Beyond GDP: How policy based on subjective data can undermine voter trust

If policymakers had paid more attention to household statistics rather than GDP, they would see why many people stopped trusting their governments following the crisis

Gross domestic product's shortcomings as a measure of well-being have been obvious for decades. Robert F. Kennedy observed in 1968 that it “measures everything except that which makes life worthwhile.” But well-meaning attempts to create a better way to measure progress threaten to make policymaking more subjective and more controversial.

Last week, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development published a report based on the work of a commission headed by Nobel prizewinning economist Joseph Stiglitz, his French colleague Jean-Paul Fitoussi and OECD Chief Statistician Martine Durand.

The group was meant to create a dashboard of indicators that go beyond GDP and