It's conventional wisdom that growth is good - and necessary, even, to keep society on an even keel. To that end, economists, politicians and a lot of other folk track "gross domestic product" as the indicator of how much - or even whether, in hard times like these - the economy is growing.
GDP is viewed by many, in fact, as a surrogate for quality of life. But there are those who challenge that well-established notion, arguing that a truer measure of well-being should take into account environmental and social factors, such as pollution, crime, climate change and long commutes.
As my colleague Jamie Smith Hopkins reported Sunday in The Baltimore Sun, alternative indices have been developed attempting to look beyond the amount of goods and services produced, which is basically what GDP measures.
Here in Maryland, the stat-happy O'Malley administration has developed its own yardstick, a state-specific "genuine progress indicator," which administration officials argue offers a truer measure of prosperity. It's a blend of 26 sets of statistics covering economic, social and natural factors — "from the costs of crime to the costs of ozone depletion," as the announcement of its debut described it.
The GPI, as it's known, tends to show that Marylanders over the past three decades or so have not been nearly as well off as they might've thought if only looking at the "gross state product," a localized GDP measuring goods and services produced within the state. While purely economic data have trended up nicely, social factors have remained static and environmental measures have tended downward since the '60s.
What do you think? Do the length of your commute, the crime rate in your neighborhoods and the health of the Chesapeake Bay affect how you feel about yourself and our state? Or is the amount of cash in your wallet the only real measure of how happy you are? For more about the genuine progress index and how it's compiled, go here.