During the Great Depression, American policy makers “had no reliable measure of economic activity.” The Senate commissioned a study, and the economist Simon Kuznets carried it out. In 1934 he delivered “National Income, 1929–1932” to Congress as Senate Document No. 124.
In the same report Kuznets warned: “The welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income.” He received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1971.