Beyond GDP
Measuring What Counts for Economic and Social Performance
Metrics matter for policy and policy matters for well-being. In this report, the co-chairs
of the OECD-hosted High Level Expert Group on the Measurement of Economic Performance
and Social Progress, Joseph E. Stiglitz, Jean-Paul Fitoussi and Martine Durand, show
how over-reliance on GDP as the yardstick of economic performance misled policy makers
who did not see the 2008 crisis coming. When the crisis did hit, concentrating on
the wrong indicators meant that governments made inadequate policy choices, with severe
and long-lasting consequences for many people. While GDP is the most well-known, and
most powerful economic indicator, it can’t tell us everything we need to know about
the health of countries and societies. In fact, it can’t even tell us everything we
need to know about economic performance. We need to develop dashboards of indicators
that reveal who is benefitting from growth, whether that growth is environmentally
sustainable, how people feel about their lives, what factors contribute to an individual’s
or a country’s success. This book looks at progress made over the past 10 years in
collecting well-being data, and in using them to inform policies. An accompanying
volume, For Good Measure: Advancing Research on Well-being Metrics Beyond GDP, presents
the latest findings from leading economists and statisticians on selected issues within
the broader agenda on defining and measuring well-being.
Published on November 27, 2018Also available in: German, Polish