Mismeasuring Our Lives: Why GDP Doesn't Add Up

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France asked Nobel Prize-winning economists Joseph E. Stiglitz and Amartya Sen, along with the distinguished French economist Jean-Paul Fitoussi, to establish a commission of experts to study whether Gross Domestic Product (GDP)-the most widely used measure of economic activity-is really a reliable indicator of economic and social progress.

Mismeasuring Our Lives is the result of this major intellectual effort, containing pressing relevance for anyone engaged is assessing how and whether our economy is serving the needs of our society. The authors offer a sweeping assessment of GDP's limitations as a measurement of the well-being of societies and introduce a bold array of new concepts from sustainable measures of economic welfare to evaluations of savings and wealth and a "green GDP." At a time when policy makers worldwide are grappling with unprecedented global financial and environmental issues, Mismeasuring Our Lives is an essential guide to measuring the things that matter most.