A better way to measure the nation’s wellbeing | Letter

Dr Jon Mulberg on why GDP isn't the best gauge of economic health

The use of alternative metrics to GDP has a long history within the environmental movement (Housework to green energy: the new markers of growth in rival metric to GDP, 19 November).

GDP was never meant to be a measure of national or even of economic wellbeing. It simply measures sales, and is always the same figure as national expenditure. The person who invented the measure - SimonKuznets - called it national income, which it also mirrors.