New Zealand: Measuring What Matters

In the spring of 2019, Grant Robertson, New Zealand’s finance minister, was in the process of developing New Zealand’s first-ever Wellbeing Budget. The prime minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, had spoken publicly about her vision to rethink how the government identified and set its priorities. Ardern was poised to push against a decades-old practice of using a country’s gross domestic product (GDP) as a proxy for the well-being of its citizens. Consequently, Robertson was tasked with developing a new budget that addressed growing concerns about the need for more holistic well-being metrics. What nuances of life in the modern world did GDP miss? What would it mean for New Zealand to place less emphasis on GDP when making policy decisions? What should be measured and included in the Wellbeing Budget in place of GDP?