Measuring National Income and Growth in Resource-Rich, Income-Poor Countries

In the decade leading to the recent
commodity boom, which peaked in 2007-08, several
resource-rich, low-income countries displayed high rates of
gross domestic product (GDP) growth while social indicators
did not improve significantly. It is well known that, in
itself, the widely tracked GDP may not be the most relevant
summary of aggregate economic performance in all places at
all times. This note suggests that for countries with
significant exhaustible natural resources and important
foreign-investor presence, adjusted net national income
(aNNI), can usefully complement GDP to assess economic progress.