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Feature Article - Measuring Australia's Progress

INTRODUCTION

Measuring a nation’s progress - providing information about whether life is getting better - is one of the most important tasks that a national statistical agency can take on. For almost 100 years, the ABS has been measuring Australia’s progress through the multitude of statistics we publish relating to Australia’s economy, society and environment. However, for the most part, our statistical publications have tended to focus on each of these three broad areas in isolation.

Recent years have seen growing public interest in the interrelationships between economic, social and environmental aspects of life. There have been, for example, debates about the sustainability of economic growth and a recognition that the environment is neither an inexhaustible source of raw materials nor capable of absorbing an unlimited amount of waste. Similarly, progress relates to social concerns - health, education and crime - and whether and how economic growth benefits those areas.

Around the world a consensus is growing that countries and governments need to develop a more comprehensive view of progress, rather than focussing mainly on economic indicators such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In an attempt to address this need, the ABS released a new publication on 4 April 2002 entitled Measuring Australia's Progress (Cat. no. 1370.0). This article outlines what is available in the new publication and summarises the headline indicators.


WHAT THE PUBLICATION IS ABOUT

Measuring Australia's Progress is about Australia’s progress. It is intended to help Australians address the question, “Has life in our country got better, especially during the past decade?”

Answering the question is far from easy. Indeed there can be no definitive answer, because we all have our own views about what is most important to individual and national life. During 2000 and 2001, the ABS consulted a wide range of experts, organisations and individuals to understand what they saw as the
most important dimensions of national progress. Measuring Australia's Progress presents indicators relating to some of those dimensions. The ABS hopes that Australians will use these headline indicators to form their own views of how our country is progressing.


PUBLICATION CONTENTS

Measuring Australia's Progress is 138 pages long and is available from ABS bookshops for $38. The major headings are Indicators of Australia's progress, Measuring progress, How the progress indicators are presented, Dimensions and indicators of progress, Population, Headline indicators and the Supplementary
commentaries. There are also appendices which explain the criteria for selecting indicators and other initiatives relating to measuring national progress.


HOW PROGRESS INDICATORS ARE PRESENTED

One way of assessing progress is to consider whether Australia is becoming wealthier (or is maintaining or depleting its wealth). Australia has many forms of wealth, some of which can be measured fairly accurately. In its broadest sense, Australia's wealth is made up of various stocks of assets that include:

• human capital embodied in the knowledge, skills and health of individual Australians;
• social capital embodied in the ways we live together;
• natural capital embodied in our land, air, fresh waters, seas, and flora and fauna; and
• produced and financial capital embodied in machinery, houses, buildings and other assets.

• Some aspects of human capital are discussed in the commentaries Health, and Education and training.
• Some aspects of social capital are discussed under Social attachment - and the liability side, as it were, of the social capital balance sheet is partly reflected in Crime.
• Natural capital is discussed under Air, Inland waters, Land, and Biodiversity.
• Produced and financial capital is discussed under National wealth, and Housing.

Human capital	Natural Capital	Produced and Financial Capital	Social Capital
Health	Biodiversity	National Wealth	Crime
Education and Training	Land (clearing and degradation)	National Income	Social Attachment
Work	Water	Economic Disadvantage and Inequality
	Air quality	Housing
	Greenhouse Gasses

• Health. During the past decade, Australians’ health improved - children born in 1999 were expected to live three years longer than those born in 1990. Indigenous Australians, however, can still expect to live some 20 years less than other Australians.
• Education and training. During the 1990s, the Australian population became more educated - between 1990 and 2000 the proportion of people aged 25-64 years with a vocational or higher education qualification rose from 46% to 50%.
• Work. Since the last recession in the early 1990s the unemployment rate has gradually declined, and the unemployment rate in 2001 was 6.7%.

• Land clearance. In 1999, about 470,000 hectares of native vegetation were cleared, an annual rate some 40% higher than in 1991. Land clearance is one influence thought to be reducing biodiversity.
• Land degradation. In 2000, about 5.7 million hectares of land were affected by, or at high risk of developing, dryland salinity, a widespread form of land degradation.
• Inland waters. Detailed national time series data are not available. But a variety of partial evidence points to a decline in the quality of some of Australia’s waterways. In 2000, about a quarter of Australia’s surface water management areas were classed as highly used or overused.
• Air quality. Australia’s air remains relatively clean by the standards of other developed nations. The available indicators, such as the incidence of fine particle pollution in several cities, suggest that Australian air quality has improved during the past decade, despite increased motor vehicle use.
• Greenhouse gas emissions in Australia increased by 17% between 1990 and 1999. Australia has some of the highest per capita emissions in the world, in part because of our heavy reliance on fossil fuel burning and also because of the Australian economy’s structure.

• National wealth, as measured in Australia’s balance sheet, grew during the 1990s. Real wealth per person increased moderately (by almost 1% a year) between 1992 and 2001.
• National income can be used to fund current consumption of goods and services. Or it can be saved to accumulate wealth. Real income per head grew strongly during the past decade (by 2.5% a year) - appreciably stronger growth than during the preceding twenty years.
• Economic disadvantage and inequality. The real income of less well-off Australians (those in the second and third lowest deciles of the income distribution) increased between 1994-95 and 1997-98 by 5%. The incomes of better-off groups increased by a similar amount.
• Housing. Australia’s housing stock is a component of produced capital. The commentary focuses on two social aspects of housing: housing affordability and houses with insufficient bedrooms. Although not a widespread problem, the proportion of houses with insufficient bedrooms declined during the 1990s. The proportion of households experiencing problems with the affordability of their housing remained much the same over the four years 1994-95 to 1997-98.

• Social attachment refers to the nature and strength of relationships people have with one another. The publication presents a number of indicators showing how aspects of social attachment in Australia are changing, but none of these is accorded headline status. No assessment is made as to whether these changes signal progress or regress.
• Crime. Through the 1990s there was an increase in the prevalence of some of the more common personal and property crimes reported to the police. According to police statistics, for every 100,000 Australians in 2000 there were about 2,300 instances of unlawful entry and 740 victims of assault.