When federal finance minister Jim Flaherty recently announced changes to the rules governing mortgage approvals in Canada, he took a first step in recognizing we’ve been spending more than we’re making and increasing our debt loads in an unsustainable way. Debt rates have been soaring in Canada for a number of years but because we rely on narrow measures of economic well-being, such as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), this trend has gone largely unnoticed. If, instead, we were measuring our economic well-being in a more holistic way, we’d have recognized the unsustainable debt levels long ago and been able to take preventative measures.
But we didn’t and so debt levels in Canada are currently at an all time high. In fact, household debt in Canada was already at $1.3 trillion by 2008 and it’s been increasing annually by 4.7 per cent for the past 30 years, outpacing gains in personal disposable income. At the same time, Canadians are saving less than ever before. Our personal saving rate has been declining since the early 1980s, dropping from a high of 20.2 per cent in 1982 to a low of 1.2 per cent in 2005, with one third of us not committing anything to savings at all. The main cause of the rising debt and plummeting savings? Consumption – people are buying stuff with money they don’t actually have. As we pay for day-to-day expenses by racking up debt, we’re ironically fuelling the growth of Canada’s Gross Domestic Product. Sound backwards? That’s because it is. Using the GDP as a measure of the economic well-being of our nation has created a false sense of security and tricked us into thinking we’re doing better than we actually are.
The GDP, while useful as a measure of economic transactions, is often misused and misunderstood as a measure of economic well-being. It measures the value of all spending, but it doesn’t distinguish between spending that contributes to societal wellbeing and that which detracts from it. Thus, the more debt spending that occurs or the more crime that takes place, the more the GDP increases. Likewise, the GDP increases with automobile accidents, environmental disasters, obesity, liquidation of natural resources and problem gambling. Simon Kuznets, one of the principal architects of the international system of National Accounts (on which the GDP is based) warned the U.S. Congress in 1934 that “the welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income” as defined by the GDP. The GDP, while useful as a measure of the size of the economy, is misused and inappropriate as a measure of total well-being. The Genuine Progress Indicator or GPI, however, was designed as an alternative and more holistic measure of well-being.
Unlike the GDP, the GPI distinguishes between good spending and bad spending. The GPI increases when crime declines, fewer automobile accidents occur, people spend less time commuting, income equality increases and greenhouse gas emissions are reduced. Conversely, the GPI decreases if personal debt loads increase or spending on environmental disasters takes place.
If we were to redefine progress and measure Canada’s true well-being rather than simply tally our economic transactions, we would be recognizing many of the challenges we’re now facing much earlier and there would be a value placed on those things that increase societal well-being. The GPI could prove much more economically advantageous than the GDP and Flaherty could have perhaps saved himself from having to tighten mortgage regulations.
Amy was director of the Pembina Institute's public sector services group until 2010.
