Wellbeing Frameworks and Future Generations

Abstract

Increasingly, governments are moving from using GDP as the primary measure of economic progress to using wellbeing frameworks, which aim to measure wellbeing. The question I address in this essay is how wellbeing frameworks should be designed so they will better serve future generations. The question has two interpretations. Firstly, the question can ask how wellbeing frameworks should be designed so they better serve future generations when they inherit them. I identify two areas for improvement. One is that wellbeing frameworks have a list of things they’re going to measure and promote as aspects of wellbeing but often have no rationale for what’s included and excluded. The other is that they typically have no mechanism for revision. I argue that the best solution for these problems is to use an account of wellbeing I call the Reflective Value account. Secondly, the question of how wellbeing frameworks should be designed so they will better serve future generations can be understood as asking how wellbeing frameworks should be designed so they influence policy decisions now to better promote the wellbeing of future generations. I argue wellbeing frameworks should include measures of the resources future generations will need in order to achieve wellbeing, and that these resources should include resilience to existential and catastrophic risks.