heard ex PM Paul Martin on BNN talking about a 'well being' index that's related to and/or rather than the GDP alone, new one to me don't know whose index Martin was referring to but found the following: "The Centre for the Study of Living Standards is a non-profit, national, independent organization that seeks to contribute to a better understanding of trends in and determinants of productivity, living standards and economic and social well-being through research." founded in Ottawa in August 1995 Very comprehensive, covers 1981 thru 2010, a report rather than index per se since they've broken down, explained and charted all the components in their index - need to download the pdf - 98 pages while the provinces are used as the source of data, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut do not appear to be included in the data: http://www.csls.ca/iwb/prov.asp minimal, not current http://ciw.ca/en/TheCanadianIndexOfWellbeing.html US: a limited well being index sponsored by Healthways - a disease management company founded in 1981 - and produced by Gallup: http://www.well-beingindex.com/ UK: again a Gallup.Healthways index the UK will be starting a government index in 2012, will it benefit the population or provide the means to improve spin doctoring government policies ?: http://news.uk.msn.com/uk/well-being-index-measures-happiness France, Germany, Japan etc, don't see anything, but Gallup has a 'thriving' index of 155 countries: http://www.gallup.com/poll/126977/global-wellbeing-surveys-find-nations-worlds-apart.aspx see also and etc such as: 'Happiness economics': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happiness_economics