Gross Domestic Product Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Gross Domestic Product - Essay Example The results and data concerning the growth of GDP come along with major influences on decisions made by both private and public policy makers and economists. GDP is based on survey and approximations of data collected over specified a duration (Ang et al. 2006). Quarterly and annual GDP approximates are extrapolated from economic survey and census data recorded from economic sectors like manufacture shipments, housing rates, and retail sales. GDP is a measure of the flow of services and goods produced within the economy market; these are products and services traded for cash. Although some non-market products are included in the data used to compute the GDP, numerous vital bits of data undergo omission from the census data used to compute GDP. Some of the vital information data include countries expenses in bettering healthcare, expenses of combating rising crime and emergency housing due to unforeseen occurrences among others. Such omissions weaken the reliability of GDP as an indic ator of progress (Islam & Clarke 2002). Information and expectations about the growth of gross development product come along with great influence notably echoed by numerous influential and interest groups. Developing countries tend to lay too much trust in the results of GDP as a reflector of their economic and social well fare (Kubiszewski et al. 2013). Since 1960, scores of scholars have expressed negative sentiments on the use of interpretations computed from the calculation of GDP as a proxy for social wellbeing. Since the creation of GDP, respectable economists have stressed that GDP is a measure of the activity of the economy and not the economy’s wellbeing. Scholars have further cautioned against the equation of GDP with social well-being and economic growth.