The Genuine wealth assessment (GWA) is an alternative metric system which has been suggested to supplement gross domestic product (GDP) as a metric of economic growth. Specifically, the GWA is used to assess the well-being of communities. [1]
The first step in the genuine wealth assessment is to come to an understanding of the core values of a community. The core values of the residents together with the community's economic, social, health and environmental conditions are evaluated against genuine wealth benchmarks to create a large number of genuine wealth indicators. For example, genuine wealth indicators of surrounding communities, or of the same community at a different period in time, can serve as a benchmark. Genuine wealth accounting considers financial, manufactured, human, social and natural capital.
The genuine progress indicator full-cost-benefit accounting model is a subset of the more comprehensive integrated genuine wealth accounting model for measuring the overall well-being and sustainability of communities and organizations. [2]
One of the key measures of the genuine wealth model is the ecological footprint analysis, or EFA. [3]
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The concept of genuine wealth accounting was defined by ecological economist and University of Alberta professor Mark Anielski. [4] It is also the subject of an award-winning book entitled “The Economics of Happiness: Building Genuine Wealth”. [5]