Measures of economic progress have traditionally focused on GDP (or GVA at a regional level).  However, these measures do not reflect the negative impacts of social and environment costs associated with increasing economic growth or measure other, arguably more important, aspects of wellbeing, such as health or community safety.

The idea behind adjusted measures of economic well-being such as the R-ISEW is to start from an account of economic consumption (as for GDP) that is then adjusted to incorporate various economic, social or environmental factors which are not included in the conventional measure.