Rethinking GDP so human wellbeing, inclusiveness and sustainability count

GENEVA--Independent experts shine a new light on ways to complement traditional economic measures with metrics that reflect human wellbeing, inclusiveness and sustainability.

Recently at the World Summit for Social Development 2025, the UN secretary-general’s high-level expert group on Beyond GDP shared their first analysis, with the release of their interim report.

The group, mandated by the UN’s landmark Pact for the Future, is tasked with developing recommendations for a set of universally relevant indicators that countries can own and use to guide policy.

UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) serves as co-secretariat to the “Beyond GDP” expert group, alongside other entities including the executive office of the UN Secretary-General, the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs and the UN Development Programme.

A new compass for progress

In its interim report, the High-Level Expert Group (HLEG) argues that gross domestic product remains a useful gauge of economic activity but no longer captures what people experience as real progress in their lives. The experts point to a world shaped by financial crises, the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate and biodiversity emergency, widening inequalities and rapid technological change that is reshaping labor markets. In many countries, they note, public frustration, youth protests and declining trust in institutions are rising even when GDP is growing, which suggests a widening gap between headline numbers and lived reality.

The report recalls that even the pioneers of national income accounting warned that national income does not equal national welfare. A quarter century of debate about the limitations of GDP, and the emergence of alternative indices and wellbeing dashboards, has not been enough to shift the dominant mindset in policy and finance. Member states therefore asked the UN to help create a shared global reference point that can sit alongside GDP rather than replace it.

Three pillars: wellbeing, equity and sustainability

The experts propose an integrated framework with three linked pillars: wellbeing, equity and inclusion, and sustainability. Wellbeing covers not only material living standards but also health, personal safety, freedom, purpose, and the quality of the environment in which people live. Equity and inclusion address how these outcomes are shared, looking at gaps in income, wealth, health, education and political voice, within and between countries and across lines such as gender, ethnicity and migration status. Sustainability focuses on whether today’s choices will allow future generations to enjoy at least the same level of wellbeing, taking into account environmental, social, economic and institutional resilience.

Human rights norms run through the framework. Meeting basic needs, living free from violence, participating as an equal member of society and protecting the rights of future generations are treated as core reference points rather than add-ons.

Seven domains of “measuring what matters”

To make the framework operational, the HLEG identifies seven domains that should anchor a new global dashboard of indicators:

• Material wellbeing: income and consumption, quality of work, time use and access to basic economic security such as housing, the internet and safety nets.
• Health: from maternal and child health to healthy life expectancy and the prevalence of chronic diseases.
• Education: access from early childhood through higher education and the skills needed to participate in work and civic life.
• Environmental quality: clean air and water, low levels of pollution and protection of biodiversity.
• Subjective wellbeing: life satisfaction, sense of meaning and purpose, hope and agency, perceived safety and trust in institutions.
• Social capital: the strength of social connections, sense of belonging and the availability of support from family and friends in times of need.
• Governance: safety and security, the ability to participate in public decisions and the absence of discrimination.

The group stresses that indicators should concentrate on outcomes, for example life expectancy rather than health spending as a share of GDP, and should be disaggregated by gender and other characteristics to reveal horizontal inequalities. They also emphasize the need to capture overlapping deprivations using multidimensional poverty measures.

For indicators to gain traction, the report argues, they must be grounded in clear concepts, use robust and transparent methods, align with existing global frameworks such as the Sustainable Development Goals, and remain simple enough for the public and policymakers to understand.

Rethinking GDP itself

Alongside the broader wellbeing dashboard, the HLEG explores practical ways to adjust GDP so that it better reflects the quality and sustainability of economic activity. The interim report sketches three experimental concepts:

• A “valued GDP” that distinguishes spending on goods and services that people genuinely value from spending that only compensates for harms, such as locks, fences or weapons purchased because of high crime or insecurity.
• An inequality-adjusted “e-GDP”, which scales down average GDP when income is highly concentrated, recognizing that the same average can correspond to very different levels of overall welfare depending on distribution.
• A sustainability-adjusted “s-GDP”, which uses prices that reflect environmental and other externalities so that activities that damage future wellbeing are not treated as unqualified gains.

These adjusted measures are intended to encourage countries to compile and use complementary indices alongside standard GDP when making policy choices.

From metrics to impact

The experts acknowledge that many “Beyond GDP” initiatives have struggled to move from academic debate to routine use in cabinets, parliaments and financial institutions. GDP benefits from being simple, longstanding and embedded in laws, budget rules and global finance. Alternative measures are often fragmented, not comparable across borders and unfamiliar to decision makers.

To overcome this, the HLEG calls for a compelling narrative that links drivers and outcomes of wellbeing in a way that resonates in different cultures, combined with tools that help governments use the new indicators in real decisions. The report highlights examples where wellbeing frameworks are already tied to fiscal and legislative processes, such as New Zealand and Ireland’s wellbeing budgets, Italy’s use of wellbeing indicators in budget planning, Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness and Ecuador’s Buen Vivir and national development plans.

Experience from countries like the Netherlands, Scotland, Canada and Sweden also shows that progress depends on cross-government coordination, regular monitoring and clear accountability. The experts argue that just as decades of investment built statistical capacity around GDP, similar long-term support, including new methods, the use of artificial intelligence and non-traditional data sources, is needed to anchor the Beyond GDP agenda.

Consultation and next steps

The interim report launches a broad online consultation hosted on the group’s website, inviting governments, civil society, academia, youth and other stakeholders to react to the proposed pillars, domains and indicator ideas. Feedback from these discussions will feed into the final recommendations that the expert group plans to present to the UN General Assembly in 2026.

Once that report is delivered, UN member states have agreed to start intergovernmental negotiations on how to embed Beyond GDP metrics in global practice. The goal is a set of indicators that every country can adapt to its own context yet still compare across borders, giving policymakers a new compass that tracks not only how economies grow, but how people and the planet fare in the process.

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