They say that all that can be measured doesn’t necessarily count, and all that counts cannot always be measured. But Britain’s statisticians are working on producing better measurements of things that really do matter to the public.
Rob Kent-Smith, the head of GDP at the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which calculates the metric in Britain, said the organisation was working to improve the measurement of GDP. The government statistics body also produces separate reports on the measures GDP fails to capture, such as wellbeing, environmental accounts, the value of unpaid work, and the distribution of income and wealth.
“It’s an ever-moving feast and continually a game of catch up and get ahead,” he says, adding: “You need to look at a broader range of indicators to look at what’s going on. But if question is what’s the best single indicator, GDP is probably best we have at the moment.”