Here's the summary: GDP was never designed as a metric for human well-being. It kind of worked as a proxy for that for a couple of decades after WWII, but no more. Using GDP assumes substitutability between labor, technology, and natural resources in the context of production. But this obviously ignores ecological limits or planetary boundaries, or, in other words: it decouples economic activity from natural resource use.
We need instead to adopt a universal goal: sustainabilty & inclusive well-being. Not sure why inclusive well-being is separated from sustainabilty here, but ok. The question then is how do we a) measure that and b) how do we aggreate our metrics into some kind of index or proxy? Here are some of the metrics: Well-being components: these 19 core factors are common to most beyond-GDP indicators.
Human
- Life satisfaction
- Health
- Life expectancy at birth
- Education
Social
- Crime
- Civic engagement
- Governance
- Income equality
- Gender equality
Built
- Housing
- Infrastructure
- Financial security
- Employment
- Per capita consumption
- Business health
Natural
- Natural capital
- Water quality
- Air quality
- Greenhouse-gas emissions
Sounds a lot like donut economics to me!
No comments:
Post a Comment