Goodbye GDP? 31 ways to replace the world's favourite measure of economic health

Beyond GDP indicators include measures of air (pictured here in Shanghai). Credit: Jackyenjoyphotography/Getty The United Nations is considering 31 new indicators to “complement and go beyond” the world’s main measure of economic growth, gross domestic product (GDP). The proposed new annual indicators include economic metrics such as household disposable income per person, and environmental data such as a country’s greenhouse gas emissions and levels of particulate matter in the air. Also included are health and education indicators such as life expectancy and children’s performance in reading and maths; as well as measures of wellbeing such as the proportion of women and girls subjected to physical and/or sexual violence. Fifteen of the 31 proposed indicators are already part of indicators for the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The new indicators are in a report, Counting What Counts , written by a multidisciplinary committee of researchers and policymakers, co- chaired by economists Kaushik Basu, based at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and Nora Lustig at Tulane University in New Orleans. The group was assembled last year by UN Secretary General António Guterres. Attempts to dethrone GDP , including by the UN, go back at least three decades but this is the first time that a UN chief has responded to such a request from member states. …