What GDP leaves off the balance sheet

GDP counts what a place produces in a year. Gross Domestic Regeneration scores the ecology, the society and the capital that output draws on, as a second account kept beside GDP: a place can read high on one and low on the other.

A framework by Tenzin Seldon

About the Institute

The Amazon's municipalities shaded by GDP per person, then by their GDR estimate: the pattern changes once GDR measures what a place restores.

The measure

GDR: Constrained by Reality

Each indicator is scored against fixed goalposts, the same limits for all twelve nations scored with the GDR method.* The pillars multiply, so the weakest sets the ceiling: a collapsed ecology pulls the reading down, however strong the capital.

Ecology

Emissions, protected land, material footprint

Norway, highest of the twelve on GDP per person, reads 8.7: its material footprint, 37.7 tonnes a person, weighs on the pillar. Protected land counts designated area in any condition.

Society

Poverty, health coverage, wealth share

Poverty, thin health coverage and wealth pooled in the top tenth pull a nation down whatever its income. The United States reads 35.1, one of three pillar deficits behind its overall 4.6.

Capital

Resilient product, export mix, public debt

Output at low risk of stranding and exports spread across many goods raise the pillar; public debt lowers it. Japan's debt, 206.5 percent of output, leaves its score at 6.1.

Tenzin Seldon offers GDR as a methodological proposal, still to be tested.* Read a rank among the twelve national scores as top six or bottom six: their 95 percent intervals overlap nearly everywhere.

Where it is read

Proxy estimates in three places

The GDR method's nine indicators are national statistics,* so the Institute scores each place on local proxies and combine its pillars by geometric mean, the cube root of E × S × C. Each estimate, read at its own scale and apart from any national score, shows which pillar holds a place down and is untested as a forecast.

The Amazon

805municipalities, 772 scored, median 16.4 of 100

Proxy estimates run from 1.7 in Angico to 76.6 in Cuiabá. Forest loss from 2019 to 2024 is a loose stand-in for emissions intensity.

El Salvador

262districts, 258 scored, median 13.7 of 100

District proxy estimates run from 3.2 in San Isidro to 66.7 in Usulután. The national reading, 12.8 on the national formula from seven of nine indicators, sits on another scale.

California

58counties, all scored, median 48.0 of 100

Proxy estimates run from 15.0 in Madera to 84.2 in San Mateo. Los Angeles is tenth on GDP per resident and fifty-seventh on the estimate.

Each place is read on its own scale, so the three are not comparable with each other or with the national table.

Connect with the Institute

GDR is a model to measure the value GDP leaves out, a lens on long-term regenerative potential, and a way to see what is at risk and what may be undervalued.

The Institute's Atlas is the start of that research: what this view lets people observe, plan and act on, through its models and indices. Open the Atlas

The Institute's current goal is to test how GDR can assist studies, pilots and economic development partnerships.

Reach out to discuss:

Where your region stands on GDR, and which pillar holds it down
The paths that could move it: programs, partners and investment vehicles
Research, data and press

Contact