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nef associate Professor Tim Jackson (Centre for Environmental Strategy at Surrey University) has produced the first UK Measure of Domestic Progress (MDP) towards sustainable development.
The MDP is an adjusted economic measure of the kind proposed in the US by former World Bank economist Herman Daly. It builds on over a decade of work to define such indicators in a number of different countries.
The UK index adjusts personal consumer expenditure to account for a variety of economic, environmental and social factors not included in the GDP.
For example, the MDP adds in the benefits of household labour, accounts for income inequality, subtracts social costs (such as crime, congestion, family breakdown) and environmental costs (such as air pollution, resource depletion and the 'hidden' costs of climate change) and makes adjustments for longterm investment and economic sustainability.
Using methodologies developed across the world and widely available UK data sets, the index offers a more realistic account of progress than is provided by economic output on its own.
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