Higher Living Standards
Page updated 30 Jan 2013
Our vision is to be a world-class Treasury working for higher living standards for New Zealanders.
By living standards we mean ...
Living standards encompass much more than just income or GDP. It also includes a broad range of material and non-material factors which impact on the well-being of both the individual and society (such as trust, education, health and environmental quality).
Treasury has been working on refining its living standards framework with a view to improving its use in our policy advice.
Read the related media statement by the Treasury: Papers a new tool for fresh thinking on raising living standards (30 January 2013).
So far, the Treasury has ...
- Outlined what it sees as important for living standards in a Treasury Paper: Working Towards Higher Living Standards for New Zealanders.
- Developed an aid to help policy analysts think across the five key aspects that are important for improving living standards for New Zealand in today's environment - Living Standards: The Heart of Our Policy Advice: sp-livingstandards-advice.pdf (346 KB).
- Provided the rationale for choosing these five aspects Improving the Living Standards of New Zealanders: Moving from a Framework to Implementation (Speech by Dr Girol Karacaoglu, Deputy Secretary Macroeconomic, International and Economic Research, 18 June 2012).
Now we have produced draft policy analyst guides and background notes...
As the next step towards integrating the five aspects of the living standards framework into policy advice, the Treasury has now released draft guides and background notes for policy analysts for each of the aspects. We would like to encourage feedback on these. Contact us at guidance@treasury.govt.nz.
| Dimension | Draft Analyst Guide | Background Notes or Further Reading |
|---|---|---|
| Economic Growth | hls-ag-econgrow-jan13.pdf (99 KB) | hls-bg-econgrow-jan13.pdf (81 KB) |
| Sustainability for the Future | hls-ag-sust-jan13.pdf (500 KB) | Statistics New Zealand Sustainable Development Website |
| Increasing Equity | hls-ag-equity-jan13.pdf (128 KB) | hls-bg-equity-jan13.pdf (388 KB) |
| Social Infrastructure | hls-ag-socinfr-jan13.pdf (157 KB) | Still to come. |
| Managing Risks | hls-ag-risks-jan13.pdf (117 KB) | hls-bg-risks-jan13.pdf (109 KB) |
Our next steps ...
The next steps we plan for our Living Standards work are:
- working collaboratively with others across the public sector to develop measures for each of the five key aspects
- encouraging researchers to contribute to an evidence base - contact guidance@treasury.govt.nz.
- using the Living Standards aid in our work, and assess whether it improves our policy advice.
