Training Statisticians in the Field of Quality of Life: A New Challenge for the University System. The Case of Qolexity in Italy

Italy has recently developed some important projects (framed in the beyond GDP initiatives) aimed at providing the country with an instrument able to monitor the national wellbeing and support the decision making. The project (launched in 2010) is known with the acronym BES (Benessere Equo e Sostenibile, Fair and Sustainable Wellbeing) and has been developed by Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) with the partnership of the National Council for Economics and Labour (CNEL) by involving also many scholars from Academia and representatives from the civil society. The project developed a system of indicators able to describe the national well-being, beyond the merely economic measures which are summarized by GDP. Beyond the results directly obtained, the project urged the necessity to have a new training project allowing the complete the background of statisticians (and not only) which would need to manage systems of indicators monitoring the wellbeing of population in the ambit of official statistics but not only. On this basis, the University of Florence (Department of Statistics, Informatics, Applications “G. Parenti” - DiSIA) developed a new post-master program named “QoLexity: Measuring, Monitoring and Analysis of Quality of Life and its Complexity”, in strict cooperation with ISTAT and with the Eurostat’s sponsorship (by offering some stage position for students). The experience was conducted for two editions and was closed on 2016.