Over the last few years, it has been increasingly argued that economic output, as measured by Gross Domestic Product, is an inadequate measure of a nation’s ‘well-being’. Similarly, FSB Scotland has become frustrated by the sometimes sterile debate over statistically insignificant increases/decreases in quarterly GDP, employment, and export figures.
For these reasons, we have developed the 'Index of Success' to allow us to better judge Scotland’s success as a nation based on wealth, equality, health, and future potential.
The purpose of the Index is to focus policy-makers’ minds on how Scotland is performing against similarly developed countries and identify those areas of under-performance where action needs to be taken.
The 2007 Index shows that, overall, Scotland is:
• down one place compared to the 10 small countries (now in last place)
• down two places compared to the OECD30 (now in 17th place)
• down one place compared to the OECD24 (now in 17th place)
The study, written by John McLaren, Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow, also includes a Scottish Index, which benchmarks the performance of Scotland's 32 local authority areas.
Closer scrutiny of the report shows that Scotland performs strongly on educational attainment, the measure of future potential, and above average on both employment rate and GDP per capita. Scotland’s poor overall score can mainly be attributed to our poor health record.
The clear conclusion from the study is that Scotland must tackle its poor health record if it is to compete with its OECD rivals as a place to live, work and do business. This must be a worry for the Executive given the huge increases in healthcare spending since 1999. There is no doubt that the Scottish Executive needs to focus more on preventative healthcare and particularly the main cause of ill health – poverty - in part by tackling the symptoms of our poor diet and unhealthy lifestyle.
2006 FSB Scotland Index of Success
2005 FSB Scotland Index of Success