1963-2018 - 55 years of Research for Social Change

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Back | Programme Area: Alternative Economies for Transformation, Social Dimensions of Sustainable Development

Opportunities and Challenges of Statistics on Social and Solidarity Economy

  • Project from: 2019 to 2020


Policy makers are paying increasing attention to social and solidarity economy organizations and enterprises, and in particular their potential to address social, economic and environmental problems in alternative and integrated ways. But there is a lack of statistical information about the weight, size and scope of SSEOEs. As a result, it can be difficult to design evidence-informed policies to support their development, and the development of SSE more broadly. This project aims to produce an overview and analysis of current statistics on SSE, and to make recommendations for their improvement.

Results and Outputs


Research Objectives and Methods


The project aims to enrich discussions on statistics on SSE both within and outside the UN system. It will provide policy makers with information on current statistics on SSE and recommendations for the production of better statistics on SSE.

The research project will:
  • provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of statistics on SSE in different parts of the world, with a focus on the methodologies and available data sets;
  • explore diverse approaches to generating statistics on SSE;
  • explain how statistics on SSE may be better presented; and
  • identify innovative approaches to measure the impact of SSE on sustainable development.

Research Beneficiaries


The principal beneficiaries of this project are:
  • policy makers
  • national statistical agencies
  • SSE sector apex organizations

Outputs and Activities


  • Online consultation to collect state-of-the-art knowledge and information on SSE statistical methodologies and data sets.
  • Research papers on
      - methodologies
      - available data
      - evolution of SSE statistics
  • Expert workshop
  • Policy recommendations

Funding and acknowledgements


This project is a research initiative of the UN Inter-Agency Task Force on Social and Solidarity Economy (TFSSE)'s SSE Knowledge Hub for the SDGs. The project is funded by the Government of the Republic of Korea (represented by Statistics Korea), and carried out by UNRISD as the implementing organization of the UNTFSSE Knowledge Hub. The project team acknowledges the support of CIRIEC International for the project.

Visit the TFSSE's webpage for this project and the Knowledge Hub for more information and resources.