structural:scholar_edition, structural:summarization
History

The modern concept of GDP was first developed by Simon Kuznets for a 1934 U.S. Congress report, where he warned against its use as a measure of welfare (see below under limitations and criticisms). After the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, GDP became the main tool for measuring a country's economy. At that time gross national product (GNP) was the preferred estimate, which differed from GDP in that it measured production by a country's citizens at home and abroad rather than its "resident institutional units" (see OECD definition above). The switch from GNP to GDP in the United States occurred in 1991. The role that measurements of GDP played in World War II was crucial to the subsequent political acceptance of GDP values as indicators of national development and progress. A crucial role was played here by the U.S. Department of Commerce under Milton Gilbert where ideas from Kuznets were embedded into institutions.