From standard of living to quality of living

The timeline

Tap a period to see its four pillars.

1. 1820–1870: surviving the city

   • Live Good – Factory towns grow faster than their drains. In 1842 Edwin Chadwick, a British civil servant, shows that people in the filthiest streets die youngest. In the hot summer of 1858 the Thames smells so bad that Parliament votes to build London’s sewers.
   • Work Good – By 1870 a factory worker puts in over 3,000 hours a year: 60 to 70 hours a week, nearly every week.
   • Feel Good – A baby born in Western Europe can expect to live to around 35.
   • Do Good – In 1867 Britain gives the vote to working men in the towns. Most people, and all women, still have no say.

2. 1870–1914: cleaning up

3. 1914–1945: getting through

4. 1945–1973: having more

5. 1973–2008: having choice

• Life got better, unevenly but steadily. Working hours roughly halved. In Germany they fell from 3,284 a year in 1870 to 1,354 by 2017. Life expectancy more than doubled. Clean water, sewers, cleaner air, the vote and rights in law came with it.

• Every gain was a choice. In 1914 the eight-hour day was dismissed as impossible. Five years later it was the first international labour agreement. France’s paid holiday came out of a strike, not a market. Someone set each goal, and others fought for it. That’s the point I make in the Business Hippie Way: what was chosen can be chosen differently.

• The biggest changes came in jolts. Two wars and the fall of the Berlin Wall changed lives more in a few years than decades of slow progress. You can’t draw a straight line through this history.

• Almost everything counted was about work and place. Hours, wages, sewers, housing, the vote: things employers and governments could deliver. A person’s own life showed up mainly as an age at death.

1. Year: 2009Who: Three economists – Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen and Jean-Paul Fitoussi – in a report for the French governmentWhat changed: GDP can’t tell you how people are actually doing
2. Year: 2011Who: The OECD, the Paris-based club of the world’s richer democracies, launches its Better Life IndexWhat changed: Housing, work, health and life satisfaction compared side by side
3. Year: 2012Who: The first World Happiness Report, for the UNWhat changed: Countries ranked on how satisfied their people are with life
4. Year: 2015Who: Wales passes its Well-being of Future Generations ActWhat changed: Public bodies must, by law, weigh the wellbeing of people now and later
5. Year: 2019Who: EU ministers, under Finland’s presidency, adopt conclusions on the Economy of WellbeingWhat changed: People’s wellbeing put at the centre of EU policy, next to economic growth
6. Year: 2026Who: The United Nations publishes Counting What CountsWhat changed: 31 measures for countries to report alongside GDP

1. 1. Seen

   Then 1842: Chadwick shows that filthy streets kill

   Now Almost everyone feels the gap between the life they live and the life they’d choose

2. 2. Counted

   Then Deaths, working hours and who could vote get recorded

   Now The Quality of Life Study asks people how life feels and what they’d choose

   we are here
3. 3. Demanded

   Then Strikes for the eight-hour day, marches for the vote

   Now People, organisations and cities name their own goal

4. 4. Made normal

   Then Laws, then habits nobody questions

   Now Quality of life reported next to GDP

• A person – what would make my life better to live, and by when?
• An organisation – how will we know our people are actually doing well?
• A city – what will we count next to GDP?

1. Next: one city publishes how its residents rate their lives on the 17 Living Goals, alongside its own statistics.
2. By 2030: one city reports on the 17 Living Goals next to its GDP.