The Wellbeing of Nations: Meaning, Motive and Measurement

2 A short history of national wellbeing and its measurement

Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things.

Robert Kennedy (1968)

At the heart of this book is the issue of the adequacy of current measures of economic performance. There are questions about how the current measures are defined, and in particular the transactions that are included or excluded in coming to the headline measure of a country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). There are also much broader concerns about how well the GDP figures measure the wellbeing of society, both at a point in time and as measures of economic, environmental and social sustainability.

When we ask someone ‘How are you?’ we are usually aware that they are likely to take different things into account in replying. We know from qualitative research that many different things matter to people in the United Kingdom. There are some common themes: health, good connections with family and friends, job satisfaction and economic security, present and future conditions of the environment and education and training (ONS, 2011, p. 6). The reply to our greeting from someone in the United Kingdom is therefore likely to be influenced mostly by their health and those of people around them, by their work or by their job prospects. Different things may matter to people in other countries. There may also be cultural differences in how open, or not, people are in responding ...