The continued importance of the “Beyond GDP” Agenda

This chapter looks at what has changed since the 2009 Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress (Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Commission). It describes the contribution of the High-Level Expert Group on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress (HLEG) to moving “Beyond GDP” when assessing a country’s health, towards a broader dashboard of indicators that would reflect concerns such as the distribution of well-being and sustainability in all of its dimensions. The challenge is to make the dashboard small enough to be easily comprehensible, but large enough to include a summary of what we care about the most. The chapter argues that what governments measure strongly influences what they do. If they do not regularly include income inequality or economic insecurity in their dashboard of indicators, for example, they may not notice that these are getting worse. The chapter also argues that distorted metrics can lead to misleading assessments, for example when gauging success solely through the lens of GDP while failing to measure the potential environmental damages caused by economic activities