International frameworks like the UN's beyond-GDP initiative propose comprehensive indicator dashboards covering health, education, and ecological health. Countries around the world are gradually integrating these broader metrics into their national accounting systems to guide more inclusive and future-proof public policies.

International frameworks like the UN's beyond-GDP initiative propose comprehensive indicator dashboards covering health, education, and ecological health. Countries around the world are gradually integrating these broader metrics into their national accounting systems to guide more inclusive and future-proof public policies.

International frameworks like the UN's beyond-GDP initiative propose comprehensive indicator dashboards covering health, education, and ecological health. Countries around the world are gradually integrating these broader metrics into their national accounting systems to guide more inclusive and future-proof public policies.

It is a well-known fact among economists and policymakers that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) metrics do not fully reflect actual or real progress regarding well-being, equity, and sustainability. Despite economic growth, many people often feel neglected, and as economic and ecological pressures are increasing, there is a need to have better measures of progress.

It can be safely assumed that national accounting systems of different countries in the world should move beyond merely measuring GDP as a measure of quality of life. Earlier this year, the report of the United Nations’ High Level Expert Group on beyond GDP is instructive and suggests the same. This includes a framework which measures well-being outcomes, tracks equity, and monitors essential capital for future prosperity. Specifically, it includes a practical dashboard of 31 indicators for countries to use, largely based on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), thus providing a means of tracking progress beyond GDP.

Indicators in the report cover four domains, namely, current well-being, equity and inclusion, sustainability and foundational principles. Current well-being looks at material conditions, health, education, security, subjective well-being, social cohesion, institutions and environmental quality.

Equity and inclusion looks at inequality and deprivation across groups. Sustainability looks at produced, human, social, institutional and natural capital. Foundational principles include peace, human rights and the planet.

The integration of the proposed indicators into existing statistical systems can be done through a few steps. Countries should start small by using what is already in place.

For example, they can use the SDG indicators framework, which already has methods and assigned agencies to manage the data. This way, they will not have to build everything afresh from scratch. It also helps avoid work by not having to report the same things in multiple ways.

Countries must also work on improving their data systems. Some indicators, like those about how people feel about their lives, trust in others, safety or satisfaction with public/government services, need surveys that cover many people and places. Many countries do not have these surveys on a regular basis.

So, building surveys, collecting data more often and making sure the data include different groups and regions is important. It is also key to get data and share it more quickly. It could also be vital and helpful to use a tiered system for adding indicators to the dashboard. Tier I indicators are the easiest to measure and should be added first, as they have definitions and methods already agreed upon by the international community. Then countries could slowly work on Tier II and Tier III indicators. These may be harder to measure because they may not have set methods or may not be collected at regular intervals. They still matter a lot for understanding real well-being and sustainability. Taking such small steps helps countries grow their skills over time, especially with support from international experts and training programmes. Working together is equally essential. National statistical offices, global organisations and university researchers need to team up and help create ingenious ways to collect data, share knowledge and make sure data, from different places, match up. Long-term funding, expert guidance and global support are needed to make sure these indicators become part of data collection and help shape real policies.  

Many countries have already or are in the process of integrating broader well-being indicators into their national statistical systems. Examples could include Bhutan, India, New Zealand and the UK. While Bhutan is globally recognised for its Gross National Happiness Index (this measures well-being through areas like how people feel about their health, their learning outcomes, how they spend their time, their culture, good leadership, how strong their communities are, nature, and how resilient their society is), India in its recently updated GDP series, with 2022–23 as the base year, seeks to widen its ambit to the informal economy and gig workers by incorporating the Annual Survey of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises (ASUSE) and the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) to better capture the hidden blind spots of informal labour. 

In addition, key sustainable/renewable energy elements too have been included in the new series. These are household rooftop solar electricity generated for self-consumption, improved and expanded tracking of biogas production, and granular, product-specific input-output tracking with an expanded set of deflators to better capture value additions in energy subsectors.

The UK has shared measures of national well-being through its Office for National Statistics. This includes a plan covering many parts of well-being that are not just about money, but a guide for users and a measuring rod when it comes to happiness, health, learning, and how people get along with each other. New Zealand too has made significant progress on the Living Standards Framework. This plan looks at well-being in many different ways, including in terms of people, planet and money. It thus reaffirms that it is vital to look at the entire picture when measuring human well-being.

Countries, while revisiting the measurement of GDP growth from a proposed perspective, may also take note of the Nordic countries’ quality of life and performance on the happiness index. Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, Norway and Finland have some key aspects ensuring a high quality of life in their countries, such as strong social welfare systems, institutional trust, work-life balance, and safety and equality.          

To guide future decision-making based on national accounts statistics, it is important to enhance the use of data in planning and policy-making, improve the existing data systems, and ensure continuous data production. All in all, there is a need for a collective effort among governments, institutions, and societies to think and move beyond GDP, with recommendations for investing in statistics and developing metrics for initiatives pertaining to national progress.

The author is assistant professor (economics and trade policy) at Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, New Delhi.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of THE WEEK.

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