Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

The OECD, in cooperation with the EU, has developed a harmonised definition of urban areas which overcomes previous limitations linked to administrative definitions (OECD, 2012). According to this definition an urban area is a functional economic unit characterised by densely inhabited “city core” and “commuting zone” whose labour market is highly integrated with the core. The Metropolitan database provides indicators of 649 OECD metropolitan areas identified in 33 OECD countries and the functional urban areas of Colombia. Comparable values of population, GDP, employment, and other indicators are presented.

How’s Life? Well-being is the one-stop shop for the 80+ indicators of the OECD Well-being Dashboard, providing information on current well-being outcomes, well-being inequalities and the resources and risks that underpin future well-being. The 11 dimensions of current well-being relate to material conditions that shape people’s economic options (Income and Wealth, Housing, Work and Job Quality) and quality-of-life factors that encompass how well people are (and how well they feel they are), what they know and can do, and how healthy and safe their places of living are (Health, Knowledge and Skills, Environmental Quality, Subjective Well-being, Safety). Quality of life also encompasses how connected and engaged people are, and how and with whom they spend their time (Work-Life Balance, Social Connections, Civic Engagement). The distribution of current well-being is taken into account by looking at three types of inequality: gaps between population groups (horizontal inequalities); gaps between those at the top and those at the bottom of the achievement scale in each dimension (vertical inequalities); and deprivations (i.e. the share of the population falling below a given threshold of achievement). The systemic resources that underpin future well-being over time are expressed in terms of four types of capital: Economic, Natural, Human and Social.

http://www.oecd.org/els/soc/IDD-Metadata.pdf

While much of the comparative evidence on inequalities that is currently available refers to household income, wealth is a critical dimension of households’ economic well-being. How wealth is distributed is important for equity and inter-generational mobility, but also for the stability of the economic system and for its resilience to shocks. While the lack of comparative evidence in this field reflects the absence of an agreed standard that statistical offices could use when collecting this information, this gap has been addressed by the OECD with the release in 2013 of a set of statistical guidelines in this field. In 2013, the OECD issued a set of ‘Guidelines’ for micro statistics on household wealth (OECD, 2013) and an increasing number of countries have engaged in the collection of micro statistics in this field (European Central Bank, 2013). Building on these initiatives as well as others, such as the Luxembourg Wealth Study (Sierminska et al, 2006) which have informed previous OECD analysis (Jantii et al., 2008), the OECD has updated the data on the distribution of household wealth for OECD countries, based on the set of conventions and classifications proposed in the 2013 OECD Guidelines.