Media Clipping — May 15, 2003 from The New Zealand Herald

Fresh definition of quality of life

By Simon Collins

Marilyn Waring and Dr. Ronald Colman
Photo by Martin Sykes

Nineteen years after bringing down the Muldoon Government, former MP Marilyn Waring has become a big name in Canada through her work on a new measure of wellbeing.

Dr Waring, now an associate professor of public policy at Massey University, Albany, drew a crowd of 1800 last time she was in the Nova Scotia capital of Halifax, the base of an institute which promotes the "global progress index" (GPI).

She is on the editorial board of the institute's journal and has been stopped by autograph-hunting students at airports throughout Canada following a Canadian documentary on her work, Who's Counting: Sex, Lies and Global Economics.

This week the institute's director, Dr Ron Colman, is returning the favour with a visit to New Zealand. He will meet government departments, local bodies, universities and other groups to discuss the GPI.

The Halifax version of the GPI measures 22 elements of Canadians' quality of life, ranging from soils to human freedom, providing a much more comprehensive picture of wellbeing than the dollars counted in the gross domestic product (GDP).

Dr Colman said it was partly inspired by Dr Waring's work in the 1980s and 1990s showing that the GDP ignored huge areas of valuable activity, such as childcare and other unpaid work traditionally done by women.

The GDP also counts negatives such as security and other costs of crime, or the costs of solid waste rubbish disposal, as if they were as valuable as food or housing.

"Marilyn was the first person to take the complex workings of the system of national accounts apart and communicate its deficiencies in a way a person could really understand," Dr Colman said.

"It was quite groundbreaking internationally. I was very, very greatly influenced by Marilyn's work."

Dr Waring became National MP for Raglan in 1975 at the age of 23, but fell out with Prime Minister Robert Muldoon almost immediately. When she decided to support a Labour bill to ban nuclear-armed ships in 1984, Sir Robert called a snap election, which he lost.

Dr Colman, an Australian-born political scientist, quit his university job in Halifax five years ago to found GPI Atlantic, an institute which does contract work for several provincial governments to pay for its main research into new areas of wellbeing where no previous measures existed.

It has produced a series of reports on the health costs of obesity, tobacco and HIV/Aids and a report on the "ecological footprint" of Nova Scotians - the area of land required to supply all the resources that each person uses.

Dr Colman said measures were chosen for the GPI on the basis of "consensus values" established by long consultation in each province or district.

Residents were asked what they wanted their district to look like in 10 years. In every place, the results were similar: good health, job security, clean air and water, safe towns.

People wanted things to be durable, and they wanted a fair income distribution. But surprisingly, they did not want to be rich themselves.

"I can't remember people saying, 'We need more stuff'," Dr Colman said.

"But then we always phrased the question not as, 'What do you want?' We asked the question: 'What kind of community do you want to leave for your children?'

"People have a natural inclination to sacrifice for their children. People are very used to that - to give up something so their children will be better off."

Like New Zealand, Nova Scotia is a small maritime land off the east coast of a richer country and loses many of its young people to big cities in the rest of Canada and the US. But Dr Colman said it did not have to be richer in dollar terms to attract people back.

"People do come back because they value the quality of life."

www.gpiatlantic.org

Global progress index: * Time use, including economic value of civic and voluntary work, unpaid housework and childcare, work hours and value of leisure time. * Natural resources such as forests and fisheries. * Environment, such as air and water quality. * Socio-economic benefits, such as income distribution, debt and external borrowing. * Social capital, such as health, education and costs of crime.

Copyright © 2003, The New Zealand Herald

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