The problem of selecting appropriate measures of societal well-being, while
novel to many advocates of government wide performance planning, is familiar within another professional community, often known as the social indicator movement or the social reporting movement. This movement has its roots in attempts in the 1950s by agencies of the United Nations to define and measure what was then referred to as the “standard of living”(Rothenbacher 1993,
2). However, the movement truly gained momentum in the United States in the next decade, driven in large part by the frustration of many policy analysts over the neglect of serious social problems. Political leaders, these analysts thought, suffered from “economic philistinism” (Gross 1966, ix): a tendency to equate societal well-being with progress on a handful of macroeconomic indicators, such as growth in gross domestic product (GDP).