Measuring Well-Being Essay, Research Paper
MEASURING ECONOMIC Wellbeing
By utilizing Gross Domestic Product as the chief index of wellbeing, many of import factors are neglected. As defined in the New Merriam-Webster Dictionary, wellbeing is the province of being happy, healthy, or comfortable ( 1989, p.831 ) . Economically, possibly the lone relevant province under the definition is prosperity, but in world felicity and wellness have a great impact on wellbeing, important adequate to be recognized even when concentrating chiefly on wealth in Numberss. If society hopes to hold a more accurate and complete indicant of wellbeing, globally or nationally, a new system of measuring must be developed, go forthing GDP to its original map of numbering the dollar value of all domestically-produced goods and services sold over a period of clip.
One of the most of import factors that is non soon acknowledged when ciphering well-being the affects of pollution and natural resource depletion. The land is the most basic foundation for virtually every good produced and gratuitous to state, one time it has been stripped of its natural stuffs, the effects will echo globally. Damage to our environment adversely affects each facet of wellbeing: wellness, felicity and prosperity. We can non trust to be healthy without clean air and H2O, nor can we trust to be comfortable without the stuffs needed to do goods. And we most surely can non trust to be happy when everything around us is ill, dead and useless. Unfortunately, GDP really considers the activities which create pollution as additions to wellbeing.
Another ignored factor that needs to be recognized when mensurating wellbeing is the value of undertakings performed at place and in the community, in which no money is exchanged but infinite hours are spent forming and keeping. Such Si
mple undertakings as horticulture or basking a block field day in the vicinity park certainly add to well-being, as do the occupations of child-rearing and senior attention, in which the lives of others are entrusted to people who volunteer their clip, love and energy for nil but the satisfaction of demoing their love and attention for another homo. A society in which the local park is a haunt for drug traders, kids run recklessly in the streets with no parental counsel and our aged citizens are left to decease in their beds, lonely and uncared for, can non be in a province of wellbeing. The activities that make a community safe and welcoming frequently do non affect a pecuniary dealing, and are hence non reflected in GDP.
One last illustration of a factor of wellbeing that is non presently recorded is the significance of war and force. Some of the most comfortable times in history have occurred during war and devastation, when guiltless work forces and adult females were killed daily, kids were left orphaned and the Earth was scarred by detonations and gunshot. The equipment, ammo, heavy weapon and conveyance needed to contend a war are all improbably dearly-won, therefore demoing a big addition in GDP. How can a society believe this addition to intend a good province of wellbeing when war, the ultimate cause of widespread wretchedness and devastation, is to thank for the economic addition?
As these illustrations have illustrated, the present technique of mensurating well-being by watching additions and losingss in GDP, leaves society with a really deluded position of its true province. While the figure that GDP gives does hold weight economically, many other factors contribute greatly to wellbeing. Less respect should be given to GDP, and a new method of measuring should be developed ; one that takes into consideration whether the minutess that GDP records have a positive or negative affect on society? s wellbeing.
