How COVID has shone a light on the way we measure economies

A year after COVID-19 became a pandemic, the drumbeat of studies saying we need to overhaul how economies are measured is getting louder.

Vaccines are being rolled out; in some places, people are eating in restaurants again; even some cinemas are opening up. A year after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic, the world is slowly returning to a semblance of what it was before the coronavirus began its devastating march. And with trillions of dollars of stimulus measures acting like a financial shot in the arm of the global economy, stock markets have surged as forecasters such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development ramp up their projections for economic growth. But some economists fear that the underlying causes of the pandemic – among them our pursuit of never-ending economic growth at the expense of the world’s limited natural resources – have yet to be addressed.