National Income and Product Accounts

The national income and product accounts (NIPA) are part of the national accounts of the United States. They are produced by the Bureau of Economic Analysis of the Department of Commerce. They are one of the main sources of data on general economic activity in the United States.

They use double-entry accounting to report the monetary value and sources of output produced in the country and the distribution of incomes that production generates. Data are available at the national and industry levels.

Seven summary accounts are published, as well as a much larger number of more specific accounts. The first summary account shows gross domestic product (GDP) and its major components. The table summarizes national income on the left (debit, revenue) side and national product on the right (credit, expense) side of a two-column accounting report. Thus the left side gives GDP by the income method, and the right side gives GDP by the expenditure method. The GDP is given on the bottom line of both sides of the report. GDP must have the same value on both sides of the account. This is because income and expenditure are defined in a way that forces them to be equal (see accounting identity). We show the 2003 table later in this article; we present the left side first for convenient screen display.

The U.S. report (updated quarterly) is available in several forms, including interactive, from links on the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) NIPA page. International norms for national accounting methods are given by the United Nations System of National Accounts. The NIPAs are prepared by the staff of the Directorate for National Economic Accounts within the BEA. The source data largely originate from public sources, such as government surveys and administrative data, and they are supplemented by data from private sources, such as data from trade associations (BEA 2008: 1–6).


Read more about National Income And Product Accounts:  Accounting For National Income: The Left Side of The Report

Famous quotes containing the words national, income, product and/or accounts:

    Not one of our national officers ever has had a dollar of salary. I retire on full pay!
    Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)

    The question for the country now is how to secure a more equal distribution of property among the people. There can be no republican institutions with vast masses of property permanently in a few hands, and large masses of voters without property.... Let no man get by inheritance, or by will, more than will produce at four per cent interest an income ... of fifteen thousand dollars] per year, or an estate of five hundred thousand dollars.
    Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)

    Whenever a taboo is broken, something good happens, something vitalizing.... Taboos after all are only hangovers, the product of diseased minds, you might say, of fearsome people who hadn’t the courage to live and who under the guise of morality and religion have imposed these things upon us.
    Henry Miller (1891–1980)

    ... by and large, wife-changing and high office are not compatible. This inequity accounts for the many dull women in Washington and is the cause of much smug complacency on the distaff side of political marriages.
    Barbara Howar (b. 1934)