Rethinking Prosperity: Innovative Metrics for Economic Progress

Chosen theme: Innovative Metrics for Economic Progress. Welcome to a refreshing lens on growth, where we measure what truly matters—well-being, inclusion, resilience, and planetary health. Join our community to debate, follow the data, and help shape the next generation of progress indicators.

Why GDP Alone Misses the Story

GDP rises when spending grows, even if communities struggle with burnout, housing costs, or environmental loss. Outcomes-based metrics spotlight what policies actually change in daily life—health, stability, belonging—so leaders can course-correct with clarity and accountability.

Why GDP Alone Misses the Story

In one coastal town, GDP-linked growth coincided with rising rents and longer commutes. Parents gained overtime pay yet lost family time. A balanced dashboard revealed time scarcity, transport stress, and child well-being declines—signals hidden by headline output alone.

Designing a New Dashboard of Progress

Measure well-being, inclusion, sustainability, resilience, and productivity together. Pair subjective life satisfaction with objective indicators like income distribution, carbon intensity, skills formation, and civic trust to build a rounded, decision-ready picture of progress.

Designing a New Dashboard of Progress

Good dashboards choose fewer, sharper indicators. Prioritize metrics with clear policy levers, robust data quality, and frequent updates. If a number cannot guide action or be communicated simply, it risks distracting from what truly moves the needle.

Designing a New Dashboard of Progress

Invite residents, small businesses, and youth councils to co-design metrics. Participation boosts legitimacy and ensures the dashboard reflects real aspirations. Tell us which neighborhood indicators you want added next, and we’ll test them in upcoming releases.

Designing a New Dashboard of Progress

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Green Growth Within Planetary Boundaries

Genuine Progress Indicator

The Genuine Progress Indicator adjusts consumption by pollution, resource depletion, and inequality. It aligns money flows with real welfare, revealing when apparent gains mask costs that future generations eventually pay with interest.

Carbon Productivity and Energy Intensity

Track value created per ton of emissions, and energy used per unit of output. Rising carbon productivity signals innovation and transition readiness. Falling intensity shows efficiency gains that protect both competitiveness and climate.

Circularity and Material Footprint

Measure recycling rates, repair activity, and secondary materials use. A lower material footprint with stable living standards signals decoupling. Community repair cafes and sharing libraries often outperform expectations—tell us where to map them next.

The Digital Economy’s Hidden Capital

Treat high-quality, well-governed datasets as capital. Measure reuse, interoperability, and documented lineage. When teams can confidently combine datasets, innovation cycles shorten, products improve, and the return on past investments compounds meaningfully.

City-Level Dashboards That Change Lives

Fifteen-Minute City Metrics

Measure access to groceries, schools, clinics, and parks within a short walk or ride. When essentials cluster nearby, emissions fall and free time rises, strengthening community bonds and local entrepreneurship simultaneously.

Inclusive Mobility Score

Go beyond average commute times. Track wheelchair accessibility, stroller-friendly routes, safe cycling networks, and nighttime transit reliability. These indicators make mobility equitable, expanding opportunity for workers, students, and caregivers across neighborhoods.

The Library Wi‑Fi Effect

A small town extended library Wi‑Fi into the parking lot. Evening crowds gathered, launching online courses and home businesses. Measuring digital access revealed an unexpected catalyst for entrepreneurship and lifelong learning in underserved areas.

Budgeting and Policy by Outcomes

New Zealand and Wales align spending with well-being priorities. Agencies must show expected outcome gains, not just activities. This approach improves transparency and reduces the temptation to chase short-term, headline-friendly outputs.

Methods, Data, and Trust

Open Data With Privacy by Design

Publish methodologies, version histories, and metadata while safeguarding individuals with robust privacy techniques. Transparency invites collaboration, error-finding, and faster iteration toward indicators that withstand public scrutiny and policymaker pressure.

Causal Evidence and Learning

Pair observational dashboards with randomized trials, quasi-experiments, and natural experiments. Causal insights prevent costly missteps and help scale policies that measurably improve lives, rather than merely correlating with good outcomes.

Feedback Loops That Stick

Set review cadences, sunset stale indicators, and reward teams that refine metrics after community feedback. Durable trust grows when people see honest updates, course corrections, and shared ownership of the progress story.