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Wellbeing matters: tackling growth dependency
Briefing Paper, 3. All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Limits to Growth, London, (февраля 2020)
Аннотация
Economists have known for more than eighty years that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is not a good measure of social progress. Numerous attempts have been made to establish alternative indicators of progress. Recently, there have been several policy initiatives to articulate a different kind of economy in which the pursuit of wellbeing takes precedence over the pursuit of growth in GDP. For the most part, UK policy still proceeds as though growth in GDP is the most important determinant of political and economic success. In the context of declining growth rates across the advanced economies and the need to tackle urgent challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss and social inequality, this strategy is at best short-sighted and at worst disastrous both for societal wellbeing and for long-term sustainability. This policy briefing highlights some alternatives to the conventional approach. It presents a three-fold strategy for moving beyond GDP by: changing the way we measure success; building a consistent policy framework for a ‘wellbeing economy’; and addressing the ‘growth dependency’ of the economy.
