Man does not live by GDP alone. A new report urges statisticians to capture what people do live by

    HOW well off are Americans? Frenchmen? Indians? Ghanaians? An economist's simplest answer is the gross domestic product, or GDP, per person of each country. To help you compare the figures, he will convert them into dollars, either at market exchange rates or （better） at purchasing-power-parity rates, which allow for the cheapness of, say, haircuts and taxi rides in poorer parts of the world.

    To be sure, this will give you a fair guide to material standards of living: the Americans and the French, on average, are much richer than Indians and Ghanaians. But you may suspect, and the economist should know, that this is not the whole truth. America's GDP per head is higher than France's, but the French spend less time at work, so are they really worse off? An Indian may be desperately poor and yet say he is happy; an American may be well fed yet fed up. GDP was designed to measure only the value of goods and services produced in a country, and it does not even do that precisely. How well off people feel also depends on things GDP does not capture, such as their health or whether they have a job. Environmentalists have long complained that GDP treats the despoliation of the planet as a plus （via the resulting economic output） rather than a minus （forests destroyed）.

    In recent years economists have therefore been looking at other measures of well-being-even "happiness", a notion that it once seemed absurd to quantify. Among those convinced that official statisticians should join in is Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president. On September 14th a commission he appointed last year, comprising 25 prominent social scientists, five with Nobel prizes in economics, presented its findings*. Joseph Stiglitz, the group's chairman and one of the laureates, said the 292-page report was a call to abandon "GDP fetishism". France's national statistics agency, Mr Sarkozy declared, should broaden its purview.

    The commission divided its work into three parts. The first deals with familiar criticisms of GDP as a measure of well-being. It takes no account of the depreciation of capital goods, and so overstates the value of production. Moreover, the value of production is based on market prices, but not everything has a price. The list of such things includes more than the environment. The worth of services not supplied through markets, such as state health care or education, owner-occupied housing or unpaid child care by parents, is "imputed"-estimated, using often rickety assumptions-or left out, even though private health care and schooling, renting and child-minding are directly measured.

    The report also argues that official statisticians should concentrate on households' incomes, consumption and wealth rather than total production. All these adjustments make a difference. In 2005, the commission found, France's real GDP per person was 73% of America's. But once government services, household production and leisure are added in, the gap narrows: French households had 87% of the adjusted income of their American counterparts. No wonder Mr Sarkozy is so keen.

    Sizing up the good life

    Next the commission turns to measures of the "quality of life". These attempt to capture well-being beyond a mere command of economic resources. One approach quantifies people's subjective well-being-divided into an overall judgment about their lives （a "ladder of life" score） and moment-by-moment flows of positive and negative feelings. For many years researchers had been spurred on by an apparent paradox: that rising incomes did not make people happier in the long run. Recent studies suggest, though, that countries with higher GDP per person do tend to have higher ladder-of-life scores. Exactly what, beyond income, affects subjective well-being-from health, marital status and age to perceptions of corruption-is much pored over. The unemployed report lower scores, even allowing for their lower incomes. Joblessness hits more than your wallet.

    Third, the report examines the well-being of future generations. People alive today will pass on a stock of exhaustible and other natural resources as well as machines, buildings and social institutions. Their children's human capital （skills and so forth） will depend on investment in education and research today. Economic activity is sustainable if future generations can expect to be at least as well off as today's. Finding a single measure that captures all this, the report concludes, seems too ambitious. That sounds right. For one thing, statisticians would have to make assumptions about the relative value of, say, the environment and new buildings-not just today, but many years from now. It is probably wiser to look at a wide range of figures.

    Some members of the commission believe that the financial crisis and the recession have made a broadening of official statistics more urgent. They think there might have been less euphoria had financial markets and policymakers been less fixated on GDP. That seems far-fetched. Stockmarket indices, soaring house prices and low inflation surely did more to feed bankers' and borrowers' exaggerated sense of well-being.

    Broadening official statistics is a good idea in its own right. Some countries have already started-notably, tiny Bhutan. There are pitfalls, though. The report justifies wider measures of well-being partly by noting that the public must have trust in official statistics. Quite so; which makes it all the more important that the statisticians are independent of government. The thought of grinning politicians telling people how happy they are is truly Orwellian. Another risk is that a proliferation of measures could be a gift to interest groups, letting them pick numbers that amplify their misery in order to demand a bigger share of the national pie. But these are early days. Meanwhile, get measuring.

    人并不單單為了GDP而活。一項最新的報道強烈要求統計學家們抓住可以顯示人們生活指標的數據。

    美國人、法國人、印度人和加納人有多富有呢？據一名經濟學家的最簡單的回答，是平均到每個國家每個公民的國內生產總值，即GDP.為了便于你比較數據，他將它們統統轉化成美元形式，或市場交易比率，再或更精確一點，采用足夠世界上貧困地區的人們理發、打的的同等購買力比率。

    可以確定一點，這將提供給你一個公平的指示物質資料生活水平的導向：總體上來說，美國人和法國人要比印度人和××人富裕很多。但是，你可能會疑問，正如經濟學家必須知道的，這并不是全部的事實。美國的人均GDP比法國高，可是，法國人工作的時間要少一點，所以，法國人就真的要比美國人窮？一個印度人可能非常非常的窮困，但他會說自己是快樂的；一個美國人或許足夠富裕但也足夠厭倦。GDP只是被設計用來衡量一個國家的商品和服務的價值，甚至，連這個它都沒法表示精確。一個人他感覺有多幸福還要依據一些GDP不能顯示的事情，比如他的健康或者他有沒有一份工作。長久以來，環境學家一直在抱怨，他們認為GDP視掠奪地球為一道加法題（通過作為結果的貿易出口量）而不是一道減法題（如森林破壞）.

    正因如此，近幾年，經濟學家們一直在研究其他測量富裕的標準，甚至說幸福，它曾經被視為在數量上很晦澀的一個概念。在眾多確信政府的統計學家們應該加入到這一行列的人中就有法國總統尼古拉斯·薩科奇。去年9月14號的一次委員會上，他提出了自己的觀點，據會議的記錄顯示，這次的委員會有25名杰出的社會科學家組成，其中5人獲得過諾貝爾經濟學獎。這個團隊的主席同時身為摘得桂冠的一員，約瑟夫·施蒂格利茲說，這份292頁的報道是廢除"GDP崇拜"的信號。薩科奇宣稱，法國國家統計局應該擴大自己的見識。

    委員會將它的工作劃分為三個部分。第一部分處理關于將GDP作為富有測量指標的常見的批評。GDP無視資本商品的貶值，因此會高估產品的價值。而且，產品的價值是基于市場價格的，但是，并不是每樣東西都有價格。這樣的一份清單所包含的東西要遠遠超過市場里所真正有的數量。沒有通過市場途徑提供的服務的價值，諸如，國家健康保健、教育、家政服務以及不被付費的家長對孩子的教育，也被轉嫁了-- 采用經常不確定的推測來估計--或者被省略，即使私人健康保健和辦學、房租以及孩子照顧被確切地測量過。

    報道還提到，政府統計學家們應該關注家庭持有的收入、消費和財富而不是整個的產量。所有的這些調整會產生一定的影響。委員會發現，2005年，法國真正的人均GDP是美國的73%.可是，一旦政府公共服務、家庭財產和空閑時間加進去的話，差距就縮小了：法國的家庭財產是他們的對手美國家庭的可支配收入的87%.薩科奇會如此熱心也就不足為奇。

    緊跟高品質生活

    第二部分，委員會轉向"生活質量"的評判標準。這些標準試圖通過超越一項單一的經濟資源的指令來抓住富有。其中一項為評定人們的主觀意義上的富有--它被劃分為對生活總體上的評價（一項"生活階梯"的得分）和時時刻刻積極和消極情緒的流動。多年以來，研究人員因為一個顯而易見的矛盾而鉆了牛角尖：持續增長的收入并不會讓人們長時間里感覺更幸福。實際上，超越收入，對主觀幸福感能起作用的因素，從健康、婚姻狀況和年齡到對腐化的洞察力受到了更多的研究。失業的人報出較低的得分，即使計算時包括了他們較低的收入。失業遠比錢包對人的打擊嚴重。

    第三部分，報道測試了未來一代的富有感。當今活著的人將要經歷不可再利用和其他自然資源、機器、建筑物和社會機構的一批貨物。他們孩子的人身資本（技能等等）將依靠今天在教育和研究上的投資。假如未來的一代能至少和今天的人一樣富有的話，經濟互動才能夠持續下去。想要找到單一的指標來掌握報道里囊括的全部這些似乎太過雄心勃勃了。那聽起來不錯。從一個方面來看，統計學家們不得不對環境和信的建筑物的相對價值進行估算，而且，不僅僅是當今的環境和建筑物，還應該是多年以后的。可能，參照廣泛的數據是比較明智的。

    委員會的一些成員相信，經濟危機和蕭條已使得越來越多的官方數據變得越發的急需。他們認為，如果經濟市場和決策領導層更少地被GDP 固定，還會有更少的欣快。那似乎很難達成。而股票市場索引、咆哮的房價以及低水平的通貨膨脹確實更多地滿足了銀行家們和借貸者們被夸大的富有感。

    就它自身的權利來講，擴大官方數據是一個不錯的想法。一些國家也已經開始實施--值得一提的，比如小小的不丹國。雖然，那頗有風險。報道通過強調公眾一定深信官方數據，為更廣闊的富有的指標辯護。這是如此，統計學家們是獨立于政府這一事實使它變得更加重要。露齒微笑的政治家們告訴人們有多幸福的思想事實上是贊成嚴格統治而使人失去人性的。另外的風險是，指標的增值可能會給利益團隊帶去好處，促使他們挑選出擴大他們的悲慘情況的數據，并以此分得國家餡餅中更大的一塊。但是，這些情況是剛開始的階段會出現的。同時，已經被考慮在內。