Prosperity Indicators: Foundations, Concerns, and Prospects of Usage in Policy Making-The Policy Compass Approach

Prosperity indicators aim at making the concept of prosperity measurable, and hold thus the potential to be used for measuring and assessing the impacts of policies and policy measures over the society. Nevertheless, the abstract and multidimensional nature of prosperity, weaknesses around their definition from a methodological perspective and concerns on their legitimacy among other factors pose difficulties on the exploitation of prosperity indicators for public debate. This paper reviews the usage of prosperity indicators in policy making, bringing up developments, trends and concerns around their conceptualization and use. It further presents the Policy Compass approach, which provides an observatory for experimentation with prosperity indicators with the view of influencing the policy-making process at the local and regional level, and thus contributing towards the vision of more responsive governance.