A few recent news stories may be of interest to this group.

Income and Happiness: An Imperfect Link has Robert H. Frank looking at the convoluted relationship between per capita income, GDP, inflation adjustments, quality of life, and happiness. If anyone is measuring per capita income (or similar measures of average income as a measure of progress), this article is for you.

Newsweek, on the other hand, published Happiness: Enough Already, suggesting that the search for happiness (and how we measure it) is perhaps not the quest we should be on.

Back to economic measures (and education and other quality of life factors): A mini-tempest on talk radio has surrounded the latest World Bank report on progress towards gender equality in the Middle East and North Africa. The data are available to discuss, and the measures are straight-forward enough: education levels, literacy, life expectancy, unemployment rates, etc. Take a look at the progress towards closing the gender gap -- are you measuring similar indicators of gender disparity in your community?