پارسی، ترجمه و ویرایش

ترجمۀ اقتصادی - متن ۶

Economic Growth

The growth rate of a variable is its percentage increase per annum. To define economic growth, we must specify both the variable we wish to measure and the period over which we wish to measure its rate of change. GDP and GNP measure the total output and total income of an economy. In particular, GDP and GNP are very incomplete measures of economic output; it is difficult to account for the introduction of new products; and there is no direct relation between GDP and happiness.

GDP measures the net output or value added of an economy by measuring goods and services purchased with money. It omits output which is not bought or sold and therefore is unmeasured. The two most important omissions are leisure and pollution.

In most industrial countries, the length of an average work week has fallen by at least ten hours a week since 1990. In choosing to work fewer hours per week, people reveal that the extra leisure is worth at least as much as the extra goods that could have been produced by working harder. But when people decide to swap washing machines for extra leisure, recorded GDP is reduced; hence GDP understates the true economic output of the economy. Conversely, the output of pollution reduces the net economic welfare that the economy is producing and ideally should be subtracted from GDP.

Including leisure in GDP would have increased recorded GDP in both 1870 and 1990. Since the value of leisure has probably increased less quickly than measured output, which increased ninefold in the UK and 90-fold in Japan, over the same period, this would tend to reduce the rate of growth of a more comprehensive output measure.

The object of all economic activity is to provide people with the highest possible real incomes or standard of living.