For years，policy makers and economists have all used GDP to measure the growth of country. But this excessive focus on GDP can distort development incentives and lead to unintended consequences. Clearly， for a country to prosper， sufficient economic activity must be generated in order to employ greater numbers of people and to improve the overall standard of living. However， GDP was developed as a measure decades ago， and it has many shortcomings that can make it a poor measure of quality of life. Instead， economists and policy makers should focus on other indicators and develop new models for measuring a country’s development progress. And this is fully possible with today’s technology. GDP records all the financial transactions for products and services within a country. The first problem with this measure is that with many companies operating in multiple countries， the profits that is created do not necessarily stay within a country’s borders. In fact， a majority of the profits of multinational firms flows back to the country of origin. For instance， Nike may hire Chinese workers to produce its shoes， have stores in China to sell its products， and only Chinese customers buy from those stores. 90 percent of the economic activity happens in China and gets recorded in China’s GDP. However， the majority of the profits of Nike goes back to the owners in the United States even if none of the economic activity happens in the United States. The national wealth measure is therefore， distorted because it would seem that China is getting richer and the United States is getting poorer. Obviously， this is not the case. Secondly， GDP does not show distribution of income. A company that creates a lot of income from production does not show how that income is being distributed. The majority of profits actually go to very few individuals and that the income inequality is wide in China. Another problem with GDP as a measure for economic progress is that it only captures financial transactions. When a mother takes his kid to watch a movie， that activity is captured in GDP. But when she takes the same kid to play soccer in a park， that activity is not captured in GDP. However， going to the park to play socce rcould create a better quality of life than going to the movies. if the focus becomes overwhelmingly on GDP growth， policy makers would have more incentives to create more movie theaters than public parks. As the result， the quality of life could drop. The worst part about focusing on GDP is that it can actually create the conditions for a worse quality of life. The pollution that causes cancers， food poisoning， or birth defects actually adds to GDP growth because whenever people seek medical help and incur medical bills to pay for all these ailments， GDP grows. On the other hand， GDP doesn’t grow if people remain healthy and don’t seek medical help. Obviously， it is much better to have a healthier， cleaner society， but that will not create higher GDP growth. In summary， GDP can be used as a guide， but it should be considered alongside other factors and indicators that are important to developing a sustainable society. Other measurements that should be adopted include the happiness index which measures satisfaction with life， air quality index， pollution index， and life expectancy. GDP has been relied upon because it is fast and easy to gather that gross data and make simple comparisons across countries. But because of its many shortcomings， policy makers would achieve their development goals faster if they also used other ways to measure their progress.