Measuring quality of life for public policy: an idea whose time has come? Agenda-setting dynamics in the European Union

Measuring quality of life has recently risen rapidly up the political agenda in a range of political arenas. In the EU context this is indicated most clearly by a Commission communication to the Council and European Parliament in 2009, ‘GDP and Beyond’, which sets out a roadmap with five key actions to improve the indicators for measuring progress.

This initiative, along with similar developments both nationally and internationally, signals discontent with the dominance of gross domestic product growth as the dominant measure of societal progress and suggest that in some respects at least, concern with measuring quality of life is an idea whose time has come. This article seeks to explain how and why this issue has risen up the EU's political agenda through this initiative, drawing on Kingdon's (2011) multiple streams approach to agenda-setting and related contributions.