Diane Coyle educates us on the History of GDP

On Thursday 6^th March, students of the Epsom College Economics and Enterprise Society travelled to the acclaimed Eton College, where we were educated on the measurement of economic and social progress by Diane Coyle OBE. Mrs Coyle is a freelance economist and author of the newly published GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History. Her talk consisted primarily about the shortcomings of GDP as a measurement of economic and social growth; she brought to our attention the extent of unrecorded economic activity including the informal and intangible economy. For example, the disregard of housework: if we included housework in GDP, our economy may be nearly double the size, however the government discount it on the grounds that it’s too difficult to record. The second half of her talk consisted of possible alternatives to GDP, which included Human Development Index, Happiness, or measuring what is important to the population. What fascinated me the most was the measurement of happiness. She noted that in Bhutan, instead of calculating GDP, the government measure Gross National Happiness (it’s even illegal to mention GDP). This evaluation of happiness is an attempt to unveil the quality of life using not only economic terms, but psychological terms, which seems only fitting – social welfare should be accounted for when assessing the extent to success of an economy. A booming economy with an unhappy population may not represent full potential or achievement. Ultimately, Diane’s conclusions that we should measure economic activity (GDP), social welfare, and sustainability were thoroughly convincing, and has certainly made me think more about the social and psychological sides of economics.