It has long been recognised that GDP growth does not correlate well with changes in social welfare, i.e. national well-being. The GPI adjusts GDP by 23 factors that reflect some of the social and environmental costs of economic growth to give a better measures of changes in national prosperity. This paper explores these issues in the context of describing the methodological approach of the Australian GPI. The results show that a sharp divergence between GDP and the GPI has opened up since the 1970s.