Angus Deaton, 2015 Nobel prize winner, has popularized a new source of information to measure economic well-being: household surveys that ask people how happy they are. His 2015 book, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, examines how the patterns of economic development and technological change in the past 250 years of human existence have transformed lives and affected economic well-being.
And I remember as a freshman in Econ 101 many years ago my professor discussing how GDP left out certain things like clean air and clear water that were important to human welfare.
The United Arab Emirates have a minister of happiness. Easy to make fun of. But I think a good idea. Dubai has pronounced 2019 the year of tolerance. Previous years were pronounced years of culture, reading etc. I think those kinds of things are important and definitely worthy of promotion via government policy.