Dr. Jonathan Andreas, associate professor of economics at Bluffton University, will present the Colloquium, “Replacing GDP with Median Expected Lifetime Income,” at 4 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 19, in Stutzman Lecture Hall.

Andreas will discuss MELI, his potential replacement for Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as the standard measurement for well-being. 

MELI stands for Median Expected Lifetime Income, and is measured by adding up the median income for every age group in the population weighed by the probability of survival to each specific age. It is an expected value of how much people would earn in a lifetime, if economic conditions persisted as they are in the current year.

Andreas traveled to South Korea at the end of April 2017 to present this research at the International Association for Research in Income and Wealth conference. Power players from agencies including the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Bureau of Economic Analysis were in attendance. 

This event is free and open to the public.