For Good Measure: An Agenda for Moving Beyond GDP

Today's leading economists weigh in with a new "dashboard" of metrics for measuring our economic and social health

"What we measure affects what we do. If we focus only on material well-being―on, say, the production of goods, rather than on health, education, and the environment―we become distorted in the same way that these measures are distorted."
―Joseph E. Stiglitz

A consensus has emerged among key experts that our conventional economic measures are out of sync with how most people live their lives. GDP, they argue, is a poor and outmoded measure of our well-being.

The global movement to move beyond GDP has attracted some of the world's leading economists, statisticians, and social thinkers who have worked collectively to articulate new approaches to measuring economic well-being and social progress. In the decade since the 2008 economic crisis, these experts have come together to determine what indicators can actually tell us about people's lives.

In the first book of its kind, leading economists from around the world, including Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, Elizabeth Beasely, Jacob Hacker, François Bourguignon, Nora Lustig, Alan B. Krueger, and Joseph E. Stiglitz, describe a range of fascinating metrics―from economic insecurity and environmental sustainability to inequality of opportunity and levels of trust and resilience―that can be used to supplement the simplistic measure of gross domestic product, providing a far more nuanced and accurate account of societal health and well-being.

This groundbreaking volume is sure to provide a major source of ideas and inspiration for one of the most important intellectual movements of our time.

Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, is university professor at Columbia University and chief economist at the Roosevelt Institute. He is the author of The Stiglitz Report: Reforming the International Monetary and Financial Systems in the Wake of the Global Crisis, a co-author of Mismeasuring Our Lives: Why GDP Doesn't Add Up and Measuring What Counts: A New Dashboard for Well-being. He lives in New York City.

Jean-Paul Fitoussi is professor emeritus at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (SciencesPo), Paris, and professor at LUISS Guido Carli University, Rome. He is a co-author of Mismeasuring Our Lives and Measuring What Counts and a co-editor of For Good Measure (all published by The New Press). He lives in Paris.

Martine Durand was appointed director of statistics and chief statistician of the OECD in 2010. A co-author of Measuring What Counts: A New Dashboard for Well-being. She lives in Paris.