Beyond GDP report

For decades, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and its growth have been treated as the closest thing the world has to a measure of progress. Yet GDP growth has coexisted with persistent inequality, environmental degradation, and declining trust in public institutions. GDP is an indispensable measure of economic activity, but it was never designed to capture the full range of outcomes that shape people’s lives. We have come to expect answers from it that it was never designed to give.

This report is a response to that gap. In May 2025, the Secretary-General appointed an independent High-Level Expert Group on Beyond GDP to develop recommendations for a limited set of country-owned, universally applicable indicators of sustainable development that complement and go beyond GDP. This represents the first time the United Nations has developed a proposal of this nature explicitly in response to a request from Member States. The Group’s response draws on decades of research and on national and international efforts to measure progress, including work undertaken in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals, promoting convergence of past and ongoing initiatives. It proposes global norms for measuring progress beyond GDP, and a clear, practical implementation agenda: a conceptual framework, a dashboard of indicators, avenues for future headline indicators, and priorities for statistical development, research, and national uptake.

At the heart of the framework lies the well-being of people and planet under one organizing principle: that progress means equitable, inclusive, and sustainable well-being. It is multidimensional and intergenerational in scope, recognizing that well-being depends on economic, social, institutional, and environmental conditions — and on how sustainable those conditions are over time.

The report proposes a dashboard of 31 indicators structured around four components. The first is foundational principles — peace, human rights, and respect for the planet — captured through a limited set of indicators, complemented by normative commitments and institutional safeguards. The second is current well-being, measured across domains that reflect people’s lived experiences: material conditions and work, health, education, security, subjective well-being, social cohesion, quality of institutions and environmental quality. The third is equity and inclusion, treated as a cross-cutting dimension and assessed through indicators of inequality, poverty, and disparities across population groups — including overlapping deprivations, with space for country-specific dimensions where relevant. The fourth is sustainability and resilience, which connects present outcomes to future well-being through the measurement of key forms of capital: produced, human, social, institutional and natural. Together, these four components map the conditions a society needs not just to function today, but to hold together over time.

The dashboard builds on what already exists: a deliberate choice that lowers the barrier to action. Close to half of its indicators are drawn directly from the SDGs, which means most countries have the data, the systems, and the experience to begin without delay. It goes further, incorporating measures for dimensions of progress — social cohesion, subjective well-being, and institutional quality — that have historically been overlooked or poorly tracked. And because a detailed dashboard is not always the most effective tool for public communication or high-level decision-making, the report also recommends developing a small number of headline indicators that capture where things stand and are accessible to decision-makers and the public alike.

The value of any measurement framework lies entirely in whether and how it is used. The implementation agenda set out in this report — covering statistical development, national adoption, and international coordination — can begin immediately. Over time, it will require sustained investment in statistical systems, improvements in data availability and timeliness, and continued methodological work. And, most importantly, it will require sustained political commitment. The upcoming intergovernmental process will be a decisive opportunity to set global norms and build this commitment.

The report also sets out what each constituency must do to bring this agenda to life. For Governments, the task is manifold. Crucially, establish and regularly publish country-owned progress dashboards grounded in this framework, adapted to national priorities and expanded to reflect additional equity dimensions, and embed them in the core processes of policy, planning, budgeting, and accountability. In addition, strengthen the statistical infrastructure that makes measurement possible, including the legal mandates of National Statistical Offices and the systems that produce timely and disaggregated data, and enable them to rapidly adopt measurement of frontier areas of well-being.

For the UN system and international organizations, the priorities are equally clear. An annual Beyond GDP global progress report, applying the framework to all countries and aligned with SDG reporting, would create the shared baseline that national efforts require. Coordination mechanisms to channel financial and technical support to national implementation would ensure that ambition does not outrun capacity. And the integration of well-being, equity, sustainability, and cross-border spillovers into development cooperation, financing decisions, and country classifications would embed this agenda where decisions are made. Efforts should also be made to advance the design, testing, and roll-out of headline aggregate indicators.

The international statistical community has its own distinct role. Under the UN Statistical Commission, it should maintain and periodically refine the dashboard and develop methodological guidance for each indicator — including guidance specifically calibrated for disaggregation and use in low-capacity settings, where the need is greatest and the tools are thinnest. It should fast-track work on the frontier areas where measurement remains weakest. The community should also collaborate with experts in the field to develop common standards for capital and comprehensive wealth accounting, as well as measures for cross-border spillovers.

Beyond Governments and statistical institutions, this agenda depends on a wider group of actors. Academia and civil society should drive innovation in measurement — including through citizen-generated data — and provide the independent monitoring and analysis of progress, trade-offs, and distributional impacts that official statistics cannot always supply. Alongside the private sector and the media, these groups have a crucial role to play in shaping public discourse and sustaining this agenda.

What we measure shapes what we value. This report does not ask the world to abandon GDP. It asks something more ambitious: to look at the full picture, and to act accordingly.

SOURCE: Executive Summary: https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/executive_summary_-_report_of…
Full report: https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/high-level_expert_group_on_be…