Page 167 - Invited Paper Session (IPS) - Volume 2

IPS195 Peter van de Ven
(see Stiglitz et al., 2018) makes, amongst others, a plea for the “capital
approach”, in which progress is monitored by the development of economic,
human and environmental capital, and by the vulnerability and resilience of
systems.
In response to the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Report, and also motivated by the
OECD Inclusive Growth Agenda, among which the work on broader measures
of well-being (see e.g. the OECD Better Life Index), several initiatives have been
taken forward in the area of national accounts as well, with the objective to
put more focus on (the distribution of) household disposable income, instead
of GDP:
 The dissemination of a dashboard on households’ economic well-
being; see http://www.oecd.org/sdd/na/household-dashboard.htm.
 The dissemination of a quarterly news release on “growth and
economic well-being”; see e.g. http://www.oecd.org/sdd/na/Growth-
and-economic-well-being-oecd-02-2019.pdf.
 A working paper on the decomposition of differences between GDP
growth and growth in real disposable income.
 A working paper on the impact of valuing unpaid household activities.
 Aligning micro data on the distribution of income and consumption to
national accounts, to arrive at distributional information that is
consistent with macro-economic indicators; see e.g. the latest working
paper on this topic.
Furthermore, much effort has been put into the further development and
dissemination of environmental-economic accounts. These accounts are
based on the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting – Central
Framework (SEEA-CF), which the UN Statistical Commission endorsed in 2012
as a global standard for compiling such accounts. In addition to an extended
accounting for natural assets, and perhaps more importantly from a
monitoring perspective, the SEEA-CF includes a set of physical flow accounts,
in which natural inputs, products and residuals are linked to economic
activities. Physical supply and use tables are included for energy, water, and
various material flows (emissions to air, emission to water, and solid waste).
Another part of the framework concerns a more prominent accounting for
environmental activities, by identifying economic transactions within the
system of national accounts which mainly relate to “... economic activities
whose primary purpose is to reduce or eliminate pressures on the environment
or to make more efficient use of natural resources” (§ 1.30 of SEEA-CF). A final
set of accounts breaks out environmental taxes, subsidies and similar transfers.
The uptake of implementing SEEA-consistent accounts has been very
good, with currently 69 countries having programmes on environmental-
economic accounting. The goal for 2020 is to have at least 100 countries with
ongoing, well-resourced programmes in line with SEEA-CF. All of this is a

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