Finally, an item such as the political freedom enjoyed by the nation's
citizens is not included in the GPI because it is not the aim of the GPI to
measure all welfare-related factors. As already stressed, the GPI is confined
to measuring the total economic welfare generated by economic
activity. It is confined in this way because one of the purposes of the
GPI is to determine whether economic activity is increasing benefits
more than costs—that is, to determine whether the marginal benefits
of GDP growth are higher or lower than the marginal costs.