Gross domestic product: Are other measures needed?

Barbara M. Fraumeni
Additional contact information
Barbara M. Fraumeni: Hunan University, China, NBER, USA, and IZA, Germany

IZA World of Labor, 2017, No 368, 368

Abstract: Gross domestic product (GDP) is the key indicator of the health of an economy and can be easily compared across countries. But it has limitations. GDP tells what is going on today, but does not inform about sustainability of growth. It does not measure happiness, so residents can be dissatisfied even when GDP is rising. GDP does not consider environmental factors or reflect what individuals do outside paid employment. It might increase in times of military conflicts and after natural disasters or terrorist acts, as the loss of property is not counted. Hence, complementary measures may help to show a more comprehensive picture of an economy.

Keywords: GDP; macroeconomic measures; national income accounting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://wol.iza.org/uploads/articles/368/pdfs/gros ... -measures-needed.pdf (application/pdf)
https://wol.iza.org/articles/gross-domestic-product-are-other-measures-needed (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izawol:journl:2017:n:368

Access Statistics for this article

IZA World of Labor is currently edited by Pierre Cahuc

More articles in IZA World of Labor from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) ().