In 2009, a group of economists led by Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz, French economist Jean-Paul Fitoussi, and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen sparked a global conversation about GDP and a major movement among scholars, policy makers, and activists to change the way we measure our economies.
 |
| Book cover – November 19, 2019 |
For economists, metrics are the means to measure performance. “If we measure the wrong thing, we will do the wrong thing,”
GDP gives no hint of environmental degradation or resource depletion, nor inequality, middle-class suffering, or lower standards of living.
“If growth is not sustainable because we are destroying the environment and using up scarce natural resources our statistics should warn us,” he says. “It is clear that something is fundamentally wrong with the way we assess economic performance and social performance.”
The new book, Measuring What Counts: The Global Movement for Well-Being, cowritten with French economists Jean-Paul Fitoussi and Martine Durand, provides a blueprint for how countries can use more appropriate metrics that account for details such as sustainability and how people feel about their lives.
This book provides an accessible overview of the last decade’s global movement, sparked by the original critique of GDP, and proposes a new “dashboard” of metrics to assess a society’s health, including measures of inequality and economic vulnerability, whether growth is environmentally sustainable, and how people feel about their lives. Essential reading for our time, it also serves as a guide for policy makers and others on how to use these new tools to fundamentally change the way we measure our lives—and to plot a radically new path forward.
This book provides an accessible overview of the last decade’s global movement, sparked by the original critique of GDP, and proposes a new “dashboard” of metrics to assess a society’s health, including measures of inequality and economic vulnerability, whether growth is environmentally sustainable, and how people feel about their lives. Essential reading for our time, it also serves as a guide for policy makers and others on how to use these new tools to fundamentally change the way we measure our lives—and to plot a radically new path forward.
"If we want to put people first, we have to know what matters to them, what improves their well-being, and how we can supply more of whatever that is."—Joseph E. Stiglitz
