The Inclusive Wealth Index. A Sustainability Indicator, Really?

Geraldine Thiry and Philippe Roman
Additional contact information
Philippe Roman: CREDA - CREDA - Centre de Recherche Et de Documentation sur les Amériques - UMR 7227 - Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3 - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Working Papers from HAL

Abstract: Among recent high-profile propositions to revise national accounts and to provide new indicators of sustainability and well-being, the Inclusive Wealth Framework and the related Inclusive Wealth Index (thereafter IWI), first released during the "Rio+20" Conference, undoubtedly stand out as the most promising endeavour. Built up at the confluence of welfare, development and sustainability economics, the indicator is supposed to bring information about the wealth of nations and their sustainability, in a comprehensive way. The inclusive wealth framework is nevertheless fraught with limitations, due to questionable theoretical assumptions and gaps in data availability. We propose a critical appraisal of the index and its underlying framework. Our conclusion is that these limitations undermine its capacity to reach the goals it was given, and to fulfill the requirements of a satisfactory sustainability indicator. Special emphasis is put on the misleading pretension of (neoclassical) economics to handle highly complex, uncertain and manifold issues, even on theoretical bases renovated by dropping some optimality assumptions. We briefly sketch alternative research avenues, that appear more conducive to the endorsement of strong sustainability, and less prone to economism. Alleged theoretical consistency and elegance should not beguile us when choosing indicators for sustainable and prosperous societies.

Keywords: inclusive wealth; sustainability; well-being; indicators; green accounting; richesse inclusive; soutenabilité; bien-être; indicateurs; comptablité verte (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-06-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap and nep-hme
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-01011250v1
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://shs.hal.science/halshs-01011250v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-01011250

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().