Mismeasuring Our Lives Why GDP Doesn't Add Up

I'm glad you asked that because that's a question I've done a lot of research I did a book called mismeasuring our lives why GDP doesn't add up where I tried with a group of I was a chair of a co-chair of an international commission on the measurement of economic performance and social progress and our commission concluded very strongly that GDP was not a good measure of well-being it was a measure of market output but that's not the same as well-being we delineated ways in which there were major deficiencies we advocated that there's not a single measure that could capture anything as complex as ourselves or what makes us well off or our society but we should have a dashboard and you name several of the things obviously we want material consumption is part of it what we call GDP but health is another in terms of health the US has a lower life expectancy than in almost any other advanced country and one that's lower today than it was a number of years ago in spite of the fact that we're doing the best research in this area we value our leisure then as you say in european really value their leisure we value security that's why we have social security one of the things that we clearly have gotten wrong in many cases as we say oh be more efficient for the economy get our GDP if we kept back on social security well if you come back and social security you make people more anxious more uncertain so what if GDP goes up a little bit people are are all worried about what's going to happen in the last third of their lives you know that's pending wise and powerful as they used to say so to me well-being is really what we ought to be focusing on there are a number groups that have attempted to measure in various ways well-being and interestingly the united states while we are close to the top on GDP per capita are not at the top anywhere near the top on well-being in almost any of these studies.