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.

    人并不单单为了GDP而活。一项最新的报道强烈要求统计学家们抓住可以显示人们生活指标的数据。

    美国人、法国人、印度人和加纳人有多富有呢？据一名经济学家的最简单的回答，是平均到每个国家每个公民的国内生产总值，即GDP.为了便于你比较数据，他将它们统统转化成美元形式，或市场交易比率，再或更精确一点，采用足够世界上贫困地区的人们理发、打的的同等购买力比率。

    可以确定一点，这将提供给你一个公平的指示物质资料生活水平的导向：总体上来说，美国人和法国人要比印度人和××人富裕很多。但是，你可能会疑问，正如经济学家必须知道的，这并不是全部的事实。美国的人均GDP比法国高，可是，法国人工作的时间要少一点，所以，法国人就真的要比美国人穷？一个印度人可能非常非常的穷困，但他会说自己是快乐的；一个美国人或许足够富裕但也足够厌倦。GDP只是被设计用来衡量一个国家的商品和服务的价值，甚至，连这个它都没法表示精确。一个人他感觉有多幸福还要依据一些GDP不能显示的事情，比如他的健康或者他有没有一份工作。长久以来，环境学家一直在抱怨，他们认为GDP视掠夺地球为一道加法题（通过作为结果的贸易出口量）而不是一道减法题（如森林破坏）.

    正因如此，近几年，经济学家们一直在研究其他测量富裕的标准，甚至说幸福，它曾经被视为在数量上很晦涩的一个概念。在众多确信政府的统计学家们应该加入到这一行列的人中就有法国总统尼古拉斯·萨科奇。去年9月14号的一次委员会上，他提出了自己的观点，据会议的记录显示，这次的委员会有25名杰出的社会科学家组成，其中5人获得过诺贝尔经济学奖。这个团队的主席同时身为摘得桂冠的一员，约瑟夫·施蒂格利兹说，这份292页的报道是废除"GDP崇拜"的信号。萨科奇宣称，法国国家统计局应该扩大自己的见识。

    委员会将它的工作划分为三个部分。第一部分处理关于将GDP作为富有测量指标的常见的批评。GDP无视资本商品的贬值，因此会高估产品的价值。而且，产品的价值是基于市场价格的，但是，并不是每样东西都有价格。这样的一份清单所包含的东西要远远超过市场里所真正有的数量。没有通过市场途径提供的服务的价值，诸如，国家健康保健、教育、家政服务以及不被付费的家长对孩子的教育，也被转嫁了-- 采用经常不确定的推测来估计--或者被省略，即使私人健康保健和办学、房租以及孩子照顾被确切地测量过。

    报道还提到，政府统计学家们应该关注家庭持有的收入、消费和财富而不是整个的产量。所有的这些调整会产生一定的影响。委员会发现，2005年，法国真正的人均GDP是美国的73%.可是，一旦政府公共服务、家庭财产和空闲时间加进去的话，差距就缩小了：法国的家庭财产是他们的对手美国家庭的可支配收入的87%.萨科奇会如此热心也就不足为奇。

    紧跟高品质生活

    第二部分，委员会转向"生活质量"的评判标准。这些标准试图通过超越一项单一的经济资源的指令来抓住富有。其中一项为评定人们的主观意义上的富有--它被划分为对生活总体上的评价（一项"生活阶梯"的得分）和时时刻刻积极和消极情绪的流动。多年以来，研究人员因为一个显而易见的矛盾而钻了牛角尖：持续增长的收入并不会让人们长时间里感觉更幸福。实际上，超越收入，对主观幸福感能起作用的因素，从健康、婚姻状况和年龄到对腐化的洞察力受到了更多的研究。失业的人报出较低的得分，即使计算时包括了他们较低的收入。失业远比钱包对人的打击严重。

    第三部分，报道测试了未来一代的富有感。当今活着的人将要经历不可再利用和其他自然资源、机器、建筑物和社会机构的一批货物。他们孩子的人身资本（技能等等）将依靠今天在教育和研究上的投资。假如未来的一代能至少和今天的人一样富有的话，经济互动才能够持续下去。想要找到单一的指标来掌握报道里囊括的全部这些似乎太过雄心勃勃了。那听起来不错。从一个方面来看，统计学家们不得不对环境和信的建筑物的相对价值进行估算，而且，不仅仅是当今的环境和建筑物，还应该是多年以后的。可能，参照广泛的数据是比较明智的。

    委员会的一些成员相信，经济危机和萧条已使得越来越多的官方数据变得越发的急需。他们认为，如果经济市场和决策领导层更少地被GDP 固定，还会有更少的欣快。那似乎很难达成。而股票市场索引、咆哮的房价以及低水平的通货膨胀确实更多地满足了银行家们和借贷者们被夸大的富有感。

    就它自身的权利来讲，扩大官方数据是一个不错的想法。一些国家也已经开始实施--值得一提的，比如小小的不丹国。虽然，那颇有风险。报道通过强调公众一定深信官方数据，为更广阔的富有的指标辩护。这是如此，统计学家们是独立于政府这一事实使它变得更加重要。露齿微笑的政治家们告诉人们有多幸福的思想事实上是赞成严格统治而使人失去人性的。另外的风险是，指标的增值可能会给利益团队带去好处，促使他们挑选出扩大他们的悲惨情况的数据，并以此分得国家馅饼中更大的一块。但是，这些情况是刚开始的阶段会出现的。同时，已经被考虑在内。