Measuring What Counts: The Global Movement for Well-Being

(Paperback)

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A bold agenda for a better way to assess societal well-being, by three of the world's leading economists and statisticians.

In 2009, a group of economists led by Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz, French economist Jean-Paul Fitoussi, and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen issued a report challenging gross domestic product (GDP) as a measure of progress and well-being. Published as Mismeasuring Our Lives by The New Press, the book sparked a global conversation about GDP and a major movement among scholars, policy makers, and activists to change the way we measure our economies.

Now, in Measuring What Counts, these economists, summarising the deliberations of a panel of experts on the measurement of economic performance and social progress hosted at the OECD, the official think tank of the advanced countries, propose a new, "beyond GDP" agenda. The book offers an accessible overview of the last decade's global movement, sparked by their original critique of GDP, and proposes a new "dashboard" of metrics to assess a society's health, including measuring inequality and economic vulnerability, whether growth is environmentally sustainable, how people feel about their lives, and what factors contribute to individuals' and countries' success. It also offers a guide for policy makers and others on how to use these new tools to change the way we measure our lives--and to plot a radically new path forward.

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Praise for Measuring What Counts:
"Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz's (former chief economist of the World Bank) new book: Measuring What Counts: The Global Movement for Well-Being (The New Press, 2019) tackles the issue by exposing its paramount importance in judging how society gauges prosperity or alternatively the failure of prosperity."
CityWatch LA

Author Bio

Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, is university professor at Columbia University and chief economist at the Roosevelt Institute. He is the author of The Stiglitz Report and a co-author of Mismeasuring Our Lives. He lives in New York City. Jean-Paul Fitoussi is professor emeritus at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (SciencesPo), Paris, and professor at LUISS Guido Carli University, Rome. He is a co-author of Mismeasuring Our Lives and a co-editor of For Good Measure. He lives in Paris. Martine Durand is the chief statistician and director of statistics of the OECD. She is a co-editor of For Good Measure. She lives in Paris.