Improving the Genuine Progress Indicator to Measure Comparable Sustainable Development Trends in the U.S. And California, 1995-2017

This paper suggests that important improvements in the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) can be made by including government provisions of health care and education, and by directly calculating the contribution of natural resources and leisure, and adjusting for inequality, using a global norm rather than using local, historical benchmarks. We first look at how the U.S. and California GPI compare to GDP over the period 1995 through 2017. While GDP per person is approximately the same, the U.S. GPI is significantly lower, primarily because of larger environmental costs. We also find a large and growing cost of inequality for both. Some differences in their GPIs are artefacts of the benchmark methods. We suggest changes in how benchmarks are used. The GPI is highly sensitive to using the benchmark methods compared to our suggested alternative methods. Implementing the alternative methods narrows the gap in GPI results between CA and the U.S. as it reduces the environmental costs for the U.S. and closes the artificial differential between CA and the U.S. in the cost of inequality. Overall, we suggest that the GPI can be significantly improved with these high priority revisions without changing the fundamental approach or theoretical framework