Which best expresses the passage's overall claim?

GDP measures paid production well; the danger lies in treating it as a measure of a good life. (The passage lists the blind spots, then grants that GDP does its narrow job well, and locates the failure "not in the gauge but in the reverence.")

According to the passage, what happens to GDP when you pay someone to cook a meal you used to cook yourself?

It rises, although the work performed has not changed. (The text says: "Hire someone to do the same tasks and the figure rises, though the work performed has not changed.")

What does the passage imply about spending to rebuild after a flood?

It raises GDP even though it only restores what was already there. (Repair after a flood "registers as activity", and the passage concludes that damage, once paid for, looks like progress.)

As used in the third paragraph, "reverence" means

treating something with far too much respect (The failure is not in the gauge, the tool, but in how people regard it. Reverence is deep, uncritical respect.)

Counting What Counts: Level 5 Reading Comprehension Questions

Gross domestic product counts the market value of everything a country produces in a year. It is the number governments cite, the number headlines shorten to growth, and the number that decides, in practice, whether a decade is judged a success. It is also, by construction, a strange instrument.

GDP counts transactions, so it is blind to work nobody is paid for. A parent raising a child, a neighbor sitting with an elderly friend, a meal cooked at home: all invisible. Hire someone to do the same tasks and the figure rises, though the work performed has not changed. It is equally indifferent to what the spending is for. Repairing a city after a flood, treating illness caused by dirty air, replanting a burned forest, each registers as activity. Damage, once paid for, looks like progress.

Its defenders make a fair reply. GDP was designed to measure production, not virtue, and it does that narrow job with unusual consistency across countries and decades. The failure is not in the gauge but in the reverence.

Still, a number kept because it is easy to measure will, given enough time, quietly redefine what a society treats as worth having.

Comprehension questions