Building consensus on societal wellbeing: a semantic synthesis of indicators to move beyond GDP

To achieve sustainable wellbeing for both humanity and the rest of nature, we must shift from a narrow focus on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to a broader understanding and measurement of sustainable wellbeing and prosperity within the planetary boundaries. Several hundred alternative indicators have been proposed to replace GDP, but their variety and lack of consensus have allowed GDP to retain its privileged status. What is needed now is broad agreement on shifting beyond GDP. We conducted a systematic literature review of existing alternative indicators and identified over 200 across multiple spatial scales. Using these indicators, we built a database to compare their similarities and differences. While the terminology for describing the components of wellbeing varied greatly, there was a surprising degree of agreement on the core concepts and elements. We applied semantic modelling to estimate the degree of similarity among the indicators’ components and identified those that represented a broad synthesis. Results show that indicators with around 20 components capture a large share of the overall similarity across the indicators in the dataset. Beyond 20 components, adding additional components yielded diminishing returns in similarity. Based on this, we created a 20-component indicator to serve as a model for building consensus and mapped its relationship to several well-known alternative indicators. We aim for this database and synthesis to support broad stakeholder engagement toward the consensus we need to move beyond GDP.