NDP: Net domestic product is defined as "gross domestic product (GDP) minus depreciation of capital", similar to NNP.

[6]

GDP per capita: Gross domestic product per capita is the mean value of the output produced per person, which is also the mean income.

Gross domestic product (GDP) is defined as "the value of all final goods and services produced in a country in 1 year".[3]


Gross national product (GNP) is defined as "the market value of all goods and services produced in one year by labour and property supplied by the residents of a country."[4]


As an example, the table below shows some GDP and GNP, and NNI data for the United States:[5]

Measures of GDP typically exclude unpaid economic activity, most importantly domestic work such as childcare. This leads to distortions; for example, a paid nanny's income contributes to GDP, but an unpaid parent's time spent caring for children will not, even though they are both carrying out the same economic activity.

GDP takes no account of the inputs used to produce the output. For example, if everyone worked for twice the number of hours, then GDP might roughly double, but this does not necessarily mean that workers are better off as they would have less leisure time. Similarly, the impact of economic activity on the environment is not measured in calculating GDP.

Comparison of GDP from one country to another may be distorted by movements in exchange rates. Measuring national income at may overcome this problem at the risk of overvaluing basic goods and services, for example subsistence farming.

purchasing power parity

GDP does not measure factors that affect quality of life, such as the quality of the environment (as distinct from the input value) and security from crime. This leads to distortions - for example, spending on cleaning up an oil spill is included in GDP, but the negative impact of the spill on well-being (e.g. loss of clean beaches) is not measured.

GDP is the mean (average) wealth rather than median (middle-point) wealth. Countries with a skewed income distribution may have a relatively high per-capita GDP while the majority of its citizens have a relatively low level of income, due to concentration of wealth in the hands of a small fraction of the population. See .

Gini coefficient

GDP per capita (per person) is often used as a measure of a person's welfare. Countries with higher GDP may be more likely to also score high on other measures of welfare, such as life expectancy. However, there are serious limitations to the usefulness of GDP as a measure of welfare:


Because of this, other measures of welfare such as the Human Development Index (HDI), Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW), Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), gross national happiness (GNH), and sustainable national income (SNI) are used.[7]

Australian Bureau of Statistics, , 2000. This fairly large document has a wealth of information on the meaning of the national income and output measures and how they are obtained.

Australian National Accounts: Concepts, Sources and Methods

Historicalstatistics.org: Links to historical national accounts and statistics for different countries and regions

World Bank's Development and Education Program Website

- GDP by country - data available in CSV, Excel, JSON or XML formats

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