Economic measures of income have ignored large areas of human well-being and are poor measures of well-being in the areas to which they attend. Despite increased recognition of those distortions, ‘GNP per capita continues to be regarded as the quintessential indicator of a country’s living standard’ (Partha Dasgupta). Well-being seems to have intuitive plausibility as a concept, but in practice...

Christine Bertram Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), Kiel, Germany; christine.bertram{at}ifw-kiel.de

EDITORIAL article Front. Ecol. Evol., 17 May 2023Sec. Conservation and Restoration Ecology Volume 11 - 2023 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2023.1174160

Increased wealth and per capita energy use have transformed lives shaped societies, but poverty remains a global challenge. Previous research has shown positive relationships among metrics of health happiness economic indices such as income gross domestic product between human development. To our knowledge, however, no comprehensive assessment examined to what extent may limit national-level tr...