{"id":1154593,"date":"2026-08-18T00:05:18","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T00:05:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1154593\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T00:05:18","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T00:05:18","slug":"why-we-still-use-gdp-to-measure-economic-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1154593\/","title":{"rendered":"Why we still use GDP to measure economic growth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When it comes to measuring whether an economy is growing, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is basically the gold standard. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt leaves some things out, but it is a very good gauge of the health of an economy, if it&#8217;s growing, if it&#8217;s becoming more productive,\u201d said Allison Schrager, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. \u201cAnd you know because it includes so many things, it&#8217;s probably the most complete incomplete economic statistic we have.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the U.S., GDP is measured and released by the <a class=\"externallink\" title=\"\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bea.gov\/resources\/learning-center\/what-to-know-gdp\">Bureau of Economic Analysis,<\/a> who define GDP as \u201cvalue of the final goods and services produced in the United States.\u201d The measurement is widely used around the world, but it has also garnered plenty of critics. Early this year, a commission from the United Nations published <a class=\"externallink\" title=\"\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.un.org\/en\/beyondGDP\">a report looking at alternatives.<\/a> <\/p>\n<p>But for now, Schrager still prefers GDP.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEvery economy \u2014 every culture \u2014 puts values on different things,\u201d she said. \u201cBut what we need is something we can compare across all these different countries.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Schrager <a class=\"externallink\" title=\"\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/opinion\/articles\/2026-08-11\/why-gdp-is-the-goat-of-economic-statistics\">wrote a defense of GDP<\/a> for Bloomberg Opinion<a class=\"externallink\" title=\"\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/opinion\/articles\/2026-08-11\/why-gdp-is-the-goat-of-economic-statistics\">.<\/a> \u201cMarketplace\u201d host Kai Ryssdal spoke to her about the column. <\/p>\n<p>To listen to their conversation, use the media player above.<\/p>\n<p>Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When it comes to measuring whether an economy is growing, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is basically the gold&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1154594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3090],"tags":[3662,165540,51,5286,1700,3448,3393,16,15],"class_list":["post-1154593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-bloomberg","tag-bureau-of-economic-analysis","tag-business","tag-economic-growth","tag-economy","tag-gdp","tag-productivity","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117113594061009671","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1154593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1154594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1154593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1154593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1154593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}