Standards of living

25 November 2010 By Robert Cole

David Cameron has launched a national debate on ways to measure UK wellbeing. He’s right that economic development cannot just be measured in money. But to succeed where others have failed, the indicator should be modelled on respected series of data like the retail prices index.

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British Prime Minister David Cameron on Nov. 25 asked the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to build an index which measures national wellbeing. He was responding to observations that pure financial indicators, such as GDP, give a partial view of economic development.

The ONS said debate has been stimulated by a report, authored by Professors Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen and JeanPaul Fitoussi and commissioned by French president Nicolas Sarkozy.

The European Commission's GDP and Beyond project and the OECD's global project on measuring the progress of societies are also looking at these issues.

UK national statistician Jill Matheson said: "We must measure what matters the key elements of national wellbeing. There is no shortage of numbers that could be used to construct measures of wellbeing, but they will only be successful if they are widely accepted and understood. We want to develop measures based on what people tell us matters most."

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