"Affordable/Decent Housing" valued on Oxfam Humankind Index

Last year, Oxfam Scotland came up with the Oxfam Humankind Index, a new way of measuring what makes a good life. The aim of the index is to assess Scotland’s prosperity through a holistic and more representative measure of progress, that goes beyond the dominant economic model, which relies on Gross Domestic Product as the main indicator.

So Oxfam Scotland set off to find out what things really matter to the people of Scotland. This might include their social relations, their health and skills, their physical environment and natural context, and their financial assets.

This is the second report of the Oxfam Humankind Index for Scotland, updating the first results published in April 2012. While the Index shows a marginal overall increase on last year’s report, our impression is one of a society where prosperity is broadly flat. The report shows that deprived communities continue to lag behind the rest of Scotland, although the gap has narrowed slightly from 11% to 10%.

Affordable and decent housing is valued as the first element of a good life.