How Well GDP Measures the Well-Being of Society

GDP is Rough, but Useful

A high level of GDP should not be the only goal of macroeconomic policy, or government policy more broadly. Even though GDP does not measure the broader standard of living with any precision, it does measure production well and it does indicate when a country is materially better or worse off in terms of jobs and incomes. In most countries, a significantly higher GDP per capita occurs hand in hand with other improvements in everyday life along many dimensions, like education, health, and environmental protection.

No single number can capture all the elements of a term as broad as “standard of living.” Nonetheless, GDP per capita is a reasonable, rough-and-ready measure of the standard of living.

How is the Economy Doing? How Does One Tell?

To determine the state of the economy, one needs to examine economic indicators, such as GDP. To calculate GDP is quite an undertaking. It is the broadest measure of a nation’s economic activity and we owe a debt to Simon Kuznets, the creator of the measurement, for that.

The sheer size of the U.S. economy as measured by GDP is huge—as of the fourth quarter of 2016, $18.9 trillion worth of goods and services were produced annually. Real GDP informed us that the 2008–2009 recession was severe and that the recovery from that recession has been slow, but the economy is improving. GDP per capita gives a rough estimate of a nation’s standard of living. This chapter is the building block for other chapters that explore more economic indicators such as unemployment, inflation, or interest rates, and perhaps more importantly, will explain how they are related and what causes them to rise or fall.