Governments and the media obsess about it while statisticians endlessly fiddle – but what is the real point of GDP and can it ever be accurately measured?
What do the price of hair-salon services in Beijing and sexual services in London have in common? The answer is that, depending on how you measure them – or indeed whether you measure them at all – the size of the Chinese and British economies will expand or contract like an accordion.
In April, statisticians working under the aegis of the World Bank determined that China’s gross domestic product was far bigger than they had previously realised. China was, in fact, just about to overtake the US as the world’s largest economy, many years earlier than expected. The reason? Statisticians had been overestimating the prices of everything from haircuts to noodles. As a result, they were underestimating the purchasing power of Chinese people and thus the size of the economy.
Last month, British statisticians worked some magic too. They declared that the UK economy – admittedly only a fraction of China’s size – was 5 per cent bigger than previously thought. It was as if they had suddenly discovered billions of pounds in annual revenue at the back of the nation’s couch. Here the explanation was simpler. Among other tweaks to their methodology, statisticians started counting the economic “contribution” of prostitution and illegal drugs.
Gross domestic product has become a ubiquitous term. It is how we measure economic success. Countries are judged by how much they have of it. Governments can rise and fall according to how effectively their economies create it. Everything from debt levels to the contribution of manufacturing is measured against it. GDP is what makes the world go round. Yet what exactly does it mean? Outside a few experts, most people have only a shaky understanding. In fact, the more you delve into the whole concept of GDP – one of the most centrally important ideas in modern life – the more slippery it becomes. In the words of Diane Coyle, an economist who recently wrote an entire book on the subject, “GDP is a made-up entity.”
Lees deze column van David Pilling verder op The Financial Times