2013
ISBN 9789264180666
111 pages

National Accounts at a Glance is designed to present the national accounts in a way that reflects the richness inherent in the data and the value it represents for analysts and policymakers. It responds to the Stiglitz Commission's recommendation that policymakers look beyond just GDP when they assess material well-being of citizens. 

In particular it uses national accounts data to show important findings about households and governments, including important series on gross adjusted household income and non-financial fixed assets of households, and among others, on general government expenditures by function.

The publication is broken down into six key chapters, and provides indicators related to GDP, income, expenditure, production, government and capital respectively.

Each of the series is presented on a two-page spread, with the page on the left providing information on the meaning, usage, and comparability of the data and the page on the right presenting data from 1998 onwards for the OECD countries as well as graphics highlighting differences among countries.

Two indicators, household adjusted disposable income and household final and actual consumption, presented in National Accounts at a Glance can be viewed below.

Disposable income as a concept is closer to the concept of income generally understood in economics, than either national income or GDP and reflects reallocations of national income across sectors, (income taxes, social contributions or social benefits other than social transfers in kind). It is mainly this reallocation that brings the concept of income closer to economic concept. An important variant of this concept exists, the adjusted disposable income, which additionally reallocates income from government and NPISHs to households to reflect social transfers in kind. These transfers reflect expenditures made by government or NPISHs on individual goods and services (health, education,...) on behalf of individual household. This variant provides an important mechanism for international comparisons of households income as it adjusts for the levels of individual goods and services indirectly "consumed" by households via taxation for example.

In most OECD economies Household final consumption typically reflect around 60% of GDP. It covers all purchases made by resident households to meet everyday needs (food, clothing, energy, transport, spending on health etc…) and also includes a number of imputed expenditures (such as owner-occupiers'  imputed rents.

Actual individual consumption allocates individual consumption expenditures of General Government and NPISHs to households, providing an important measure for cross-country comparisons, in particular for comparisons of material well being. Individual consumption expenditures of general government, are expenditures that benefit households directly, such as health care and education (and where there are often international differences in how households receive these services - e.g. via taxation, via direct payment).

Database

The online database edition of National Accounts at a Glance contains longer time series than the publication. Data are available as far back as 1970 for some countries.

How to obtain this publication

• For subcribers to the OECD iLibrary the WebBook is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/na_glance-2013-en 
• Readers can purchase the book in PDF and/or paper copy via the OECD Online Bookshop.
• Government officials can access the online database and the book in PDF via OLISnet.

Previous edition

National Accounts at a Glance 2011

• the database
• the WebBook 
• the OECD book in PDF and/or paper

Contacts

For further information, journalists are invited to contact the OECD's Media Relations Division on (33) 1 45 24 97 00 or news.contact@oecd.org;  others should contact the Statistics Directorate on stat.contact@oecd.org.