1. Framework overview and HM Treasury Green Book guidance

Policy goals and impact framework

HM Treasury Green Book Wellbeing in Appraisal Guidance

Overview

Considering the wellbeing evidence changes decisions at three levels.

1. Strategic level

Define the objective: a focus on improving people’s lives, improving wellbeing

2. Policy or project level

Design in wellbeing when developing options

• Design options which improve wellbeing, based on the evidence
• Use the wellbeing evidence to better achieve outcomes, since wellbeing in turn improves productivity, health and pro-social behaviours

3. Appraising options

Understand and compare the wellbeing impacts in appraisal. Support the estimates in social cost benefit analysis by:

• Consider the full potential impacts
• Quantify wellbeing impacts and monetising where possible
• Reflect the impacts on different groups

In some cases, wellbeing will fully capture all the outcomes affected by a proposal. For example, improving social relations or improving wellbeing in a classroom.

In this case, we can consistently compare options using wellbeing as the unit of benefit, rather than translating via monetary benefits. This means that subjective wellbeing can be used as the outcome variable for Social Cost Effectiveness Analysis.

• Guide to Wellbeing Economic Evaluation
• Guide to Wellbeing Evidence Synthesis 
• Adding Subjective Wellbeing to Evaluations
• Office for National Statistics: How to add personal subjective wellbeing to your surveys
• Guide to measuring wellbeing inequality