Genuine progress indicator
In economics, a Genuine Progress Indicator is an indicator of progress that is not biased by productivism or by consumerism, but instead represents some combination of improvement in human well-being and enhancement of nature's ability to provide services and generate water, air, soil and produce.
There are many examples, of which the best known are probably the GPI Atlantic indicator pioneered by Ronald Colman, and the ecological and social indicators used by the Government of Canada to measure its own progress to achieving well-being goals: its Environment and Sustainable Development Indicators Initiative (Canada) is a substantial effort to justify state services in GPI terms. It assigns the Commissioner for the Environment and Sustainable Development (Canada)), an officer in the Auditor-General of Canada's office, to perform the analysis and report to the House of Commons.
In the EU the Metropole efforts and the London Health Observatory methods are equivalents focused mostly on urban lifestyle.
These are among the most advanced efforts in any of the G8 or OECD nations, but there are parallel efforts to measure quality of life or standard of living in health (not strictly wealth) terms in all developed nations.
The need for a GPI to replace biased indicators such as GDP was highlighted by analyses of uneconomic growth in the 1980s and 1990s, at which point (according to human development theory and ecological economics) the growth in money supply was actually reflective of a loss of well-being. The matter remains controversial and is a main issue between advocates of green economics and neo-classical economics.
To the latter, GDP is already a perfectly valid means of measuring progress, and there is no problem with including a rising health care or purchase of basic survival goods like water in growth indicators - whereas a GPI analysis would take both as indicators of more fundamental problems, not as indicators of actual progress to any state deemed desirable.
References:
- Hansard record of Canadian House of Commons debate of June 2, 2003 which passed elements of the Canada Well-Being Measurement Act into law