Poverty, prosperity, and growth are often measured in monetary terms, most commonly as people’s income. But while monetary measures have some important advantages, they have the big disadvantage that they are abstract. In the worst case monetary measures – like GDP per capita – are so abstract that we forget what they are actually about: people’s access to goods and services.
The point of this text is to show why economic growth is important and how the abstract monetary measures tell us about the reality of people’s material living conditions around the world and throughout history:
In the first part I want to explain what economic growth is and why it is so difficult to measure.
Our World in Data
In the second part I will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of several measures of growth and you will find the latest data on several of these measures so that we can see what they tell us about how people’s material living conditions have changed.
What are these goods and services that I’m talking about?...
What is economic growth? And why is it so important?
Max Roser
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