In 2023, Treasurer Jim Chalmers announced the government would measure what matters to the wellbeing of Australians as a complement to the traditional economic measures in the national accounts.

The purpose of the report, called Measuring What Matters, is to help us understand whether the lives of Australians are improving or deteriorating. It measures more than economic output, such as gross domestic product (GDP).

Measuring What Matters has five wellbeing themes – healthy, secure, sustainable, cohesive, and prosperous. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has just published the 2025 results.

How to read the 50 indicators

It can be overwhelming to wade through the 50 indicators across the 12 dimensions in the five themes that make up the Measuring What Matters framework. What’s important is the overall direction of change – are things getting better or worse in each area of wellbeing?

There are some things to be aware of in trying to decipher the measures. The data will reflect events, like the COVID pandemic, that have mostly temporary impacts. In addition, many of the indicators are subjective – that is, they report perceptions or attitudes.

These can reflect changes in popular discourse and expectations, rather then a more fundamental change in objectively measured outcomes. The disconnect between rates of crime and perceptions of crime is one example. However, how people feel is an important part of wellbeing, so people reporting feeling less safe matters, even if measures of crime are trending down.

Health measures are not improving

So, with these caveats in mind, what does the 2025 report tell us? Here are a few key indicators in each of the five themes:

Healthy – The trends in this report show the health of the Australian population is slowly deteriorating. Gains in life expectancy at birth have flatlined at 85 for women and 81 for men. The share with chronic conditions rose to 50% in 2022 from 43% in 2007–08. On access to health services, 39% of people with a disability reported needing more formal assistance than they received. The one good bit of news was that the share of people saying they delayed or did not see a GP when needed due to cost ticked down slightly in 2024.

Secure – The indicator of feeling safe to walk at night trended down (to 74% for men and 46% for women). Feeling safe based on world events followed a similar pattern.

The importance of looking at results across groups is stark in indicators such as homelessness. In 2021, 48 in 10,000 people were assisted by homeless services. The rate was 91 for people between 19 and 24 years, and 307 per 10,000 for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Sustainable – Greenhouse emissions flatlined in 2024, as did the efficiency with which resources are reused and recycled. The rate of decline in the index of biological diversity has slowed but it is still heading the the wrong direction.

Cohesive – The indicators reflecting elements of cohesiveness tell a mixed story. Acceptance of diversity had risen over the last decade but fell slightly in 2024 to 71%, but the measure of a sense of belonging has been falling since 2007. Trust in other people fell slightly between 2021 and 2024 to 46%, but there was a slight rise in trust in the police (68%) and national government (49%).

Prosperous – Income per capita was down slightly in 2023–24 (to A$74,727) following a post-pandemic rise. A measure of inequality, the Gini coefficient, fell back toward its long term level of 0.3, following a sharp rise (showing an increase in inequality) post-pandemic.

The education and skills indicators tell a mixed story. NAPLAN provides the most recent data of all measures with 2025 showing an improvement in Year 3 numeracy, but a continued decline in reading. Less encouraging is that the share of children on track in all domains of childhood development has reversed its improving trend to fall slightly to 53% in 2024.

One way to rate government performance

The limitations of the national accounts in measuring what matters for people’s wellbeing has long been recognised, including by its creator, Simon Kuznets. The System of National Accounts was established to ensure comparability across countries for economic statistics.

Other reports have been developed to delve deeper into areas that cross industries, such as tourism, or that fall outside the standard economic measures, such as health and welfare, household and unpaid work, and the longer-term impact on the environment. While the methodology for these reports has been standardised across countries, measures of wellbeing tend to be more country specific and tailored to their policy needs and data availability.

Australian efforts to measure wellbeing are not new. The Bureau of Statistics’ ambitious project called Measuring Australia’s Progress was cancelled in the 2014 Abbott government budget cuts.

This latest version is a worthy exercise, although the lack of a headline number, like GDP, makes it hard to report. But this is what policy making has to cope with – lots of competing priorities, programs pushing against underlying deteriorating trends, and expectations driving satisfaction with government performance. Measuring What Matters is not a scorecard for government performance. But it is good start.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Jenny Gordon, Australian National University

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Jenny Gordon is affiliated with The Lowy Institute as a non-resident fellow and with ANU, POLIS, as an honorary professor.