Measure What Matters

Measure What Matters
Make sure the indicators of economic health and progress on our societal control panel actually help us steer accurately. Use measures that account for the well-being of individuals and health of human and natural communities, such as Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) or Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness (GNH).

Instead of: Relying solely on GDP (which measures only the total quantity of money moving around, not all the other things we care about like quality of life or health of communities and ecosystems.

[Return to Homepage]

Synergies
(cards that work well together)
 * [link to related card]

Idea Family
(cards with shared core concept — such as specific application of general principles)
 * [link to related card]

Detailed Description

 * The time is ripe for our measurement system to shift emphasis from measuring economic production to measuring people's well being"—Joseph Stiglets and others, Commission on the Measurement of Economic Development and Social Progress
 * Such measures should exist not only for nations, regions and the world, but for individual communities whose measured realities may rightfully differ from place to place. To be most successful, such indicators should also be tied to the accounting and reward systems of economic entities like corporations.

Data and Statistics

 * [if there is data that backs up this card please list it here—with references!]

Resources and References

 * [who's working on this? What good information is out there?]

Examples and Experiments

 * Quality of Life indicators
 * Bhutan's Gross National Happiness
 * Genuine Progress Indicator
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genuine_progress_indicator
 * Estimates for different regions http://www.uvm.edu/giee/?Page=genuine/index.html
 * Maryland to use GPI http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/maryland-launches-genuine-progress-indicator
 * and many local community indicators...

[Return to Homepage]