measuring progress, prosperity, happiness
Shout-outs for an alternative way to measure progress, to move beyond the too-unilateral GDP, are sounding louder throughout the world. Spurred by the need to decouple the link between economic progress and ecological disaster, as well as a growing awareness of socio-democratic unequality, of the gap between wellbeing vs. welfare … all elements slipping under the radar of or hiding behind the gross domestic product index, call for alternative ways to measure and compare progress in the world.
The past decades several attempts have been made to change the way we measure, compare and see progress, but none of the instruments so far has managed to achieve a worldwide accepted and objective status. The underlying methodologies continue to be up for debate.
To mention but a few examples: the happy planet index, the UN’s Human Development Index, the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare, the General Progress Indicator, etc.
When assessing future scenarios many discussions related to measuring, monitoring and comparing evolving situations often come up. Often people feel the urge to connect qualitative and quantitative data. What one wishes to measure, what one really measures, how one does it, what it means, how relationships possibly change over time, etc. make these discussions interesting but also very complex.
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