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Permalink Reply by Joan Denoo on June 18, 2012 at 12:09am

This is very good news. Trying to get data on change over time as different economic and political events occur is very hard to come by. Especially because there are strong pressures not to reveal what really happened when huge loans made to developing countries turned out to be a disaster, increased poverty, hunger and declining health care availability. Those loans bankrupted many peoples. 

Permalink Reply by Joan Denoo on June 18, 2012 at 12:23am

Beyond GDP: Experts preview 'Inclusive Wealth' index

"Brazil and India pay a high price for rapid economic growth, according to experts speaking at a major international meeting in London, Planet Under Pressure.

Between 1990 and 2008, the wealth of these two countries as measured by GDP per capita rose 34% and 120% respectively. But a myopic focus on economic capital is flawed, scientists and economists at the conference argue. Natural capital, the sum of a country's assets, from forests to fossil fuels and minerals, declined 46% in Brazil and 31% in India, according to a new "Inclusive Wealth Indicator" designed to augment GDP as a measure of economic progress.

When measures of natural, human and manufactured capital are considered together to obtain a more comprehensive value, Brazil's "Inclusive Wealth" rose just 3% and India's rose 9% over that time.

"The work on Brazil and India illustrates why Gross Domestic Product is inadequate and misleading as an index of economic progress from a long-term perspective," says Professor Anantha Duraiappah, Executive Director of UNU-IHDP."

Thank you Ruth for finding this valuable data.