The need to follow up on the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Commission

This chapter looks at work carried out since the 2009 Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Commission on going “Beyond GDP”. It argues that the 169 targets agreed by the international community on the Sustainable Development Goals are too many, and that countries have to select a set that corresponds to their priorities. It shows that growing inequality in income and wealth are global concerns and that, even in developed countries, data are often inadequate. It warns against over-reliance on broad averages, since these fail to reflect important inequalities across given groups (“horizontal inequalities”) and say nothing about how resources are shared and managed within households. The chapter argues that what matters are not just inequalities in outcomes but inequalities in people’s opportunity to achieve those outcomes, and that measuring this is possible. Other areas where more work is needed include subjective well-being and economic insecurity, which interact with social capital and trust, as well as sustainability across its social, economic and environmental dimensions.