A prosperous nation: SDC e-bulletin
Britain is booming, but have we found happiness?
SDC Commissioner Professor Tim Jackson leads our policy advice to Government on what 'prosperity' means and how we should measure it.
By conventional measures, Britain is booming. Many of today's young people have more money in their pockets than their grandparents ever dreamed of. Employment is high, leisure spending has soared, foreign holidays are commonplace. But is our surfeit of material wealth marred by a deficit of happiness? What does it mean to be a 'prosperous nation'? And how should we achieve and maintain a good quality of life?
The Sustainable Development Commission has launched a consultative dialogue to address these questions and with your help we are aiming to offer guidance to Government on working towards a genuine and lasting prosperity for our children.
 | Photo credit: Project for Public Spaces |
Measuring prosperity
Four years ago, the Government’s Sustainable Development Strategy proposed that quality of life could be pursued through four simultaneous objectives:
- social progress which recognises the needs of everyone;
- effective protection of the environment;
- prudent use of natural resources; and
- maintenance of high and stable levels of economic growth and employment.
Without a doubt, this strategy represents a profound departure from conventional thinking. For most of the last fifty years, the quality of life has been more or less equated with the 4th objective, the ‘prosperity objective’: growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The pursuit of GDP has become a core policy objective for almost every nation in the world. Rising GDP traditionally symbolises a thriving economy, more spending power, richer and fuller lives, increased family security, greater choice, and more public spending. Since the UK national income has more than tripled since 1950, this view suggests that we have been doing rather well in terms of prosperity.
"GDP takes no account of how incomes are distributed, of the increasing gap between the rich and the poor, of rising crime levels, of burgeoning debt, of falling social investment"
The life-satisfaction paradox
But the simplistic equation of quality of life with economic growth really doesn’t stack up. For a start, it cannot explain why reported life-satisfaction (see Figure) in the UK has remained resolutely flat in the last thirty years, in spite of increased spending power. What is more, GDP takes no account of how incomes are distributed, of the increasing gap between the rich and the poor, of rising crime levels, of burgeoning debt, of falling social investment. It fails to note the ever-present toll of mundane environmental damage, and pays no attention to the potentially devastating future costs of climate change. 'It is indifferent,' in the words of former US attorney general Robert Kennedy, 'to the decency of our factories and the safety of streets alike… It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.'
 | A graph of life satisfaction in the UK |
In other words, economic growth per se is a poor indicator of the quality of lives now, and an even poorer indicator of quality of life in the future. Worse still, there are disturbing signs that continually rising GDP is structurally reliant on high levels of consumer debt, widening inequality, declining social investment and a rising public sector deficit. It appears to demand increasing material throughput, ever higher volumes of waste, and the continuing depletion of resources. In its current form, it seems to be incompatible with key environmental goals, including the urgent need to combat climate change.
 | Never had it so good? |
Redefining prosperity
Is it then appropriate to include economic growth (as it is currently defined and used) as one of the sustainable development objectives? Is the narrow view of prosperity encoded in the 4th objective a legitimate part of the vision for sustainable development? Or should the prosperity objective be redefined? Would it be possible to enhance the formulation of this key objective to reflect a more sophisticated, more accurate and more coherent concept of prosperity?
"We do not believe that growth per se is a legitimate end in itself. At best, it is a means to an end"
The Sustainable Development Commission believes that it would. We accept that there are some very good reasons for taking economic growth seriously. High and stable levels of satisfying employment are certainly a fundamental goal for a sustainable society. And the way the economy is structured at the moment, this goal is closely linked to GDP growth. Public spending also relies on a healthy economy. But we do not believe that growth per se is a legitimate end in itself. At best, it is a means to an end. And it can only serve that end if it does not conflict with the other key objectives: social progress, environmental protection and the prudent use of resources.
What are the options?
In the light of these arguments, sustainable development appears to be squeezed between a rock and the proverbial hard place. On the one hand, the 4th objective risks being construed as inconsistent with the other objectives. On the other, doing away with growth does not appear to be an option. Far from regarding this apparent impasse as a threat, however, SDC believes it offers us a vital opportunity to open up a public debate about the true meaning of prosperity and how to achieve it.
 | Cathedral of consumerism |
Clearly, this process is going to have to confront head-on the structural reliance of modern society on economic growth. And here we are faced with two possibilities. The first is that it is possible to devise a type of growth that does not conflict with the other sustainable development objectives. That is, the way out of the impasse is to develop a concept of prosperity that is couched in terms of ‘good’ growth – growth that is consistent with social progress and does not breach environmental goals. The second, much more uncomfortable possibility is that this kind of growth is just not feasible.
The truth is that, at this point in time, we simply do not know for sure which of these two situations we are faced with. One thing is clear however. The optimistic scenario – the potential to distinguish between ‘good’ growth and ‘bad’ growth and to steer the economy towards the former and away from the latter – is unlikely to materialise unless it is clearly signalled in policy objectives, unless trade-offs between objectives are explicitly recognised, and unless potential conflicts are confronted and explored in public debate.
Could 'growth' be replaced by 'prosperity' or 'development'? Should we qualify the kind of growth we want to see?
A broader debate
These are some of the reasons why the Commission is launching its own consultative dialogue – as a key input to the Government’s Sustainable Development Strategy review – on the specific wording of the 4th objective. How could the prosperity objective be improved? How would you rewrite it? Would you tease apart employment from growth? Could 'growth' be replaced by ‘prosperity’ or ‘development’? Should we qualify the kind of growth we want to see? This is a unique opportunity to contribute to a very focused effort to improve our vision for sustainable development and provide a more robust set of guiding objectives.
At one level, this process is just about getting a more consistent and coherent set of objectives for sustainable development. At another level, the process is the start of a bigger and more important debate about what prosperity means, both now and for generations to come. We are enlisting your help to make this happen.
Read our landmark publication: » Redefining Prosperity
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