The American Academy of Arts & Sciences, was founded in 1780 to help a new nation face its challenges ahead. One way the Academy continues its mission today is through the work of its cross-partisan, cross-disciplinary Commission on Reimagining the Economy (CORE).
The scholars, journalists, artists, and leaders from the business, faith, labor, and philanthropic communities on the Commission worked together to consider the well-being of Americans beyond customary economic discussions. Guided by the values of security, opportunity and mobility, and democracy, they were dedicated to understanding and addressing ways to make the economy work for the people who make it work.
The Commission issued a report with recommendations, a photojournal, audio clips and quotations from listening sessions across the country, and a new metric and dashboard offering county-level measures of wellbeing. All are available online.
The new measure, the CORE Score, was featured in the Wall Street Journal in an essay "Do the GDP and Dow Reflect American Well-Being?” coauthored by Commission member Jacob S. Hacker (Yale) who led the development of the metric and Jon Cohen, the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Senior Program Officer at the Academy.
The essay uses the new metric to illuminate the distance between traditional economic metrics like GDP and how Americans feel about their finances and the future of their communities. It begins:
“How is the economy doing? This seemingly simple question is prompting not-so-simple answers. For decades, public opinion about the economy tracked economic performance. When times were good, people said the economy was good. When times were bad, people said the economy was bad.
“Lately, this equation has broken down. . . .