EC4004 Students: check out this video where alternative measures of output are put forward. Other interesting people to look at on this issue are :Bill Nordhaus and the late James Tobin, in a paper titled "Is growth obsolete?" in 1973. They developed the Measure of Economic Welfare, which used GDP (or more accurately NNP, net national product) as the starting point and made some imputations for the value of leisure and the depreciation of natural capital, among others. It turned out that GDP tracked the MEW pretty closely. Their conclusion: "Is growth obsolete? We think not."
Daly, Cobb and Cobb in 1989 with the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare made some further adjustments and concluded that "empirical evidence that GDP growth has increased welfare is very weak."
In the 1990s, Redefining Progress entered the picture. They developed the Genuine Progress Indicator, which makes the most far-reaching adjustments to GDP. They conclude that the growth of well-being has not kept pace with that of economic output. "GPI started declining around 1975, while GDP keeps increasing."