A richer way of measuring wealth: new well-being index would complement traditional gross domestic product (Toronto Star)

By Stuart Laidaw, Toronto Star

[...] the Ice Storm of 1998 is the biggest single event in Canadian history to boost the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a simple totalling of all goods and services in the economy that is the most-used measure of the economy.

It's this irony – that rebuilding in the wake of devastation is good for the economy – that is in large part fuelling an ambitious attempt to produce an alternative to the GDP, one that balances economic growth against a much larger and more comprehensive set of numbers to tell us if we are truly better off. It's called the Canadian Index of Wellbeing...

Read the full article at The Star website.