ABSTRACT
The human desire to know where one stands at a collective level has resulted in the development of, among others, (1) Gross Domestic Product (GDP), conceived in the United States in the 1930s; (2) Human Development Index (HDI), developed by the United Nations in the 1950s; and (3) Human Happiness Index, developed by Bhutan in early 1970s and being improvised upon in the United Kingdom. GDP is the measure of the market value of all the goods and services produced in the economy. The UN HDI includes GDP but adds other essentially non-financial criteria like literacy, political freedom etc. The suggestion assumes greater significance when account is taken of the fact that it emanated from a panel of top economists, chaired by two Nobel Laureate economists, Joseph E. Stiglitz and Amartya Sen, constituted by France to review the adequacy of the current standard of fiscal well-being: GDP.
