WISE Accounts

April 2026

Beyond-GDP measurement systems provide either an index or a dashboard of indicators. However, these proposals are rarely embedded in a coherent accounting framework. This paper argues this is a mistake because the success of GDP cannot be separated from the broader success of the System of National Accounts (SNA). Rather than “Beyond-GDP” we need to go “Beyond-SNA”.

Based on decades of literature and initiatives, this report informs a Beyond-SNA strategy and provides the architecture for a new interdisciplinary accounting framework. It is not a full statistical manual, but rather a high-level description of the main features and sub-accounts. These “WISE accounts” are based on three concepts: Wellbeing (average current wellbeing), Inclusion (distribution of wellbeing) and Sustainability (future wellbeing). These dimensions are increasingly being used by international initiatives such as the UN High-Level Expert Group (HLEG) on Beyond-GDP. The interdisciplinary WISE accounting framework is unique in 3 ways:

1. It quantifies stocks/flows of the economic, social and environmental systems in multiple units (money, mass, people, time, etc);
2. It (e)valuates wellbeing, inclusion and sustainability using methods from various scientific schools of thought, thereby linking it to all the major Beyond-GDP indexes and dashboards;
3. It is a global framework rather than a national one (the SNA has a national perspective), although the WISE accounts do of course have country-level data.

This report also shows that the conceptual WISE accounts are empirically feasible, by leveraging and integrating various existing databases. A concrete suggestion about the way forward is provided.