In summary , economic prosperity indicators will give you a basic understanding of whether your community at least has the financial security to enjoy life . Economic resilience indicators will tell you whether your economy is sophisticated and diverse enough to survive economic shocks like recessions , factory closures , or automation that makes some skills redundant . In simple terms , these metrics tell you if your economic shock absorbers are robust . Economic self-sufficiency means there is money circulating in your economy and not just leaking out . This means more money for infrastructure , local job creation and local vibrancy .
ECONOMIC FOUNDATIONS UNDERPIN WELL-BEING The research on quality of life I ’ ve been immersed in for nearly 12 months now clearly shows these indicators and others like them directly connect economic performance to community well-being , resilience and sustainability .
And local governments can directly influence the trajectory of most of these indicators . This means they have both effective measures of the performance of the local economy and of how their efforts are influencing that performance .
In simple terms , these metrics tell you if your economic shock absorbers are robust . Economic self-sufficiency means there is money circulating in your economy and not just leaking out . This means more money for infrastructure , local job creation and local vibrancy .
Positive measures of these indicators mean you have a healthy economy . A healthy economy means greater community resilience , security , confidence , and sustainability . And that sums up to human well-being .
The Commonwealth Government and some Australian local governments are on board with quality of life indicators and measuring what matters , including economic resilience . But clearly , many are not yet on board enough . There ’ s some work to do there .
Working as an economic development professional in local government cannot be easy if you have a daily battle with your colleagues about the relevance of economic indicators . But maybe your job would be made a little easier if you could use better tools and clearer arguments that demonstrate the link between your work , local economic development outcome
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DR KEVIN JOHNSON Dr Kevin Johnson runs Geografia , an award-winning Melbourne-based company working in economics and spatial analytics . Kevin ’ s background is in state economic policy and he has taught at three Australian universities , most recently the University of Melbourne . Since 2020 , Kevin has been a senior advisor to UN-Habitat . In this capacity , he works on monitoring tools for cities to track progress towards the achievement of the UN ’ s sustainable development goals .
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