What do Angela Merkel, David Cameron, Nicolas Sarkozy and Ben Bernanke have in common? One thing, anyway: they have all discussed “wellbeing” as a better measure of success than gross domestic product. With the wind of political and economic interest behind it, why is more not happening to change the focus of public policy?

GDP is entrenched as the yardstick of progress. But politically, it never seems the right moment in the economic cycle to switch focus. Promote wellbeing in a recession and you will be accused of trying to divert attention from falling output. Demote GDP in a recovery and your spin-doctors will complain you are throwing away a success story.

GDP – the total sum of the goods and services we produce – not only fails to reflect the distribution of income, it also omits feelings, not easily reducible to monetary values. But efforts to broaden it face serious challenges. First, how do you define wellbeing? Second, where are the data? Third, what do we really know about what drives changes in wellbeing? And so, fourth and most important, is there any point? Would, or should, a focus on wellbeing change anything that governments, companies and individuals do?