The Italian initiative (2010) on a multi-dimensional framework to measure equitable and sustainable well-being” (Bes is the acronym in Italian) is among the experiences quoted by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). It was developed by the Italian National Institute of Statistics (Istat), together with the National Council for Economics and Labor (CNEL). In 2018 Istat published the 6th edition of the Annual report on well-being (Istat 2018) that contains information at national and regional level on 130 indicators that are considered to be able to represent this complex phenomenon. Measuring well-being can be seen as a three steps process:

• the first step concerns the development of a shared definition of progress in the Italian society, by identifying the most relevant dimensions of well-being;
• the second step relates to the selection of a set of high-quality statistical indicators that are representative of the different domains;
• the third step consists in communicating the results of this process, informing citizens of indicator values, trends and differences among different groups of population.

(…) a sample of 45,000 people aged 14 years and over, representative of the population resident in Italy (…) The results of the consultations identified a total of 12 domains (…) The 12 selected domains are divided into 2 typologies, 9 of them are defined as outcome domains: health; education and training; work and life balance; economic well-being; social relationship; security; landscape and cultural heritage; environment; subjective well-being; (…) the remaining 3 domains are defined as drivers of well-being: politics and institutions; innovation, research and creativity; quality of services.

Excerpts from: Bacchini, Fabio, Barbara Baldazzi, Rita De Carli, Lorenzo Di Biagio, Miria Savioli, Maria Pia Sorvillo, Alessandra Tinto. “The Italian framework to measure well-being: towards the 2.0 version.” Growth Welfare Innovation Productivity (GroWInPro) Working Paper (2019), available here