Wasn't sure whether to start a new thread or tack this on to some other partially related one.
http://www.thestar.com/news/article...being-reveals-how-canadians-are-really-faring
Several lines:
The Canadian Index of Wellbeing, a dozen years in the making, is intended to do what standard economic tools such as Gross Domestic Product cannot — namely, to measure not just the economy, but how people and communities, the environment and our democracy are faring.
Roy Romanow, former Saskatchewan premier and chair of the CIW advisory board, told the Star the project puts “scientific underpinning” to a widespread, intuitive sense that though the GDP might rise, circumstances for the majority of Canadians have not been keeping pace.
In fact, the report says that while the GDP increased by 31 per cent from 1994 to 2008, the Canadian Index of Wellbeing rose just 11 per cent. Moreover, the wealthiest 20 per cent of people received the lion's share of that growth, while the gap to the bottom 20 per cent grew even larger.
The discrepancy between GDP and CIW growth “tells us emphatically that we have not been making the right investments in our people and in our communities,” the report says. “And we have not been doing it for a long time. It is time public policy focused more on the quality of our lives.”
http://www.thestar.com/news/article...being-reveals-how-canadians-are-really-faring
Several lines:
The Canadian Index of Wellbeing, a dozen years in the making, is intended to do what standard economic tools such as Gross Domestic Product cannot — namely, to measure not just the economy, but how people and communities, the environment and our democracy are faring.
Roy Romanow, former Saskatchewan premier and chair of the CIW advisory board, told the Star the project puts “scientific underpinning” to a widespread, intuitive sense that though the GDP might rise, circumstances for the majority of Canadians have not been keeping pace.
In fact, the report says that while the GDP increased by 31 per cent from 1994 to 2008, the Canadian Index of Wellbeing rose just 11 per cent. Moreover, the wealthiest 20 per cent of people received the lion's share of that growth, while the gap to the bottom 20 per cent grew even larger.
The discrepancy between GDP and CIW growth “tells us emphatically that we have not been making the right investments in our people and in our communities,” the report says. “And we have not been doing it for a long time. It is time public policy focused more on the quality of our lives.”
