Every Saturday I do something that may surprise people. I turn to the Business sections of the print newspapers to which I subscribe. Not first to the markets. Not to Bay Street. Not to the latest GDP figures.
I turn to the death notices – the obituaries or obits. And over many years I have noticed something curious.
The Business section is filled with stories celebrating productivity, economic growth, investment, mergers, corporate performance and wealth creation. Turn a few pages and you encounter something entirely different.
Lives.
The death notices follow a remarkably consistent pattern.
We learn where someone was born; who their parents were; the siblings they loved; the children and grandchildren they cherished.
We read about cottages, sailboats, curling clubs, volunteer work, bridge games, favourite fishing spots and family holidays. Sometimes we learn where they worked. Occasionally we learn the highest position they attained.
Often, we discover the qualities people admired in them: their humour; their generosity; their patience, their craftsmanship, their devotion.
Rarely do we learn how much they contributed to GDP. Almost never do we discover how much productivity they generated. No obituary proudly reports that the deceased increased national output by 0.00003 percent.
Nobody remembers that they successfully maximized quarterly shareholder value.
No family writes: “she consistently exceeded productivity targets and significantly enhanced Canada’s competitiveness.”
The omission – to me – is striking.
Modern public policy increasingly treats productivity as the central measure of national success. Governments worry constantly about economic growth. Think tanks publish reports on labour productivity. Editorials warn about Canada’s declining competitiveness.
Economists quite properly remind us that higher productivity ultimately finances better schools, hospitals, pensions and living standards.
None of this is wrong. Productivity matters enormously. But death notices suggest something equally important. They reveal what people actually remember.
The final accounting of a human life is conducted in a different currency.
People remember kindness. Reliability. Curiosity. Friendship. Mentorship. Family. Community.
The ability to repair anything. The annual camping trip. The fishing boat. The cabin at the lake. The piano. The laugh. The neighbour who always showed up. The grandfather who never missed a hockey game.
Even careers are remembered differently than economists describe them.
People rarely write that someone “maximized organizational efficiency.”
Instead, they say:
“She loved teaching.”
“He took pride in building things.”
“She cared deeply for her patients.”
The occupation matters. The contribution matters more.
Economist Diane Coyle has written thoughtfully about GDP and the limits of economic measurement. GDP tells us what is bought and sold. It tells us surprisingly little about what ultimately makes life meaningful.
The death notices take that argument one step further. They are society’s unofficial replacement for GDP. Not because they measure economic output.
But because they reveal what surviving families believe was worth mentioning; and remarkably little of it is economic.
This does not mean productivity is unimportant. Without productive economies, many of the lives celebrated in those notices would have been harder, poorer and shorter.
Economic growth creates possibilities. It is not itself the purpose.
The obituary quietly reminds us of the distinction. Means become confused with ends. GDP allows us to build hospitals.
The obituary remembers the nurse.
Economic growth pays for schools.
The obituary remembers the teacher.
Productivity builds cottages.
The obituary remembers summers at the cottage.
One supports the other. Neither replaces it.
Perhaps this is why I enjoy reading the death notices in the Business section.
The juxtaposition is almost purposeful.
On one page we read about what makes economies flourish. On the next we read about what makes lives flourish.
The two are connected but they are not the same.
Obituaries reveal preferences.
Economists often distinguish between what people say they value and what their actions reveal they value. An obituary is written by the people who knew someone best, after there is no further incentive to impress employers, markets or society.
It is perhaps the purest statement of what families believe mattered in a person’s life. And almost invariably, they choose to remember relationships, character, service, curiosity, humour and love—not productivity. That makes the contrast with the surrounding Business sections all the more striking.
If economists from another planet tried to understand humanity only by reading our productivity statistics, they would conclude that production was our highest value.
If they then read our obituaries, they would hopefully reach a very different conclusion.
They would discover that when all the work is done, the markets have closed, the balance sheets have been filed and the careers have ended, we remember something else entirely.
Not what people produced – but who they were.
Perhaps that is the final lesson hidden in the Saturday Business section. The economy gives us the opportunity to live well.
Our obituaries tell us whether we did.