Quality of Government and Well-being: Assessing the Gap in European Countries

This paper analyses the influential factors which determine the differences between social and economic dimensions in the European Union. The main objective was to construct a composite indicator of the quality of government and citizens’ well-being, and rank the EU countries based on it. The dataset refers to variables specific to economic and social wellness (latest year available is 2015), focusing on both, the objective and subjective dimension of the governance and well-being. The results obtained indicate that the countries with the highest performance in terms of the quality of government and citizens’ well-being are Denmark, Sweden, Finland, followed by Austria and the Netherlands. Differences to the rest of the EU member states are based on economic and social policies, as these countries have the highest employment rates and social protection expenditures, focusing on the risks related to unemployment, social exclusion, invalidity or aging to increase citizens’ overall life satisfaction.