Britain is struggling to convert economic growth into well-being for its citizens, according to a study.
The Private-Sector Opportunity to Improve Wellbeing, a report from The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) published Thursday, assesses well-being among the citizens of 162 countries and Hong Kong.
BCG also looked at the performance of those countries in converting the wealth and growth they generate into well-being, a measure the report's authors define using ten categories including quality of environment, rate of employment and access to services such as health care and education.
It found that the U.K. was among the bottom 20 percent of countries in terms of their ability to convert growth into well-being, while Germany was in the top 20 percent.
Enrique Rueda-Sabater, one of the report's authors, says the U.K. is starting to fall behindbehind in its ability to convert growth into the well-being of its citizens. "When we look at the measure of recent progress in well-being, the U.K. doesn't do well at all," he tells Newsweek.
Rueda-Sabater says that the continued strong performance of some wealthier countries shows that nations that have already made substantial progress can continue to push ahead in improving well-being.
The report also finds that EU membership may have a significant positive effect on some countries' well-being. Several central and eastern European states that have recently joined the EU, or are in the process of doing so, made some of the strongest progress on the "sustainability" aspects of well-being, such as income equality and good governance.
Douglas Beal, a BCG partner and a co-author of the report, said that measuring well-being should change the way we look at global development: "Changes in the relative performance of countries are making the old 'advanced' and 'developing' labels obsolete; some countries in Europe are stuck, while others around the world are making significant progress," he said.
In Britain, well-being was high on the political agenda when David Cameron first came to power in 2010. The former prime minister introduced new measures tracking it to the U.K.'s national statistics, but critics say the agenda has been sidelined in recent years.
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