Sustainable and Inclusive Wellbeing, the road forward

The triple planetary crisis (climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution), the Covid pandemic, financial crises, persisting poverty, social exclusion, increasing inequality, and societal polarisation all clearly demonstrate that GDP is incomplete as a measure of a country’s economic performance and overall progress. In this context, people’s ‘wellbeing’ is gaining political traction as an explicit political objective. To progressively complement the use of GDP with wellbeing indicators in EU policymaking, also in line with the 8th Environmental Action Programme, the 2023 Strategic Foresight Report has announced Commission work on developing Sustainable and Inclusive Wellbeing metrics. Such complementary (especially augmented-GDP-type) metrics would highlight the contributions of environmental, health, or social policies to people’s wellbeing beyond the traditional economic perspective. They would facilitate the communication of political challenges and the options to address them. Finally, they would be instrumental to compare the capacity of the Union to deliver sustainable and inclusive wellbeing, vis-à-vis other geopolitical actors. The work also aims to assemble a consensus-based medium-sized dashboard of around 120 indicators. This concise, balanced and comprehensive list of indicators would contain the most important aspects of a country’s progress. With the additional help of statistical analyses, it would also pave the way for a small headline dashboard, more suitable for broad communication purposes.