Health 'poverty' not captured in the famous GDP

The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a metric used to gauge a country’s economic success. Countries are rated based on how much of it they have. 

Governments rise and fall on the basis of the efficiency with which their economies generate wealth. However, the economic tool has serious misgivings, recognised even by one of those who found it, Belarusian-American economist Simon Kuznets. 

When asked to paint a realistic picture of a post-crash America stuck in an indefinite recession, he did a lot of “spade work”, but, from a conceptual standpoint, he desired something different. In a book GDP: A Brief But Affectionate History, the author warns that the GDP is a “artificial construct”, a made-up entity, a relic of the industrial revolution.

Like many, I am always stunned by the “fandango” and “public ritual” that surrounds its quarterly release. Even when the data is reportedly within the margin of error, and is routinely amended, we still infuse it with as much meaning as a priest does his liturgies. Perhaps that’s why the book Economics: The User’s Guide casts a sly glance over our economic assumptions. 

One of GDP’s major flaws is its inability to “measure” services. It covers spending for environmental protection, healthcare and education, but not levels of environmental cleanliness, health or education. 

It accounts for the expense of buying pollution-control equipment, but doesn’t consider whether the air and water are cleaner or filthy. GDP includes medical spending but doesn’t show if life expectancy or infant/maternal mortality have increased or decreased.

It tracks education spending but doesn’t address how many can read, write, or perform basic math. It’s illogical to say if Nairobi is densely populated by people from the rural neighbourhoods and experiences a surge in housing units construction activity, the rural-urban migration was thus economically beneficial.

It is equally wrong to claim that, based on some GDP data, Kenya is now the continent’s sixth wealthiest economy, when our people are still battling disease, systemic vulnerability, healthcare system inadequacy, and, most significantly, poverty.

Our poverty rate is 32.4 per cent. The impact of poverty trickles down to health, resulting in “healthcare poverty”, as demonstrated by the national health indices: The infant mortality rate is 34.056 deaths per 1000 live births.

The intersection between poverty and health hasn’t received attention since the former isn’t regarded a disruption of normal physiologic function, little resources are allocated to combating it, proposed solutions are wrongheaded, and concerns with expert-driven top-down decision making abound. 

 -The writer is a life scientist and Global Fellow at Moving Worlds Institute.