Healthy, safe and getting along with each other: Australia attempts to look beyond GDP to measure what matters

Australia’s Measuring What Matters wellbeing report measures the rate of progress towards ‘a more healthy, secure, sustainable, cohesive and prosperous Australia’. Photograph: James O’Neil/Getty Images

Too often economists reduce important issues, like prosperity, to a narrow set of indicators such as gross domestic product to measure national progress.

Anything that boosts GDP is good, right?