Growth is useful, but it is not self-interpreting. A rising aggregate can coexist with a shrinking sense of possibility: the economy is bigger, and yet the rent still takes a third of the pay packet and the commute grows longer each year.
The better question is what expansion makes newly possible. Secure homes, shorter journeys, healthier streets, work with room to improve. These are not luxuries added after growth; they are what growth is for.
Measuring what people can do
Several cities now publish a short dashboard alongside their budgets: the time it takes to reach a doctor, the share of income left after housing, the number of days a park is usable. None is perfect, but together they describe a life more accurately than a single percentage.
An economy earns confidence when its headline direction becomes visible in ordinary life.
That is a demanding standard, because it cannot be met by good statistics alone. It requires the improvements to be felt: a bus that comes, a tenancy that lasts, a wage that goes further this year than last. Growth that cannot be felt is, for most people, only a rumour.