The article analyses the causes of the apparent paradox between the strongly positive response in public debate to the criticism of Gdp as inadequate in measuring progress, and the continuing centrality of economic growth in the political aims that are actually pursued. Economic growth requires the constant enlargement of markets, without which there would be the risk of economic collapse, and in this situation it continues to be the premise of security quite apart from its value in terms of wellbeing, progress and sustainability. To be able to pursue these aims without it will require more than measurements going «beyond Gdp» further than they already do, as an overall reconsideration is necessary that will make it possible to translate increased productivity into shorter working hours rather than greater production, and shift decision-making as to what, how much, for whom, where and how we produce from the market to society.only subscribers can see the full article

The article goes over the main stages and most significant events that accompanied the development of progress indicators from 1930 to 2010 – from the birth of Gdp to the present questioning of it. It describes how the present debate reflects on the timeliness of uniting the traditional indicator of economic growth, the gross domestic product (Gdp), with a series of complementary indicators that could measure the level of wellbeing reached by a society and also guarantee its economic, environmental and social sustainability.only subscribers can see the full article

How adequate Gdp is as a measure of development has always been a matter of debate, but attempts to define a more holistic concept of development have so far failed. As well as considering national and international policy initiatives aimed at defining agreed paradigms of sustainable development, this article offers to identify a series of theoretical and cultural elements on which a measurement of wellbeing compatible with the idea of sustainability can be based. The possibility of translating these elements into a concrete example is demonstrated in the analysis of the Feem Si (Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei Sustainability index), a flexible tool that can simulate the impact of various policies, thus making a new paradigm of sustainable development operative. only subscribers can see the full article

The author considers the limits both internal and external of Gdp and growth as indicators of wellbeing and the state of social health. The increased legitimacy of the arguments developed on this has led to a proliferation of new indicators, above all social ones, and the article gives some examples of them. Particular attention is given to the American and French Iss (Index of social health). As social health should reflect the state of social cohesion in a land, its social capital and its individual and collective capacities to take part in the economic and social project of the country, the French experiment of Iss, basing its legitimacy on an innovative procedure, underlines the desire to tie the question of «indicators» to the democratic process from which they may emerge. only subscribers can see the full article

The measurement of wellbeing has become one of the challenges that national statistics institutes are called on to face. To do that, there are at least two big challenges. First, statistical production needs to be able to cover all the significant dimensions of progress. Secondly, the selection of key indicators needs to derive from a democratic process that guarantees the legitimacy of the tool. The statistical production of Istat (Italian national institute of statistics) seems able to provide enough solid information to measure economic performance, the different dimensions that make up wellbeing, and environmental sustainability. The definition of the set of indicators to be used to measure progress is assigned to an initiative recently launched by Istat and the Cnel, which aims to include all the most representative stakeholders in a shared deliberation. only subscribers can see the full article

For a long time, the research community has been trying to find indices that can be used as an alternative to the Gdp, which has often been criticized for its incapacity to measure the overall development of a country. A composite indicator, the Human development index (Hdi), has been used as an alternative tool, especially for comparing countries. In addition to the Gdp, the Hdi also takes into consideration health and education, contributing to the growing idea of multidimensional development as something that is not closely related to income. The Hdi has also been disaggregated at regional level in Italy and used to analyse inequalities in health. Other synthetic indices were constructed to explain the well-being of the Italian regions. An area index was also built to measure economic, social, health, and cultural dependence between cities. It is therefore becoming increasingly necessary to find more complex indices that take into consideration all these aspects, to assess the various local realities in order to plan intervention programmes to reduce social inequalities and health.only subscribers can see the full article