When governments ask people what truly matters to them, they cite things like being healthy, having a secure and affordable home, enough income to live with dignity, and time for the people they love. As the former leaders of Iceland and Scotland, we have heard concerns first-hand. But these people-first priorities are not abstract ambitions.
They are the conditions for a decent life, and ensuring they are met should be the first priority of any government. And yet none of this is captured in the number that most economists, the media, and indeed, governments use to measure a country’s success: Gross Domestic Product (GDP), commonly referred to as economic “growth.” To be sure, GDP has its uses as a measure of many of the goods and services a country exchanges and produces. But today, it is typically used in a way its architects never intended.
For instance, a country's GDP rises when a forest is felled and when an oil spill is cleaned up. It rises with financial speculation. But it does not rise when a parent cares for a child or a child for an elderly parent, when the forest is left standing, when a woman can walk home at night without fear, when voters turn out because they trust their institutions, or when a patient sees a doctor in days rather than months.
A new UN Framework, Beyond GDP, promises to change this by offering a dashboard of more meaningful indicators to complement GDP. Governments must now put this framework into action. Not simply by publishing new statistics, but by using them to set priorities, shape budgets, assess policies and be held to account publicly on whether people’s lives are genuinely improving.
Eight years ago, we set out to put the wellbeing of our people ahead of the narrow pursuit of economic growth. Together with New Zealand's Jacinda Ardern, we founded the Wellbeing Economy Governments partnership, later joined by Wales and Finland, with Canada actively participating. We shared practical lessons about developing national wellbeing indicators, embedding them in government decision-making and ensuring that economic policy considers social and environmental outcomes alongside financial ones.
In Iceland, we introduced 39 wellbeing indicators, built on what people themselves told us they valued, and used them to inform policy. GDP became one measure among many, alongside life expectancy, unmet healthcare needs, material deprivation and work-life balance. Parental leave shows what this means in practice.
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