We must address the population’s well-being when we analyze a country’s development, not only ensure the financial. It think New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, which introduces a new way to measure the country’s prosperity.
Read more: New Zealand scraps of GDP – is investing in the well–being budget
From this year on, the New Zealand government to introduce a ”welfare budget” to measure what effect the long-term political decisions have on people’s lives.
and interesting to try and look at it in the slightly longer term. It is the political cyklernas problems that you want to be re-elected after four years and then there is no logic in that see twenty years into the future, ” says Ola Olsson is professor in economics at the school of Economics at Gothenburg university.
Thomas Sterner is professor of environmental economics at the university. Although he is sympathetic to the initiative of the young prime minister, with a proviso.
– It is needed and it is important. These measurements would be both more interesting and more important to measure than economic growth. The only problem is that it is very difficult to measure. It is unlikely to be successful especially good.
to measure net rather than gross.
” You have to take into account wear and tear and it makes you not even for the machines because you don’t know exactly. And when it comes to the wear and tear of the people, that is to say, mental health and such things as the environment, so we know even less about it.
The classic way to measure a country’s development is to look at the growth in the GDP, thus the goods and services produced. But it has been suggested that the welfare measurement because it takes into account only economic growth. The economists DN talked with think that GDP sometimes överanvänds.
– the GDP is only one measure of economic activity. The easiest way to measure development, that is why it is used so much. It is a good measure of short-term fluctuations in the economy and that sort of thing, but not a good measure of long-term prosperity, ” says Thomas Sterner, who is echoed.
– There is probably no one who argues that GDP is a good measure of development or welfare, it is not a good measure. But it is not either or, but all the dimensions needed. GDP performs its function, ” says Runar Brännlund, professor in economics at Umeå university.
the three economists that DN has talked with that the discussion about alternative welfare indicators is not new in itself.
– New Zealand’s solution seems similar to what we refer to as genuine savings or genuine investment where you look at how all capital stocks in a society change so that natural capital, human capital and social capital, ” says Runar Brännlund.
In Sweden, the government then in 2014 from ”New measure of wealth” which, among other things, takes into account the perceived physical and mental health of the population. The framework, which contains fifteen indicators for economic, environmental and social aspects of quality of life, is meant to complement the GDP measure.