Comment

John Walsh: GDP is out of date – it’s time we found another way to measure economic growth

The universal metric is inherently gender biased and fails to take in other factors such as the environment and societal issues

A recent Oxfam report stated that GDP should be replaced by a set of metrics that ‘look at the whole picture’. Picture: Getty

Oxfam, the development charity, released a report at the start of this month calling for GDP as a measurement of economic growth to be scrapped on the basis that it was “anti-feminist and colonial because it sustains a framework of value creation and productivity that only counts what can be monetised”.

Not surprisingly, the right-wing press in the UK took aim at the report because allegedly it formed part of a broader ‘woke’ left-wing agenda. ...