International Journal of Commerce and Management Research

Authors
Ishwar Lal Sharma

Abstract
In 1930s, the concept of GDP and how to calculate it was developed by Simon Kuznets in the wake of the Great Depression and in the context of World War II to measure the size of an economy by reference to its production and output. But laterBill Nordhaus and James Tobin (1971) develop GDP which also account for environmental impact. Richard Easterlin (1974) publishes the results of his study into whether economic growth makes people happier. He claims that no link is found between GDP per capita and wellbeing, yet the wealthy in a country report greater wellbeing than those less fortunate. This study resulted in the phrase ‘Easterlin paradox’, to which the wellbeing literature frequently refers. In 2008the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Global Project on Measuring the Progress of Societies is established to foster the development of key economic, social and environmental indicators with a view of measuring wellbeing.