New Indicators and Measurement Methods for Welfare in the Global Economy Era

Abstract

This study discusses the inadequacy of GDP alone as a measure of welfare in the global economic age and examines alternative welfare indicators and measurement methods. This study, which discusses the human development index (HDI), the inequality adjusted human development index (I-HDI), the gender inequality index (GII), the multidimensional poverty index (MPI), the social progress index (SPI), the happy planet index (HPI), the better life index (BLI), the Legatum prosperity index(LPI), the human capital index (HCI), and the ecological footprint (EF) methods, shares the country rankings of these methods and reveals the differences in the results depending on the method. It also draws attention to the differences between the economic size and welfare level by sharing the rankings of the world's 10 largest economies in alternative methods. In addition, the study examines the obstacles to the inability to establish a complete, precise, and generally accepted method of measuring welfare.