Event:GDP and Happiness

From Wikiprogress.org

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was developed in the 1930s to help measure economic output and it is certainly one of the most useful economic statistics. However, the financial crisis and global warming have undermined confidence in our traditional ways of looking at wealth because they do not take speculative risk, social disparities and environmental costs into consideration. A number of alternative instruments and indexes have been developed that strive to take a more comprehensive perspective and to measure people’s well-being, environmental sustainability of our planet or even human happiness.

The Centre for European Studies (CES), the political foundation of the European People’s Party (EPP), and the Bertelsmann Stiftung have the pleasure of inviting you to an evening debate dealing with the pros and cons of these different measurement approaches. Our discussion will focus on the following questions:

• Does GDP measure happiness or do we need more comprehensive sets of indicators to measure happiness instead of GDP?
• Are there any viable definitions of well-being and happiness that allow for a solid measurement beyond GDP? Are rich countries happy countries?
• To what extent is the current criticism on GDP instrumentalized as means of political dispute?

See official site here