WISER: Well-being in a Sustainable Economy Revisited

The focus on economic growth as an instrument to lead societies towards sustainable high well-being is increasingly problematic. While Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth is slowing down, its environmental and social costs are increasing, such that continued reliance on GDP growth entails a trade-off between the well-being of current versus future generations. In addition, research shows that higher GDP generally hardly improves people’s subjective well-being. To better support policy options, our project aims to develop a new economic development framework that provides evidence-based and theoretically-sound policy insights on how to raise well-being of present generations (leaving no one behind) without sacrificing future well-being. We will identify how GDP growth and productivity growth can be promoted and invested in well-being, focusing on relationships that reconcile economic growth and sustainable high well-being while leaving no person and place behind. We will analyze how these relationships work at different subgroup levels, by explicitly considering gender perspectives and disadvantaged groups. The project’s multi-disciplinary approach integrates knowledge from different disciplines, combining quantitative and qualitative techniques to generate solid evidence.