Expert Comment: How should we measure progress in the 21st century?
Professor Sabina Alkire, Director of the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) at the University of Oxford, discusses why the UN’s new Beyond GDP framework could reshape how the world measures progress – and the five factors that will determine its success.
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a cornerstone of modern society, but it is a statistic originating from a rather different world, reaching back now almost a century.
GDP figures form a fundamental basis for a large proportion of government’s financial decisions and provide an influential yardstick of a country’s economic success compared to others. Yet a growing body of evidence demonstrates that rising GDP can tell a misleading story about whether people’s lives are actually improving.
In February, the UK’s Office for National Statistics reported that well-being indicators contradict the story told by rising GDP per capita – demonstrating that well-being data tells us novel and important information.
After decades of scholarly debate, we have reached a point where we need to consider seriously – and with a degree of urgency – what measures to use as a compass for navigating towards a world where all of humanity can thrive – and continue to thrive for the foreseeable future. We need an alternative, official, multidimensional, trusted and trustworthy lens on social progress.
“After decades of scholarly debate, we have reached a point where we need to consider seriously – and with a degree of urgency – what measures to use as a compass for navigating towards a world where all of humanity can thrive – and continue to thrive for the foreseeable future.”
A glaring blind spot
Having observed the absence of such metrics to be a ‘glaring blind spot in how we measure economic prosperity and progress’, last May the UN Secretary General appointed an independent High-Level Expert Group on Beyond GDP (HLEG) to develop a limited set of country-owned, universally applicable indicators that complement and go beyond GDP.
Informed by consultations with over 6,000 organisations, this team of 14 experts presented their report last month. The report defines progress as ‘equitable, inclusive, and sustainable well-being’ and proposes a dashboard of 31 indicators, close to half of which can be operationalised immediately. As co-chair Professor Nora Lustig explained: ‘progress that excludes people, or compromises the future, cannot truly be called progress.’
Making poverty visible
Our research group, OPHI, works on multidimensional poverty and well-being measurement. We are grateful that the HLEG’s dashboard of indicators includes OPHI and UNDP’s Global Multidimensional Poverty Index – a measure that makes visible the overlapping deprivations experienced by the poorest. This seems a positive step. It provides a clear line of sight to policy: if any deprivation of any poor person is solved, MPI goes down. It also provides a plethora of observations on actionable metrics that might fertilise the Beyond GDP discussions.
From report to reality
The Beyond GDP initiative now moves to an intergovernmental process co-facilitated by Spain and Guyana to finalise and agree Beyond GDP indicators. Its success will rest on five factors.
Data first, not last
The first is data – which is usually, and very wrongly, considered last. If a single, parsimonious, annually updated, multidimensional well-being household survey was available, a global multidimensional well-being measure could be built.
In the absence of high-quality, comparable, official, objective and subjective data at the national and subnational level, any Beyond GDP headline will omit key indicators, or lack the disaggregation needed to illuminate disparity and guide policy, or be updated infrequently, or fail to be meaningfully comparable across countries.
In an era of data overload, a breakthrough on multidimensional well-being data collection – looking at the nature of people’s lives and their views on their well-being – is essential for success.
Begin with the end in mind
The second is that the intergovernmental process needs to avoid wading into conceptual or methodological battles, and to begin with the end in mind.
To be useful, Beyond GDP metrics must show progress clearly, swiftly and accurately; they must provide details needed to guide actions by multiple actors; they must highlight inequalities within as well as between countries; they must affirm diverse patterns of well-being that can be radiant in their plurality; and they must be transparent, intuitive and easy to understand by journalists and their readers as well as policy actors.
The press release test
The third is to think about incentives: how might the Beyond GDP headline catalyse and inform the well-being narrative to create virtuous circles of feedback between governments - national to local - and society? Let’s say well-being increased: what will the rest of the press release say about how and where this happened? What else will the indicators of the multidimensional measure tell us? And whose professional success will it recognise?
Gross National Happiness
The fourth is looking to country experiences with well-being measurement so far. I have a particular admiration for Bhutan’s national well-being metric, which is termed their ‘Gross National Happiness’ index. It shows how capturing societal well-being can be a powerful metric for policy. Bhutan has sought to foster well-being through policies such as inclusive economic growth, social protection, democratic exchange, mindfulness and mental health supports, clean energy, public holidays, and so on.
While GNH has improved steadily since the index was first launched, the patterns of social change vary, offering important insights. In some updates, the living standards dimensions drove progress while psychological and community dimensions retreated. As is the case for all pioneers, Bhutan is gaining practical experience of how better to measure happiness as aspirations evolve and how policy actors can respond.
The missing conversation
The fifth is whole-of-society engagement. There is no dearth of research groups, networks and statistical bodies engaged in well-being debates. But there has been a notable lack of press covering this conversation. At some point, I hope this changes.
Following Amartya Sen’s longstanding call for well-being to be considered within economics and social sciences, we hope that academia, civil society, the private sector and the media will all support the Beyond GDP process to produce profound and transformative measures that are fit for purpose to guide both narratives and actions.
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