Growth at any cost leaves us all poorer.
António Guterres, Secretary-General of the UN

A report commissioned by the UN proposes 31 new indicators to “complement and go beyond” gross domestic product (GDP) as the world’s main measure of economic growth. They include:

• Economic metrics such as household disposable income per person
• Environmental data such as a country’s greenhouse gas emissions and levels of particulate matter in the air
• Health and education indicators such as life expectancy and children’s performance in reading and maths
• Measures of wellbeing such as the proportion of women and girls subjected to violence.

Beyond GDP | UN
Alternatives to the world’s favourite measure of economic health | Marina Lenharo in Nature, 8 May 2026 (paywall)
Science can take the lead in making better measures of economic growth | Nature editorial, 12 May 2026

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Originally posted in Second Nature 062 (May 2026). Category economics tags GDP.
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