A widely accepted measure of a country’s economic performance is its GDP, which is the total market value of all final goods and services produced in a particular country within a year. The GDP measures the productive resources of a country and does not, therefore, include such payments as social security which are not the result of genuine production but rather a transfer of money from one area of society, i.e. the government, to another.

GDP is often used for the purposes of measuring the standard of living of a country. More specifically, the standard of living is derived by dividing the total production of a country (GDP) by its population(GDP per capita). This figure helps compare the quality of life of different countries, and provides a basic measure of the economic strength of a particular society as well as a comparative measure by which a country can evaluate its economic progress.