King's College London

The event, Measuring What Matters: Economic Indicators for Democratic Governance, highlighted how conventional metrics, such as gross domestic product, often fail to capture individual hardships, prompting the proposal of innovative alternatives.

Taking place on 24 June, the panel event was organised by the Centre for British Democracy and featured contributions from Maria Cotofan and Martin Weale (King’s College London, Lord Richard Layard (London School of Economics), and Peter Levell (Institute for Fiscal Studies).

Key contributions

• Professor Lord Richard Layard argued for using subjective wellbeing as a primary policy goal, noting its strong predictive power for electoral outcomes. He suggested evaluating policies based on the life satisfaction they generate per pound spent.
• Professor Martin Weale introduced a "democratic" measure of real income that weighs all households equally. This approach revealed a yearly decline in real incomes between 2017 and 2024, exposing the disproportionate impact of inflation on poorer households.
• Dr Maria Cotofan demonstrated that true labour-market inequality is a third higher than wage data alone implies when non-monetary job attributes are factored in.
• Dr Peter Levell utilised local financial footprint data to map consumption, illustrating that economic disadvantage is highly localised. He noted that London's apparent prosperity diminishes significantly when local housing costs are considered.

The panel urged policymakers to invest in inequality-adjusted wellbeing data. They recommended grounding policy in cost-benefit analyses focused on the actual drivers of life satisfaction, and cautioned against over-relying on disjointed indicator dashboards.