Article in The Conversation.

New Zealand’s wellbeing budget is not a complete departure from a standard budget. It still has economic content and, like any set of papers produced by a government, cannot escape politics.

Nonetheless it puts wellbeing spending at the forefront of the government’s most important policy statement of the year. It is working on measuring progress in more sophisticated ways than standard indicators such as GDP.

It encourages departments and their ministers to prepare policy bids with a view to these priorities. It makes wellbeing a benchmark by which to judge the budget – even by critics.

Illustration: Main goals of Scotland’s national performance framework. Scottish Government,