IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fce/doctra/1119.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

On the measurement of social progress and well being: some further thoughts

Author

Listed:

Abstract

Two years after the delivery of the report on The Measurement of Economic Performances and Social Progress (Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi),this paper provides some further reflections on the subject. Since 2008, when the work of the Commission began, the world has experienced several dramatic events which all call into question our measurement systems and the policies which were grounded on them: the financial crisis of 2007-2008, the grave events in Japan, the Sovereign debt crisis, and the revolutions in the Arabic world. In particular, the Japanese earthquake and its aftermath underlines three central shortcomings of our metrics: the measurement of the economic product,the measurement of well being, and the measurement of sustainability. For economists, these concerns are especially important, because we often rely on statistical (econometric analyses) to make inferences about what are good policies. Those inferences are only as reliable as the metrics that they are based on. Our statistical systems should tell us whether or not what we are doing is sustainable, economically, environmentally, politically, or socially and whether proposed policies will in fact enhance well-being . There would be little sense in pursuing policies aimed at increasing some widely used metric like GDP ifsuch policies lead to a decrease in well being.

Suggested Citation

  • Jean Paul Fitoussi & Joseph Stiglitz, 2011. "On the measurement of social progress and well being: some further thoughts," Documents de Travail de l'OFCE 2011-19, Observatoire Francais des Conjonctures Economiques (OFCE).
    • Handle: RePEc:fce:doctra:1119
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ofce.sciences-po.fr/pdf/dtravail/WP2011-19.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andrei Bougrov & Robert Johnson & Benno Ndulo & Pedro Paez & Avinash Persaud & Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul & Akhtar Aziz Zeti & Charles Goodhart & Jomo Kwame Sundaram & Youssef Boutros-Ghali & José Anto, 2010. "The Stiglitz Report," Working Papers hal-03415638, HAL.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Francesco Sarracino & Luca Fumarco, 2020. "Assessing the Non-financial Outcomes of Social Enterprises in Luxembourg," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 165(3), pages 425-451, September.
    2. Sarracino, Francesco & Gosset, Andrea, 2015. "The non-economic outcomes of social entrepreneurship in Luxembourg," MPRA Paper 69347, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Montero, Rodrigo & Miranda, Álvaro, 2020. "The determinants of life satisfaction among Chilean workers," Revista CEPAL, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), August.
    4. Eduardo González & Ana Cárcaba & Juan Ventura, 2018. "Weight Constrained DEA Measurement of the Quality of Life in Spanish Municipalities in 2011," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 136(3), pages 1157-1182, April.
    5. Ana Cárcaba & Eduardo González & Juan Ventura, 2017. "Social Progress in Spanish Municipalities (2001–2011)," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 12(4), pages 997-1019, December.
    6. Yue Qian & Wen Fan, 2019. "Men and Women at Work: Occupational Gender Composition and Affective Well-Being in the United States," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 20(7), pages 2077-2099, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. John Gibson, 2016. "Poverty Measurement: We Know Less than Policy Makers Realize," Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 3(3), pages 430-442, September.
    2. Simone Schneider, 2012. "Income Inequality and its Consequences for Life Satisfaction: What Role do Social Cognitions Play?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 106(3), pages 419-438, May.
    3. Joanna Godlewska & Edyta Sidorczuk-Pietraszko, 2019. "Taxonomic Assessment of Transition to the Green Economy in Polish Regions," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(18), pages 1-25, September.
    4. Mohaddes, M. & Nugent, J. & Selim, H., 2018. "Reforming Fiscal Institutions in Resource-Rich Arab Economies: Policy Proposals," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1848, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    5. Pak, Tae-Young, 2020. "Social protection for happiness? The impact of social pension reform on subjective well-being of the Korean elderly," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 42(2), pages 349-366.
    6. Giorgio Calcagnini & Francesco Perugini, 2019. "A Well-Being Indicator for the Italian Provinces," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 142(1), pages 149-177, February.
    7. Sinha, Kompal & Davillas, Apostolos & Jones, Andrew M. & Sharma, Anurag, 2021. "Do socioeconomic health gradients persist over time and beyond income? A distributional analysis using UK biomarker data," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 43(C).
    8. Daniele Girardi & Antonio Mura, 2014. "The Construction-Development Curve: Evidence from a New International Dataset," The IUP Journal of Applied Economics, IUP Publications, vol. 0(3), pages 7-26, July.
    9. Shaker A. Zahra & Lance R. Newey & Yong Li, 2014. "On the Frontiers: The Implications of Social Entrepreneurship for International Entrepreneurship," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 38(1), pages 137-158, January.
    10. George Ward, 2015. "Is Happiness a Predictor of Election Results?," CEP Discussion Papers dp1343, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    11. Vanessa Sha Fan & Renuka Mahadevan, 2019. "The Role of Social Capital and Remote Chinese Villagers’ Well-Being," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 143(3), pages 1109-1128, June.
    12. Frederick Bird, 2016. "The Practice of Mining and Inclusive Wealth Development in Developing Countries," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 135(4), pages 631-643, June.
    13. Lieze Sohier, 2019. "Do Involuntary Longer Working Careers Reduce Well-being?," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 14(1), pages 171-196, March.
    14. Benjamin Schalembier, 2016. "The Impact of Exposure to Other Countries on Life Satisfaction: An International Application of the Relative Income Hypothesis," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 128(1), pages 221-239, August.
    15. Alison Fairbrass & Georgina Mace & Paul Ekins & Ben Milligan, 2020. "The Natural Capital Indicator Framework (NCIF): A framework of indicators for national natural capital reporting," Papers 2005.08568, arXiv.org.
    16. Butticè, Vincenzo & Colombo, Massimo G. & Fumagalli, Elena & Orsenigo, Carlotta, 2019. "Green oriented crowdfunding campaigns: Their characteristics and diffusion in different institutional settings," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 141(C), pages 85-97.
    17. Andy Sumner & Richard Mallett, 2013. "Capturing Multidimensionality: What does a Human Wellbeing Conceptual Framework Add to the Analysis of Vulnerability?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 113(2), pages 671-690, September.
    18. Hudomiet, Péter & Hurd, Michael D. & Rohwedder, Susann, 2021. "The age profile of life satisfaction after age 65 in the U.S," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 189(C), pages 431-442.
    19. Ludovico Carrino, 2016. "Data Versus Survey-based Normalisation in a Multidimensional Analysis of Social Inclusion," Italian Economic Journal: A Continuation of Rivista Italiana degli Economisti and Giornale degli Economisti, Springer;Società Italiana degli Economisti (Italian Economic Association), vol. 2(3), pages 305-345, November.
    20. Lisa Prosser & Scott Grosse & Eve Wittenberg, 2012. "Health Utility Elicitation," PharmacoEconomics, Springer, vol. 30(2), pages 83-86, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    1- Economic indicators 2- Gross Domestic Products 3-Social indicators 4- Well being 5- Sustainability;

    JEL classification:

    • E01 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General - - - Measurement and Data on National Income and Product Accounts and Wealth; Environmental Accounts
    • E30 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
    • G10 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
    • Q50 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - General
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fce:doctra:1119. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Francesco Saraceno (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ofcspfr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.