Gross domestic product (GDP) was never designed to be a measure of societal well-being. It tracks only market transactions, conflates costs and benefits, and ignores the distribution of income, the contributions of household labour and volunteer work, and social and environmental costs and benefits.
In the decades after the Second World War, GDP growth functioned as a reasonable proxy for well-being when rebuilding economies and increasing production and consumption were the main priorities. However, since about 1950, which some call the Anthropocene era, ecological limits, inequality and declining social cohesion have restricted further improvements in well-being. At the same time, the rapid development of artificial intelligence promises fresh opportunities and challenges.
Degrowth can work — here’s how science can help
Measuring and modelling what truly matters, not just market transactions, is now essential. Processes are under way to develop indicators that move beyond GDP. In May, the United Nations secretary-general António Guterres appointed a High-Level Expert Group to develop such measures, with a focus on balancing economic, social and environmental dimensions of well-being. This initiative builds on the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): target 19 of SDG17 commits governments to adopt beyond-GDP metrics by 2030.
Yet progress remains slow. Overcoming decades of structures built around GDP is difficult. Nonetheless, several governments, including those of New Zealand, Scotland, Wales and Bhutan, have experimented with alternatives to GDP1 (see also go.nature.com/3ktuvhv). Others should follow suit, but it will be a steep climb.
Shifting all societies from a narrow focus on GDP growth to a comprehensive understanding of the multiple factors that support well-being and prosperity, and of how these factors interact over space and time, demands consensus on another approach2. Over the past seven decades, researchers and institutions have proposed hundreds of alternatives to GDP.
Paradoxically, this proliferation has helped GDP to keep its privileged status, by creating the impression that there is little agreement on what sustainable and inclusive well-being means or how to measure it. In fact, there is much that these approaches do agree on.
Here, we identify areas of common ground and propose four ways forward: universally adopting the goal of sustainable and inclusive well-being; establishing agreed metrics to evaluate progress towards this goal; developing models that incorporate the drivers and dynamics of well-being; and addressing institutionalized societal ‘addictions’ that reinforce unsustainable behaviours.
Embrace sustainable and inclusive well-being
The concept of sustainable and inclusive well-being — encompassing the well-being of all people and of the ecosystems that sustain life — is emerging as a widely accepted overarching policy goal that can provide common ground for beyond-GDP metrics, models and policies.
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