Gross Domestic Product - Determining GDP - Expenditure Approach

Expenditure Approach

" All expenditure incurred by individuals during 1 year . "

In economics, most things produced are produced for sale, and sold. Therefore, measuring the total expenditure of money used to buy things is a way of measuring production. This is known as the expenditure method of calculating GDP. Note that if you knit yourself a sweater, it is production but does not get counted as GDP because it is never sold. Sweater-knitting is a small part of the economy, but if one counts some major activities such as child-rearing (generally unpaid) as production, GDP ceases to be an accurate indicator of production. Similarly, if there is a long term shift from non-market provision of services (for example cooking, cleaning, child rearing, do-it yourself repairs) to market provision of services, then this trend toward increased market provision of services may mask a dramatic decrease in actual domestic production, resulting in overly optimistic and inflated reported GDP. This is particularly a problem for economies which have shifted from production economies to service economies.

Read more about this topic:  Gross Domestic Product, Determining GDP

Famous quotes containing the words expenditure and/or approach:

    The bread-winner must toil as in the fruitless effort of a troubled dream while the expenditure of an uneducated wife discounts the income in the lack of understanding to discern the broad possibilities of an intelligent economy.
    Anna Eugenia Morgan (1845–1909)

    I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.
    Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986)