Well-being and social welfare is more than just GDP

Bloomberg: "Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize- winning economist, urged world leaders to drop an obsession with examining gross domestic product and focus more on broader measures of prosperity.

“GDP has increasingly become used as a measure of societal well-being and changes in the structure of the economy and our society have made it increasingly poor one,” Stiglitz said in an interview today in Paris".

The remarks reflect Stiglitz’s study of the issue for French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who commissioned a report at the beginning of 2008 after the onset of the financial crisis. Stiglitz and other contributors to the report will present their results tomorrow in Paris at a daylong conference hosted by Sarkozy and attended by Finance Minister Christine Lagarde.

Check out the full report here