We all know there's more to Australia's success than economic figures.
That's why many economists have turned their attention to finding better ways to measure our national welfare than gross domestic product, which was never intended to be a marker of social progress.
An example is the Fairfax-Lateral Economics Index of Australia's Wellbeing, which adjusts GDP to take account of changes in know-how, health, income distribution, job satisfaction and the environment. 
Since its launch in 2011, the index has been very good at identifying things important to our wellbeing that are largely overlooked by traditional economic indicators - and often by political leaders.
It has uncovered some good news, especially the massive boost to wellbeing from the growing number of adults with a university degree or technical training. The proportion of Australians aged 20 to 64 with a Certificate III qualification or higher has jumped from 47 per cent to 60 per cent since 2005. According to the index, that know-how boom has been the biggest contributor to our collective wellbeing during the past decade. Overall, the value of our wellbeing took a dip in 2013-14 but has been growing steadily since.
But the index has also exposed four big drags on our wellbeing:
Mental illness
About one in five adults experiences mental illness in any year so it has a dramatic effect on collective wellbeing. Traditional economic measures pick up some of the financial impact, such as days off work due to poor health. But those with a mental illness tend to report much lower levels of wellbeing than average. The Fairfax-Lateral Economics Index puts a dollar figure on these non-economic - but significant - effects by measuring the prevalence of patient treatment plans. It puts the annual wellbeing cost of mental illness in Australia at a staggering $200 billion - equivalent to about 12 per cent of the annual output of the economy.
Obesity
Conventional economic figures pick up some of the costs of obesity, such as work absenteeism due to obesity-related illnesses. But obese people also report a lower sense of wellbeing because of their weight and the Fairfax-Lateral Economics Index puts a dollar figure on that. It reveals the wellbeing cost of obesity has risen more than 80 per cent in the past decade to more than $130 billion a year, equivalent to about 8 per cent of annual output of the economy. Although the rate of growth in the proportion of adults affected by obesity has slowed in the past few years, the wellbeing cost continues to mount.
Long-term unemployment
Treasurer Scott Morrison couldn't hide his delight when a better-than-expected annual GDP growth rate of 3.1 per cent was released last week. We're "outstripping the world's most advanced economies" and growth was "twice the pace of comparable resource-based economies like Canada", he said. But there's an entrenched economic challenge neither Morrison nor his Labor opponents are talking much about: long-term unemployment. The count of people out of work for a year or more has been on the rise since the global financial crisis in 2009. Numbers peaked at a 16-year high in early 2015 and, after a brief dip in the second half of last year, have started to rise again. The index put the wellbeing cost of long- term unemployment near $3 billion in the   March quarter alone.
Income inequality
The index also draws attention to the cost of income inequality. Unequal distribution of income is important to a community's collective wellbeing for a simple reason - an extra dollar means much more to a very poor person than to a millionaire. Research has shown that each additional dollar received by the poorest fifth of households adds at least five times more to national wellbeing than each additional dollar received by the wealthiest fifth of households. The most recent figures show the wealthiest 20 per cent of Australian households take home nearly 41 per cent of all the income, while the poorest fifth take home 7.5 per cent. Last year the index puts the wellbeing cost of income inequality at nearly $220 billion.
The upshot? Even small improvements in any one of those four indicators - treatment of mental illness, the prevalence of obesity, the numbers of long-term jobless or the distribution of income - would deliver a massive boost to community welfare.
The creator of the Fairfax-Lateral Economics Wellbeing Index, Dr Nicholas Gruen, points out that if Australia could, say, halve the obesity, rate the payoff would be akin to pushing ahead with several major economic reforms.
Studying wellbeing has shown that economic debate in Australia often focuses on the wrong things.
"People have a very stereotyped view of what economists and 'the economy' are about," Gruen tells me.
"Sadly, a lot of economists share that view - that it's about 'serious' stuff you do with a hard hat on. That's becoming less and less true. My favourite economists - like Adam Smith, Alfred Marshall and   Maynard Keynes - always knew that, but somehow economic debate and economic expertise is almost always about things that are close to money and finance. Finance is critical of course - it provides the arteries of the economy - the means by which we decide what activities are and are not undertaken. You'd be crazy to say otherwise, but there's so much more to having a well-functioning economy than what is most easily measured."
What strikes me about the four big drags on our wellbeing is how little any of them have featured during the election campaign.
It is a mystery that things so crucial to the welfare of voters receive less attention than they deserve.
Ross Gittins is on leave.