Baseline standard or real outcome?

Quality of life is one of the most complex and multifaceted measures of a country’s development. It includes not only income, education, health, housing, and safety but also how people actually feel about their everyday lives. Today, quality of life is becoming the main benchmark of state success. It reflects not only economic growth but also the real well-being of citizens.

This is where the concept of a “Listening State” directly connects to quality of life. A government that truly listens to its citizens must design its planning system in a way where indicators reflect real change, not just ticked boxes. Quality of life is not a final statistic—it is a mirror of what public policy really means in practice.

On paper, the system looks complete. The state planning framework includes key indicators and targets that are supposed to reflect living standards and well-being. The National Development Plan until 2029 sets out 39 key national indicators (KNIs). These are meant to guide all other documents. At first glance, everything seems well structured.

But in reality, things look different. There are too many indicators, they are fragmented, and in many cases serve mostly for reporting. The system increasingly resembles a “conveyor belt” of documents and numbers, with only weak links to real results.

Yes, the plan provides for decomposition: KNIs are broken down into targets and outcome indicators. On paper, this logic makes sense. In practice, it works far from perfectly.

Take the Development Plan of Astana as an example. The key indicator was the share of the population with incomes below the poverty line: the 2024 target was 2.4%, but the actual result was 2.8%. To achieve this, the target indicator was unemployment (plan 4.8%, actual 4.4%). Outcome indicators were also over-achieved: 14.4 thousand people were employed versus the plan of 12.2 thousand, including 8 thousand young people versus the plan of 5.7 thousand.

Formally, the whole chain worked: activities carried out, outcomes exceeded, target reached. Yet the national goal—reducing poverty—remained unmet. This shows a core weakness: lowering unemployment and placing people in jobs does not automatically reduce poverty. Jobs are being created, but the income they bring is not enough to lift people above the poverty line.

The current system mostly measures quantity, not quality. It counts how many activities were organized, how many people found jobs, and how much unemployment decreased. But it doesn’t answer the real question: has the standard of living actually improved?

The previous National Plan (until 2025) had more meaningful indicators—such as real monetary income and the income share of the bottom 40% of the population. These showed distribution dynamics and inequality. Now the system has shifted toward a “baseline standard,” focusing on the share of people below the poverty line and regional service standards (access to housing, schools, hospitals, infrastructure). These are important “sanitary floors” that equalize starting conditions, but they do not capture quality of life.

This mismatch also shows up in surveys. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, only 56% of people say they are satisfied with life, 43.8% are partially satisfied, and only a small share consider themselves “well-off.”

Budget execution follows a similar logic. In 2024, the “Productive Employment Development” program spent 2.76 billion tenge in full. All coverage and employment targets were over-fulfilled, unemployment was below plan. Yet poverty reduction targets in Astana were not met. That means tools are designed to fund processes, not final outcomes: we are excellent at counting and financing “number of measures,” but not at improving “quality of life.”

Back in 2022, the Supreme Audit Chamber pointed out this systemic flaw, calling for a national quality-of-life standard that ties budget spending and policies to social impact. This has partly been addressed through regional standards, but full integration is still missing. The foundation is in place, but the “second floor”—indicators of quality and real impact on people’s lives—is absent.

Kazakhstan needs a single National Quality of Life Index. It should be built into the state planning system, broken down by regions and sectors, and include not only basic measures (poverty, access to services) but also:

• ⁠ ⁠quality of employment,
• ⁠ ⁠income growth,
• ⁠ ⁠the state of urban and rural environments,
• ⁠ ⁠subjective well-being as reported by citizens.

All surveys conducted by government agencies and organizations should be linked to this index, not run separately. Only then will there be a clear link between “policy – spending – change in people’s lives.”

Equally important is transparency. Many current indicators exist only inside reports and are unclear to citizens. A National Quality of Life Index must be open, simple to understand, and regularly published. Only in this way can it become not just an internal bureaucratic tool but a real public benchmark, allowing people to see how government policy actually affects their lives.