Back in April, I reviewed the book Measuring What Counts, by Joseph Stiglitz, Jean-Paul Fitoussi, and Martine Durand, which summarised the work of the High-Level Expert Group (HLEG) on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, established by the OECD in 2013. I made the point that the summary "lacks some of the detail necessary to fully understand some of the points that were made", and noted that there was a companion volume, For Good Measure.
I have now read that book, edited by Joseph Stiglitz, with Amartya Sen and Jean-Paul Fitoussi, and with contributions from members of the HLEG. Indeed, it does contain much of the detail that the summary lacks, but is a bit uneven in what it offers. For example, the chapter by Francois Bourguignon on inequality of opportunity includes a good framework for understanding the different between inequality of opportunity and inequality of outcomes, and how they are interrelated. However, much of the chapter is quite mathematical, and the general reader may be left quite confused. In contrast, I thought I wouldn't get much out of the chapter on measuring sustainability (by Marleen De Smedt, Enrico Gionvannini, and Walter Radermacher), but it turned out to be a highlight of the book. In particular, the discussion of the differences between absorptive capacity, adaptive capacity, and transformative capacity, was quite illuminating.
Other chapters that I found interesting included the chapter on subjective wellbeing (by Arthur Stone and the late Alan Krueger, who passed away before the book was published), and the chapter on trust and social capital (by Yann Algan). The former chapter has an excellent discussion of the challenges and concerns with subjective wellbeing, and future directions for measurement and improvement. The chapter on economic security (by Jacob Hacker) included some data on New Zealand that I found interesting - that 'economic vulnerability' is relatively high (measured as the proportion of the population who are not 'income poor', but have equivalised wealth below 25 percent of the income poverty line - that is, they have less than a three-month buffer of wealth), but income poverty is relatively low (measured as the proportion of people with equivalised income below 50% of the median income). With that in mind, we could definitely do with better understanding of economic insecurity in New Zealand, and perhaps policy settings that are more attuned to reducing insecurity. I wish that Hacker's chapter had been available when I had a PhD student looking at economic insecurity in Timor Leste some years ago, as it would have helped to better frame his work.
A lot of the book is devoted to inequality, and I found those chapters not to contribute much. Readers who are less aware of the current state of the literature and measurement of inequality will no doubt find those chapters much more rewarding than I did. We also didn't get an answer to the question of how many indicators are too many for a dashboard, which was an outstanding issue from my review of the summary book. This book provided less of a general critique of GDP than the summary book, except in the first chapter, and that reflects the difference in audience for this more technical book. I think that made for a better product overall. The only thing the book really lacked was a concluding chapter to bring it all together. However, I guess in some way the summary book fulfils that role.
Despite those minor gripes, this is a good book for those who want to go a little bit deeper into the research that underlies the HLEG work as outlined in the summary book. And going even further in particular areas can easily be achieved by following through to the well-referenced material in this book.
Despite the subtitle of this book, it does not really provide "an agenda for moving beyond GDP". It would be more accurate to label it an agenda for improving the measurement of wellbeing generally. Maybe I'm being unfair - being better able to measure wellbeing might help us to move beyond a singular focus on GDP. If you're wanting to understand how we might do that, then I strongly recommend this book as a good source for you.
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