- Home
- Publications
- Measuring Welfare Beyond GDP
Measuring welfare beyond GDP
Authors
Related Themes
Macro-Economic Modelling and ForecastingTags
JEL Code
I31, D31, E01
Journal
National Institute Economic Review
Publisher
Sage Publications, London
External Resources
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/002795011924900110
Issue
249
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is often treated as shorthand for national economic well-being, even though it was never intended to be; it is a measure of (some) of the marketable output of the economy. This paper reviews several developments in measuring welfare beyond GDP that were recently presented at the Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE) annual conference in May 2019. The papers discussed fall into three broad areas. First, a significant amount of work has focused on incorporating information about the distribution of income, consumption and wealth in the national accounts. Second, the effects of digitisation and the growth of the internet highlight the potential value in measuring time use as a measure of welfare. Third, the digital revolution has spawned many new, often ‘free’ goods, the welfare consequences of which are difficult to measure. Other areas, such as government services, are also difficult to measure. Measuring economic welfare properly matters because it affects the decisions made by government and society. GDP does a reasonable job of measuring the marketable output of the economy (which remains important for some policies), but it should be downgraded; more attention should be given to measures that reflect both objective and subjective measures of well-being, and measures that better reflect the heterogeneity of peoples’ experiences.
Related Blog Posts
Inflation Still Likely to Fall to 2 per cent or Below Next Month
Huw Dixon
17 Apr 2024
8 min read
What is the Current State of the UK Economy?
Paula Bejarano Carbo
Stephen Millard
26 Feb 2024
7 min read
Related Projects
Related News
Why it’s not worth worrying that the UK has technically entered a recession
26 Feb 2024
4 min read
Related Publications
Recessionary Pressures Receding in the Rearview Mirror as UK Economy Gains Momentum
12 Apr 2024
GDP Trackers