UN proposes dashboard to measure progress beyond GDP

A bigger economy can still leave people sicker, less secure and more exposed to climate damage. That is the gap the United Nations is now trying to close with a new dashboard meant to sit beside GDP, not be swallowed by it.

On May 7, the UN Secretary-General’s independent High-Level Expert Group on Beyond GDP released “Counting What Counts: A Compass of Progress for People and Planet,” its final report and the first global blueprint for measuring national progress beyond economic output alone. The framework is meant to be practical and ready for immediate use, with a concise set of indicators covering well-being, inclusion and equity, and sustainability. UN officials say the point is not to abandon GDP, which still matters for measuring output, but to stop treating it as the only number that counts when governments judge how their countries are doing.

The proposed structure is deliberately narrow. The expert group’s framework is built around three pillars and seven domains: education, environmental quality, health, material wellbeing, peace and rights, social cohesion, and subjective wellbeing. The group is considering a dashboard with no more than 20 indicators, and may also attach a composite headline measure. Even so, several questions remain open, including how the new system would align with the 2025 System of National Accounts. The UN says the framework also recognizes cross-country spillovers, meaning decisions in one place can shape well-being in another.

The urgency comes from a long list of pressures that GDP does not capture well. The expert group said the debate has sharpened over the past two decades, after the Great Recession, the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate crisis, biodiversity loss, pollution, widening inequality and rapid technological change. The UN has also argued that GDP can rise while safety or environmental quality deteriorate, and that it misses non-monetary conditions that ordinary people feel directly, from health and education to peace and social cohesion. That warning echoes Simon Kuznets, who helped shape national accounts and cautioned that welfare can scarcely be inferred from national income. It also builds on Amartya Sen’s work on human deprivation and capability.

The political challenge is bigger than the technical one. Member states asked for action in the 2024 Pact for the Future, and the HLEG was appointed in May 2025, but consensus on what should sit in the dashboard, and how much weight it should carry, remains elusive. The World Bank’s 2021 Changing Wealth of Nations report made a similar case from another angle, saying global wealth has grown overall but that in many countries GDP is rising at the expense of total wealth and future prosperity. It warned that countries depleting resources for short-term gains are moving onto unsustainable paths. The UN’s new blueprint may sharpen that warning, but its lasting force will depend on whether governments use it to change spending, regulation and long-term planning, or simply to add one more indicator to a crowded debate.