Measuring Well-Being and Exclusion in Europe’sRegions

The Lisbon summit of the European Council in March 2000 declared the number ofpeople living in poverty and social exclusion in the European Union to beunacceptable, and called for steps to tackle the issue, beginning with the setting oftargets for particular indicators. The targets suggested have been broad in nature buthave largely concentrated on national averages. This paper seeks to marry thisapproach with the EU’s traditional focus on regional cohesion, by developingregional indicators of well-being and exclusion for EU countries. It draws on a rangeof sources to put together indicators in five dimensions of well-being: material wellbeing,health, education and participation in two spheres – productive and social. Itexplores, first, how far national indicators disguise geographical inequalities in thesedifferent dimensions; and second, the extent to which regional performance differsaccording to which dimension is being examined. At the same time, the paper drawsattention to the limits of currently available data, in light of the fact that one keyaspect of the Lisbon summit conclusions was a commitment to the collection ofbetter data on poverty and social exclusion in the EU.[...]