Our three-decade recession

The American quality of life has been going downhill since 1975.

By Robert Costanza
March 10, 2008

The news media and the government are fixated on the fact that the U.S. economy may be headed into a recession -- defined as two or more successive quarters of declining gross domestic product. The situation is actually much worse. By some measures of economic performance, the United States has been in a recession since 1975 -- a recession in quality of life, or well-being.

How can this be? One first needs to understand what GDP measures to see why it is not an appropriate gauge of our national well-being.