FREE ESSAY ON MEASURING WELL-BEING

MEASURING WELL-BEING

MEASURING ECONOMIC WELL-BEING
By using Gross Domestic Product as the main indicator of well-being, many important
factors are neglected. As defined in the New Merriam-Webster Dictionary, well-being is
the state of being happy, healthy, or prosperous (1989, p.831). Economically, perhaps the
only relevant state under the definition is prosperity, but in reality happiness and
health have a great impact on well-being, significant enough to be recognized even when
focusing mainly on wealth in numbers. If society hopes to have a more accurate and
complete indication of well-being, globally or nationally, a new system of measurement
must be developed, leaving GDP to its original function of totaling the dollar value of
all domestically-produced goods and services sold over a period of time.
One of the most important factors that is not presently acknowledged when calculating
well-being the affects of pollution and natural resource depletion. The land is the most
basic foundation for virtually every good produced and needless to say, once it has been
stripped of its raw materials, the consequences will resound globally. Damage to our
environment adversely affects each aspect of well-being: health, happiness and
prosperity. We cannot hope to be healthy without clean air and water, nor can we hope to
be prosperous without the materials needed to make goods. And we most certainly cannot
hope to be happy when everything around us is sick, stagnant and useless. Unfortunately,
GDP actually considers the activities which create pollution as gains to well-being. 
Another neglected factor that needs to be recognized when measuring well-being is the
value of tasks performed at home and in the community, in which no money is exchanged but
countless hours are spent organizing and maintaining. Such simple tasks as gardening or
enjoying a block picnic in the neighbourhood park surely add to well-being, as do the
jobs of child-rearing and elder care, in which the lives of others are entrusted to
people who volunteer their time, love and energy for nothing but the gratification of
showing their love and care for another human. A society in which the local park is a
hangout for drug dealers, children run recklessly in the streets with no parental
guidance and our elderly citizens are left to die in their beds, lonely and uncared for,
cannot be in a state of well-being. The activities that make a community safe and
welcoming often do not involve a monetary transaction, and are therefore not reflected in
GDP.
One last example of a factor of well-being that is not currently recorded is the
significance of war and violence. Some of the most prosperous times in history have
occurred during war and destruction, when innocent men and women were killed daily,
children were left orphaned and the earth was scarred by explosions and gunfire. The
equipment, ammunition, artillery and transport needed to fight a war are all incredibly
costly, thus showing a large increase in GDP. How can a society believe this increase to
mean a good state of well-being when war, the ultimate cause of widespread misery and
destruction, is to thank for the economic gain?
As these examples have illustrated, the present technique of measuring well-being by
watching gains and losses in GDP, leaves society with a very deluded view of its true
state. While the number that GDP gives does have weight economically, many other factors
contribute greatly to well-being. Less regard should be given to GDP, and a new method of
measurement should be developed; one that takes into consideration whether the
transactions that GDP records have a positive or negative affect on society's
well-being.