Achieving MELIority: Why Demographers, Not Economists, Are Destined to Replace GDP with Median Expected Lifetime Income (MELI).

andreasj@bluffton.edu andreas , Bluffton University

The widespread acknowledgment of the inadequacy of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a comprehensive measure of societal well-being has catalyzed numerous endeavors to supplant it as the predominant metric. To effectuate the substitution of GDP with a more robust alternative, it is imperative to discern both why GDP has such enduring popularity and the reasons behind the failures of prior replacement initiatives. This paper aims to scrutinize the specific attributes in which GDP outperforms other well-being metrics. Leveraging these insights, it will proffer a viable substitute known as Median Expected Lifetime Income (MELI) that can utilize existing data. Furthermore, a more refined statistic, Median Expected Lifetime Consumption (MELC), will be introduced as an eventual goal that would require more data. An institutional impediment has posed a challenge to replacing GDP. Economists who oversee the global GDP infrastructure have made substantial investments that have created a path-dependency in their methodology that makes it costly for them to switch to MELI. In contrast, demographers possess the requisite methodological instruments for MELI measurement. However, unlike economists who convene conferences to refine GDP and explore paradigms to go beyond GDP, demographers have been less inclined toward this ontological objective. A modest expansion of the demographers' ontological perspective could facilitate the cost-effective development of a well-being metric that garners widespread acceptance, ultimately enabling the transition to leapfrog GDP.

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 Presented in Session 105. Measuring Health, Wellbeing and Morbidity