View: A policy shift away from GDP generation, and towards improving development indicators, is long overdue

观点：早就应该从打造GDP转向改善发展指标

England fought the Dutch three times, with local landowners facing high taxes on their estate’s income to fund the war. William Petty found this quite unjust and decided to compile a set of national accounts for England and Wales, asserting that national income must balance out with total spending.

He quantified expenses — about 4.5 pence per day was adjudged to be enough for food, housing, clothing and other necessities for each of England and Wales’ six million citizens, totalling up to £40 million annually. Income was tabulated across a long list of assets — houses in London, land, ship, etc — totalling up to £15 million annually. The remainder was classified as wages at about £25 million annually.

Petty’s advice, to the government of the day, was to shift the tax burden accordingly. And, thus, the gross domestic product (GDP) was born. Its modern formulation was crafted by Simon Kuznets for the US Congress report (bit.do/fj5Wf) in 1934, caveated by not being suitable for measuring social progress or welfare. And, yet, this is the metric that nations chase most after.

Such caveats were recognised from the begng. The modern formulation may not include externalities, nonmarket transactions, non-monetary economy, quality improvements or wealth distribution. Current measures of economic growth (including GDP) may consider every expense as a positive — without distinguishing between welfare-enhancing and welfare-reducing activities. Even the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster could raise GDP through rebuilding.

There is also little recognition for the distribution of income among individuals and its significant social impact.

A number of alternative approaches have emerged. In the early 1980s, a capability approach emerged, focusing on the functional capabilities enjoyed by the people of a country, explored in Séverine Deneulin and Lila Shahani’s 2009 An Introduction to the Human Development and Capability Approach: Freedom and Agency. The index of sustainable economic welfare, defined by John B Cobb and Herman Daly in 1989, is also utilised to consider other factors such as consumption of non-renewable resources.

英格兰与荷兰人进行了三次战争，当地的土地所有者要为他们的地产收入缴纳高额税款来资助战争。威廉·佩蒂认为这很不公平，于是决定编制一套英格兰和威尔士的国民账户，主张国民收入必须与总支出相平衡。

他对开支进行了量化——英格兰和威尔士600万公民每人每天的食物、住房、衣服和其他必需品支出约4.5便士，每年总计达4000万英镑。收入通过一长串资产—伦敦的房屋、土地、船舶等—汇总而成，每年总计达1500万英镑。剩下的每年工资约为2500万英镑。

佩蒂给当时的政府的建议是相应地转移税收负担。于是，国内生产总值（GDP）诞生了。它的现代表述是由西蒙·库兹涅茨在1934年为美国国会报告精心设计的，由于不适合衡量社会进步或福利而受到了批评。然而，这是各国最为追求的指标。

这种警告从一开始就得到了承认。现代公式可能没有考虑外部因素、非市场交易、非货币经济、质量改善或财富分配。当前的经济增长指标(包括GDP)可能认为每一项支出都是积极的，而不区分增进福利和减少福利的活动。即使是1984年的博帕尔天然气灾难也能通过重建提高GDP。

人们也很少认识到个人收入的分配及其重大的社会影响。

于是一些替代方法出现了。在20世纪80年代早期有人提出了一种能力方法，关注一个国家的人民所享有的功能性能力，在Severine Deneulin和Lila Shahani的《2009年人类发展和能力方法导论：自由和能动》中进行了探讨。1989年由John B Cobb和Herman Daly定义的可持续经济福利指数也被用来考虑其他因素，如不可再生资源的消耗。

Don’t GDP, Be Happy

The better known concept of gross national happiness (GNH) was formulated into a framework in 2005 by Med Jones (). The World Bank has defined ‘comprehensive wealth’, taking into account the income generated along with the associated costs, to provide a deeper insight into economic well-being and sustainability of the progress path.

Meanwhile, Canada tops up its GDP figures with a per-capita sum of key elements that include natural, social and human capital. created a ‘green GDP’ in 2006, considering environmental factors for GDP calculations. Britain surveyed happiness in addition to GDP in 2010, and New Zealand adopted a‘well-being’ budget in May 2019.

For India, there are three key measures we could explore. First, to measure the destruction of natural and social capital. A qualitative adjustment of GDP assessments, with linkages built to recognise how much incremental social and natural capital such economic activities build, may be looked at.

One metric, the ‘genuine progress indicator’ (GPI), takes an exsting GDP data set, and adds in corrections for various social and environmental factors such as inequality, pollution costs and underemployment.

Such corrections, at the very least, would enable us to showcase market failures hidden by the overlying GDP numbers, and then instigate government action — such as banning polluting industries — for mitigation. Results from these corrections are revealing.

Global GDP has increased three times since 1950. However, economic welfare, as defined by GPI, has actually decreased in net terms. Dividing this by population could give a true picture of economic outcome. Global GPI per capita peaked in 1978 — coincidentally, the same period when the global ecological footprint exceeded the global biocapacity to sustain life.

不要GDP，要快乐

众所周知的国民幸福总值（GNH）概念是由Med Jones于2005年提出的。世界银行已经定义了“综合财富”，考虑到产生的收入和相关的成本，以便更深入地了解经济福祉和进步道路的可持续性。

与此同时，加拿大的GDP数据以人均包括自然资本、社会资本和人力资本在内的关键要素的总和居于首位。在2006年创造了一个“绿色GDP”，考虑到计算GDP的环境因素。英国在2010年调查了除GDP之外的幸福感，新西兰在2019年5月通过了“幸福”预算。

对印度来说，我们可以探讨三项关键措施。第一，衡量自然资本和社会资本的破坏程度。可以考虑对GDP评估进行定性调整，建立联系，以确认此类经济活动所建立的社会和自然资本增量。

一个度量，即“真正的进步指标”（GPI），采用了现有的GDP数据集，并增加了各种社会和环境因素的修正，例如不平等、污染成本和就业不足。

这样的修正，至少可以让我们展示出被过多的GDP数字所掩盖的市场失灵，然后促使政府采取行动——比如禁止污染工业——来缓解这种状况。这些修正的结果是有启发性的。

自1950年以来，全球GDP增长了三倍。然而，根据政府采购指数的定义，经济福利实际上在净值方面有所下降。用人口来划分这一数字可以真实地反映出经济结果。全球人均GPI在1978年达到顶峰——巧合的是，同一时期，全球生态足迹超过了维持生命的全球生物承载力。

Giving greater priority to development indicators can be explored. The human development index (HDI), developed by Mahbub ul Haq in 1990, emerged as a composite index of life expectancy at birth, adult literacy rate and standard of living, and is now complemented by numerous composite indices: inequality-adjusted HDI, gender inequality index, gender development index, etc. A shift in economic policies, away from GDP generation, and towards improving development indicators, is long overdue.

Finally, we must continue to measure GDP. It remains an ingenious tool to measure economic growth. But a change in approach is necessary.

In the words of economist Simon Kuznets, ‘Distinctions must be kept in mind between quantity and quality of growth, between costs and returns, and between the short and long run. Goals for more growth should specify more growth of what and for what.’ Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ would suddenly be more visible, and be skewed towards a direction of focusing on well-being.

我们可以探讨更优先重视发展指标。人类发展指数（HDI）是由Mahbub ul Haq于1990年制定的，它是一个出生预期寿命、成人识字率和生活水平的综合指数，如今还补充了许多组合指数：经调整的不平均人类发展指数、性别不平等指数、性别发展指数等。经济政策的转变，远离了国内生产总值的产生和发展指标的改善早就应该开始了。

最后，我们必须继续衡量GDP。它仍然是衡量经济增长的巧妙工具。但方法上的改变是必要的。

用经济学家西蒙•库兹涅茨的话来说，必须牢记增长的数量和质量、成本和回报、短期和长期之间的区别。更多增长的目标应该明确更多增长的内容和目的。亚当•斯密的“看不见的手”将突然变得更明显，并向追求幸福感的方向倾斜。

 以下是《印度经济时报》网站读者评论：

译文来源：三泰虎    http://www.santaihu.com/48957.html       译者：Joyceliu

Raj Tillan

makes a good CV for finance minister post or at least RBI governor

为财政部长或至少印度储备银行行长提供良好的简历。

Yashodhan Muzumdar

yes now BJP should introduce new methods of measurement of GDP.Whatever index you give whether HDI or happiness index still reality will be same that job losses, reduction in sales or production, fall in exports over 6 years, no major investments in 6 years, degrowth in savings, fall in farm income etc.

是的，现在人民党应该引入新的GDP测量方法。无论你给出的是HDI还是幸福指数，现实情况都是一样的：失业、销售或生产减少、出口下降超过6年、6年内没有重大投资、储蓄减少、农业收入下降等等。

Mr.CoolGuy Sengupta

"The writer is a BJP MP" LOL look who we have elected �

“作者是人民党议员”哈哈看我们都推选了谁。

Mr.CoolGuy Sengupta

Idiotic article.

愚蠢的文章。

H K Doshi

GDP is very important parameter to gauge overall economic growth. However low GDP is not bad but it signify low inflation. But we do not have only problem of low GDP but reduction in overall demand and consumption, which could be due to local and global uncertainty.

GDP是衡量整体经济增长的重要指标。然而，低GDP并非坏事，但它意味着低通胀。但我们不仅面临国内生产总值低的问题，而且还有整体需求和消费下降的问题，这可能是由于本地和全球的不确定性。

Realdeshbhakt

When modi and shah are implementing tota tarian policies in India,who the hell needs economy?Our bank accoutns are now controlled by govt,our data is with govt.This is too much concentration of power in hands of bureaucrats.The illiterate voters are enthusiastic about all this because they think only rich indians will be punished by non corrupt modi-shah(while they are most corrupt politicians in india in last 70 yrs).Pretty soon we will have social credit score and anyone who criticizes govt will be pauper within seconds

当莫迪和沙阿在印度实施主义政策时，谁需要经济？我们的银行账户现在由政府控制，我们的数据是由政府提供的。官僚手中的权力太多集中。文盲选民对这一切充满热情，因为他们认为只有富有的印度人才会受到不腐败的莫迪沙阿的惩罚（但他们是印度70年来最腐败的政治家）。很快我们就会有社会信用评分，任何批评政府的人都会在几秒钟内成为穷光蛋。

Jaspinder Singh

This article is written by BJP MP as mentioned in the disclaimer. They want us to believe that GDP is not important anymore.

如免责声明所述，本文是人民党议员撰写的。他们希望我们相信GDP不再重要。

Prakash Ramiah

Also after 70 years,wealth of one percent population holds 52 percent of wealth,of which top 10 individuals hold 77 percent or 35 percent wealth.

在70年后，百分之一人口的财富占有52%的财富，其中前十名个人占有77%或35%的财富。

RMB

welfare enhancing vs welfare reducing - these two terms need to be discriminated while defining developmental index.

福利增加与福利减少—在定义发展指数时，这两个术语需要区别对待。