European System of Social Indicators

The conceptual framework of the European System of Social Indicators is based on a reflection of the scientific discourse on notions of welfare and related goals of societal development. In addition, an inventory of the goals and objectives pursued by the policies of the European Union has been undertaken. From both types of analyses, the conclusion was drawn that there are six major perspectives and dimensions of societal development in Europe which ought to be addressed by the European System of Social Indicators and should be used to derive and select measurement dimensions and indicators. The goal and measurement dimensions considered reflect the essential notions of the concepts of quality of life, social cohesion, and sustainability.

The concept of quality of life incorporates two major dimensions:

• Objective Living Conditions: This dimension concerns the ascertainable living circumstances of individuals, such as working conditions, state of health or standard of living.

• Subjective Well-Being: This dimension covers perceptions, evaluations and appreciation of life and living conditions by the individual citizens. Examples are measures of satisfaction or happiness.

The two basic dimensions extracted from the concept of social cohesion are:

• Disparities, Inequalities and Social Exclusion: This dimension refers to aspects of the distribution of welfare within a society such as regional disparities, equality of opportunities for women and men or other population groups.
• Social Relations, Ties and Inclusion: This second dimension of social cohesion concerns the social relations, bonds and ties within a society or what has been denoted as ‘social capital’. The existence of informal networks, associations and organisations and the performance of societal institutions are issues addressed by this dimension of social cohesion. Moreover, the cohesion between and integration of European societies is also covered by this dimension.

Two other dimensions have been extracted from the concept of sustainability in its notion of the World Bank's four-capital approach. According to this approach, sustainability means to preserve the societal capital (physical capital, social capital, human capital, natural capital) in order to secure equivalent living conditions for future generations: 

• Preservation of Human Capital: Measurement dimensions and indicators related to this goal dimension focus on processes and measures that affect people's skills, education and health.
• Preservation of Natural Capital: This dimension concerns the current state as well as processes and measures that improve or deteriorate the base of natural resources.

Besides these six goal dimensions concerning the quality of life and societies, the European System of Social Indicators also addresses selected trends of general social change in terms of

• Demographic and Socio-Economic Structures;
• Values and attitudes.

These eight major dimensions of welfare and general social change are being applied to the 13 life domains establishing the basic structure of the European System of Social Indicators. Thus, within each life domain up to eight dimensions of welfare and general social change are distinguished and operationalized in terms of domain-specific measurement dimensions, subdimensions and indicators.

(for details of the Conceptual Framework see: Berger-Schmitt/Noll 2000; Noll 2002)