The Recoupling Dashboard 2020

Improvement, except for environment

From 2007 to 2018, the Agency Index rose s

ubstantially, whereas the Solidarity Index slightly increased as did GDP per capita. There was also a decrease in environmental sustainability. The authors term this “liberal communitarianism.” Over time, one can observe that agency continues to rise along with GDP per capita, while the development of social solidarity has stagnated.

Improvement, except collapse of solidarity, stagnant agency

From 2007 to 2018, there is an increase in GDP per capita, accompanied by a stagnation in agency and a decrease in solidarity, as well as a slight increase in environmental sustainability. The United States has experienced a progressive decoupling of GDP from agency and solidarity in recent years, particularly after the financial crisis in 2008.

Improvement, except collapse of solidarity

From 2007 to 2018, the Recoupling Dashboard shows a rise in agency and GDP per capita, while solidarity has fallen, indicating the country has become more neoliberal. Over time, the United Kingdom has experienced a progressive decoupling of GDP from agency and solidarity, particularly after the financial crisis in 2008.

Modest improvement except in environment

At the beginning of the evaluation period 2007, India was the country with the lowest income in the sample.

Just like the other selected middle-income countries (Brazil, China, Russia and South Africa), India has also experienced an increase in the Agency Index over the period 2007 to 2018. While agency has increased, solidarity has stagnated in India.

Improvement except in environment

China has experienced changes in the direction of liberal communitarianism, i.e. low scores in environmental sustainability but rather balanced performance in agency, solidarity and GDP per capita.

China, a middle-income country, shows an increase in the Agency and Solidarity Indexes from 2007 to 2018.

All selected middle-income countries (Brazil, China, India, Russia and South Africa) have experienced an increase in the Agency Index. Whereas high-income countries tend to exhibit a larger within-country variation in the Agency Index than across-country variation, the opposite is true of the middle-income countries.

While agency increased in all depicted countries, solidarity increased in China and South Africa but stagnated in India, Russia and Brazil.

South Africa experienced changes in the direction of liberal communitarianism.

South Africa underwent a sharp increase in the agency score. This development was mainly driven by increases in life expectancy and years in education. Also a particularly high increase in solidarity can be observed. The fact that solidarity increased after the 2008 financial crisis suggests that people in this country react with personal contributions.

The Environmental Performance Index in Brazil decreased, while the country improved slightly in the Agency Index. This development was driven by factors like, years in education in Brazil, as also seen in South Africa. However, solidarity in Brazil experienced a sharp decrease, especially from 2017 to 2018.

Whereas high-income countries tend to exhibit a larger within-country variation in the Agency Index than across-country variation, the opposite is true of the middle-income countries, such as Brazil.

The findings of the Recoupling Dashboard can be used to stimulate debate on the measurement of wellbeing and the implications for governments and businesses. On the country-level, it becomes clear that countries with a high GDP are not necessarily ones that show high solidarity or agency. The table shows which ranking position the 35 countries analyzed in the Recoupling Dashboard achieve in each of the four indexes in a global comparison in 2018, limited to the countries presented in the Recoupling Dashboard:

GDP per capita (constant 2010 US$)

GDP per capita is gross domestic product divided by mid-year population. GDP is the sum of gross value added by all resident producers in the economy plus any product taxes and minus any subsidies not included in the value of the products. It is calculated without making deductions for depreciation of fabricated assets or for depletion and degradation of natural resources. Data are in constant 2010 U.S. dollars. Source: World Bank national accounts data, and OECD National Accounts data files.

Labour market insecurity (OECD)

This indicator is defined in terms of the expected earnings loss, measured as the percentage of the previous earnings, associated with unemployment. This loss depends on the risk of becoming unemployed, the expected duration of unemployment and the degree of mitigation against these losses provided by government transfers to the unemployed (effective insurance).

Vulnerable employment (World Bank)

Vulnerable employment is contributing family workers and own-account workers as a percentage of total employment.

Life Expectancy (OECD)

Life expectancy measures how long on average people could expect to live based on the age-specific death rates currently prevailing. This measure refers to people born today and is computed as a weighted average of life expectancy for men and women.

Years in Education (UNESCO)

Mean years of schooling provides the average number of years of education (primary/ISCED 1 or higher) completed by a country’s adult population (25 years and older), excluding years spent repeating grades.

Confidence in empowering institutions (OECD/Gallup World Poll)

Confidence in empowering institutions is based on the question: “In this country, do you have confidence in each of the following, or not? How about national government?” The percentage of “yes” answers is reflected here. Data comes from the Gallup World Poll and is extracted from the OECD Trust Dataset.

World Giving Index (CAF)

This index relies on a simple averaging of three giving behaviors: Helping a stranger, Donating money, Volunteering time. Each country is given a percentage score and countries are ranked on the basis of these scores. The Index measures countries by proportion of population giving.

Trust (WVS/EVS)

Trust is based on the question: Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you need to be careful in dealing with people? Data comes from the World Values Survey and the European Values Survey.

Social Support (OECD)

Percentage of people who report that they have friends or relatives whom they can count on in times of trouble. Data comes from the Gallup World Poll and is extracted from OECD “How’s Life.”

Environmental Performance Index

The Environmental Performance Index (EPI) ranks countries on 24 performance indicators across ten issue categories covering environmental health and ecosystem vitality. Source: Wendling et al. (2018). Because the EPI is released biennially in even-numbered years, the reported EPI score in the baseline year (2007) is taken from the EPI report 2008. The score for 2018 is replaced with the EPI score from 2016. Because innovations in the 2018 EPI data and methodology make comparison of scores with the EPI score of 2008 difficult.

As is frequent with data projects, some of the variables included in the Recoupling Dashboard have a degree of missing data. To ensure continuity and comparability between composite scores over time, it is necessary to estimate values for these years. Missing data can be located in the interior of the available time series or at the exterior. For the former, the linear interpolation method is used – values are replaced with numbers incrementally higher or lower than the neighboring data points. For the latter, the missing values are replaced using the closest data point from source (last value carried forward – LVCF – or first value carried backward – FVCB).

Data collected to compute the indexes are diverse. At source, the variables collected are produced on different scales, and can also have different polarities – higher is better or higher is worse. In order for them to be meaningfully combined and compared, raw data are standardized before being included in the indexes. We employ a min-max normalization whereby all raw data are transformed to a scale of 0.0-1.0 (where a score of 1.0 is the best score a country can achieve). While this constitutes an order-preserving linear transformation of the data, a score of 1.0 after normalization does not imply that a country’s score in raw data terms is perfect, but rather is the best score in the set of countries.

The authors of the Recoupling Dashboard use linear, additive aggregation and weigh each sub-component equally within its dimension.

Because the EPI is released biennially in even-numbered years, the reported EPI score in the baseline year (2007) is taken from the EPI report 2008. The score for 2018 is replaced with the EPI score from 2016. Because innovations in the 2018 EPI data and methodology make comparison of scores with the EPI score of 2008 difficult.