD countries, men universally report spending more time on activities classified as leisure than women do. Two European countries reveal the extent of this gender gap. While in Norway the gender difference is statistically insignificant, Italy has the widest gap where women have almost 80 minutes less leisure time each day than men do. Germany and Sweden account for the lowest gender difference regarding leisure time among the EU Member States.
Reference
OECD, Society at a glance 2009, OECD Social Indicators, Paris, OECD, 2009.
Stefan Lücking, Technical University Munich