Politicians, the business community and economic commentators hang on each quarterly release. With emotive descriptors, everyone yearns to get out of a depression and into growth. Contrast this with GDP’s critics who vilify its focus on monetised transactions, saying it ignores unpaid work, activities in the home and nature’s contributions. Worse still, an increase in GDP extracts more of the earth’s generous bounty and pollution clean-up counts as production.
This publication takes neither position but simply sets out to explain what GDP means.

Have You Wondered What GDP Means? is a door to understanding data so they can be used the right way, appreciating both their qualities and limitations. It is only from such a position that we can progress with the big questions, such as cutting carbon dioxide emissions while maintaining economic viability.