See the link below for information on the Centre for the Study of Living Standards' Index of Economic Well-Being (thanks Tracey Lauriault!)
Introductory text:
Has economic well-being increased or decreased in recent years, and is it higher or lower in one country compared to others? Traditionally these questions have been answered by looking at trends in and comparisons of GDP per capita, but this is a poor measure of economic well-being. It measures consumption incompletely, ignoring the value of leisure and longer life spans, and it also ignores the value of accumulation for future generations. Furthermore, since it is an average, GDP per capita gives no indication of the likelihood that an individual will share in prosperity nor of the degree of anxiety with which individuals contemplate their futures.
In 1998 the Centre for the Study of Living Standards developed the Index of Economic Well-being, based on a paper written by Lars Osberg for the MacDonald Commission entitled The Measurement of Economic Welfare. It comprises the following four domains of economic well-being:
- Effective per capita consumption flows, including consumption of marketed goods and services; government services; effective per-capita flows of household production; leisure; and changes in life span.
- Net societal accumulation of stocks of productive resources, including net accumulation of tangible capital; housing stocks; net changes in the value of natural resources stocks; environmental costs; net changes in the level of foreign indebtedness; accumulation of human capital; and the stock of R&D investment.
- Income distribution, including the intensity of poverty (incidence and depth) and the inequality of income.
- Economic security from job loss and unemployment, illness, family breakup, and poverty in old age.
continue reading on the Centre for the Study of Living Standards' web site.