“Who decides what counts?”
That is what politician-turned-academic Marilyn Waring asked in her groundbreaking 1988 book on feminist economics If Women Counted. She was highlighting the invisibility of women in Gross Domestic Product (GDP); how the System of National Accounts that GDP is built on was designed exclusively by men.
But, as we have highlighted in other blogs and reports, it’s not just women who were absent from the design of GDP. It was citizens in general. The indicator that has come to define societal success and the good life over the last 80 years was ultimately chosen by a small set of economists in a smoky room in New Hampshire.
On the 18th of May, a randomly selected panel of 33 residents from the town of Kerava in Finland put forward a new set of indicators to define the good life for their town. This was the culmination of a process which began last month, during which the residents discussed what it means to have a good life, what are the key dimensions and, ultimately, how it could be measured with just five indicators. Local politicians attended the final presentation of the recommendations. Kerava Council, who we at Hot or Cool have worked with closely throughout the process, have committed to take the indicators on board for monitoring their wellbeing strategy, and to embark on new data collection where necessary.
So here’s what the panel members chose:
- Feelings of safety
- Loneliness
- Volunteering
- Youth wellbeing
- Local Biodiversity (tree canopy coverage)
The members of the panel were mostly happy with the final selection and were pleasantly surprised by the similarities of views that people held. As one member put it:
“It was nice to notice that even in such large group, people ultimately had a similar way of thinking”
The process revealed not only what residents value, but also how strongly people felt about being included in decisions around measuring wellbeing and good life. As one participant reflected:
“Being involved in something like this is exactly the kind of influence people should have more of – real grassroot influence reaching higher levels”
Importantly, participants did not see this as a purely symbolic exercise. They wanted the indicators to lead to policy:
“What’s important is that they take the results seriously. I’d really like to see concrete results and know what the city actually does with this.”
This is the first time a deliberative mini-public has been conducted on the question of how to move Beyond GDP. We tried to keep things simple. For example we didn’t explicitly address issues of sustainability, which we believe need to be central to our assessment of how society is faring. And we encouraged members to choose indicators which either already exist or could be easily collected by the town itself.
We believe that this project represents a blueprint for how other towns, cities and indeed countries could truly move Beyond GDP. In this case we started with a blank slate. But in other contexts, Residents’ Panels or Citizens’ Assemblies could be asked to select indicators from existing expert-led dashboards, such as the European Commission’s Sustainable and Inclusive Wellbeing Dashboard, or the indicators proposed by the UN High Level Expert Group on Beyond GDP. The key aims there would be to centre a small number of headline indicators that shape political debate, and to ensure that those indicators have democratic legitimacy.
We’ll be publishing a summary report of the methods and results from Kerava in due course. If you would like to be involved in democratising the “Beyond GDP” agenda, then get in touch!
