In the spring of 2019, Grant Robertson, New Zealand’s finance minister, was in the process of developing New Zealand’s first-ever Wellbeing Budget. The prime minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, had spoken publicly about her vision to rethink how the government identified and set its priorities. Ardern was poised to push against a decades-old practice of using a country’s gross domestic product (GDP) as a proxy for the well-being of its citizens. .....more

Teaching note for product W36937.