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Gross domestic product (GDP) is one of the most widely used indicators of economic prosperity, and it includes the total output of goods and services for final use produced by labor and capital located in the United States. Net domestic product (NDP) adjusts GDP for the consumption of capital goods and infrastructure, but neither measure accounts for changes in stocks of natural resources or in the aesthetic value of the environment. While it may be conceptually preferable in the context of sustainable development to use NDP as an indicator of economic prosperity, the movement of the two series is virtually identical. Either indicator shows that aggregate domestic output has more than doubled since 1970, after adjusting for inflation.1 At the same time, it is important to note that these traditional measures of economic output do not adequately represent related environmental and societal variables that are important to sustainable development. Some economic transactions included in GDP may reflect environmental and social costs (e.g., costs associated with protection against crime or with recovery efforts following natural disasters), rather than contributions to the Nation’s overall prosperity.
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1 This series is adjusted for inflation using chained 1992 dollars. For a discussion, see the “Preview of the Comprehensive Revision of the National Income and Product Accounts: BEA’s New Featured Measures of Output and Prices,” by J. Steven Landefeld and Robert Parker in the Survey of Current Business, July, 1995, pp. 31-38.
Link(s) to be added, when feasible, to data at level of detail suitable
for use at the community level.
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http://www.sdi.gov/indicators/lc_d_pro.htm Last Modified: May 13, 2002 |