Beyond GDP

Economic statistics are used for deciding spending priorities and set levels of tax. They have a fundamental influence on the lives of people, and yet few know what they even measure.

These statistics also attempt to measure something intangible – the size of the economy, living standards and productivity. These are all abstract ideas, and great care needs to be taken to ensure that we are including everything that is important.

If we are to have statistics that measure what is important and drive policy making towards addressing those issues, then we need to ensure that the widest range of people have a say in what we measure and how it is presented.

Women have historically been ignored when formulating economic policy and the statistics that we use show this. Gross Domestic Product is still a statistic that is used for measuring growth in the economy and so is fundamental to decision making, yet it is a statistic that is recognised to miss a lot of what is important. Most notably for women it does not attempt to understand the contribution of unpaid work to a healthy, functioning economy.

The Women’s Budget Group ran workshops with a wide range of women’s organisations to enable discussion and learning about what economic statistics mean and what is important for development work so that the experiences of women are seen.

Suggestions for development are aimed at policy makers, statisticians and researchers. They cover not only the pro

• Work with organisations of people that carry out unpaid care work to establish ways of measuring the contribution they make in a helpful way.
• Prioritise measures of wellbeing that link to human rights and understand the consequences of dissatisfaction for any wellbeing measure.
• Ensure that any statistic that shows a significant difference between men and women in presented in a disaggregated form.
• Ensure that people and their contributions are central to any report on the economy.

Engagement with users and stakeholders needs to be a top priority of researchers, statisticians and policy experts. This leads to a better understanding of needs and therefore better statistics for the public good.

Read the full report