Introduction
This article exposes the hidden power mechanisms embedded in a seemingly neutral tool: national accounting. Gross Domestic Product (GDP), rather than reflecting a comprehensive picture of well-being, acts as a normative filter that promotes only market activities. This system marginalizes unpaid care work, women's contributions, and the value of the natural environment. By analyzing the thought of Marilyn Waring and Nancy Folbre, we examine the paradoxes of modern economics and new methods for valuing what has remained invisible to economic policy until now.
Marilyn Waring and the GDP Aporia: Why Does the System Ignore the Foundations of Life?
Marilyn Waring argues that GDP is not a neutral instrument but an ideological filter that recognizes as production only what passes through the market. The System of National Accounts (SNA) was designed to monitor market productivity, thereby systematically excluding unpaid domestic work and care. Nancy Folbre, a representative of feminist care economics, emphasizes that this work is based on intrinsic motivation and social bonds, making it vulnerable to exploitation because its fruits function as a quasi-public good.
Ignoring these spheres leads to a logical aporia: modern economic policy relies on a system that overlooks the necessary conditions for its own existence. If policy only takes seriously what is in the accounts, and the accounts ignore the foundations of well-being (care and nature), then such policy is, by definition, irrational. The solution to this trap must be either to move beyond the boundaries of GDP or to radically expand the definition of production.
Herman Daly and the Growth Trap: From Ecological Disasters to Time-Measurement Errors
Economist Herman Daly formulated the thesis of uneconomic growth, where the costs of natural capital degradation outweigh the gains from production. Current accounting generates absurd paradoxes: an ecological disaster can increase GDP through remediation spending while ignoring the permanent loss of the ecosystem. The response is the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA), which prioritizes physical resource balances over their uncertain monetary valuation.
Equally difficult is measuring domestic work time. Statistics clash here with the polyphonic nature of daily life—multitasking (e.g., simultaneous childcare and cooking) is a methodological nightmare that cannot be easily sliced into market categories. The result of this invisibility is the care penalty: a permanent loss of income and assets for those (primarily women) undertaking reproductive labor, which cements structural social inequalities.
New Models and Standards: From the Scandinavian Model to Amartya Sen’s Approach
The valuation of unpaid work oscillates between replacement cost (the market rate for the task) and opportunity cost (the caregiver's lost earnings). Different countries handle this challenge in various ways. The Scandinavian model actively socializes care and involves fathers, while the German model has historically preserved the division between breadwinner and domestic caregiver. Today, global business is beginning to internalize these issues, viewing the lack of care infrastructure as a balance-sheet risk.
New reporting standards, such as the European CSRD directive and ESRS standards, force corporations to disclose their impact on human and natural capital. Amartya Sen proposes the capabilities approach, which shifts the focus from income aggregates to people's actual freedom to live a dignified life. Three trends are visible on the horizon: the creation of satellite accounts, the pragmatic integration of care into corporate strategies, and a policy reorientation toward long-term resource protection.
Summary
Can we continue to believe in a growth model that measures progress while ignoring the foundations upon which it rests? An analysis of accounting's blind spots shows that without accounting for care work and natural capital, we are building a future on an illusion. It is time to look beyond the boundaries of GDP and recognize the wealth that escapes statistics. Otherwise, we will be doomed to moral and ecological bankruptcy, destroying the resources that sustain our lives and the economy.
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