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Measuring Welfare Beyond GDP

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  • Andrew Aitken

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrew Aitken, 2019. "Measuring Welfare Beyond GDP," National Institute Economic Review, National Institute of Economic and Social Research, vol. 249(1), pages 3-16, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:niesru:v:249:y:2019:i:1:p:r3-r16
    DOI: 10.1177/002795011924900110
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Austan Goolsbee & Peter J. Klenow, 2006. "Valuing Consumer Products by the Time Spent Using Them: An Application to the Internet," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(2), pages 108-113, May.
    2. Laurens Cherchye & Bram De Rock & Frederic Vermeulen, 2012. "Married with Children: A Collective Labor Supply Model with Detailed Time Use and Intrahousehold Expenditure Information," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(7), pages 3377-3405, December.
    3. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/4vsqk7docb9nmophtp29pk68cr is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Erik Brynjolfsson & Avinash Collis & Felix Eggers, 2019. "Using massive online choice experiments to measure changes in well-being," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 116(15), pages 7250-7255, April.
    5. Peter ven de Ven & Anne Harrison & Barbara Fraumeni & Dale W. Jorgenson & Paul Schreyer, 2017. "Measuring Individual Economic Well-Being and Social Welfare within the Framework of the System of National Accounts," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 63, pages 460-477, December.
    6. Diane Coyle, 2014. "GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 10183.
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    Cited by:

    1. Malgorzata Grzywinska-Rapca, 2021. "Economic Welfare and Subjective Assessments of Financial Situation of European Households," European Research Studies Journal, European Research Studies Journal, vol. 0(2 - Part ), pages 948-968.
    2. Larry Dwyer, 2024. "‘Measuring What Matters’: Resident Well-Being and the Tourism Policy Cycle," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(22), pages 1-19, November.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    GDP; welfare; inequality; time use; digital economy; economic measurement;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • E01 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General - - - Measurement and Data on National Income and Product Accounts and Wealth; Environmental Accounts

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