National Income has a long history. Income has not always been clearly distinguished from wealth. Income is a flow that can only be measured over a period of time, such as a week, month, or year, whereas wealth refers to the value of a stock of assets that can be measured at a point of time. Attempts to estimate the Nation's Income go back over three centuries to the work of William Petty (1662). However, he was more concerned with measuring the wealth of the nation and taxable capacity than income. The same preoccupation with wealth rather than income is found a century later in Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations (1950). The extent to which macroeconomic data can be influenced by ideas, concepts, and definitions is vividly illustrated by the distinction that Smith introduced between ‘productive’ and ‘unproductive’ labor. Smith argued that only workers who produced goods, as distinct from services, should be regarded as productive because only goods could add to the stock of the nation's productive capital equipment. This distinction was followed by many classical economists in the early nineteenth century, including Karl Marx in Das Kapital (1867). In the international version of that system developed after the second world war under the auspices of the United Nations it is stated that: ‘All fields of productive activity are based on material production, which is primary in comparison with the activities rendering services. 

There are two statements marked as Assertion (A) and Reason (R). Mark your answer as per the options given below.

Assertion:  A higher level of GDP of a country will mean a greater well-being of the people of that country.
Reasoning: GDP which is the sum total of value of goods and services created within the geographical boundary of a country in a particular year gets distributed among the people as incomes (except for retained earnings).

Assertion (A) is not true but Reasoning (R) is correct.

The correct answer is option 4: Assertion (A) is not true but Reasoning (R) is correct.

Assertion (A): "A higher level of GDP of a country will mean a greater well-being of the people of that country." This assertion is not entirely accurate. While a higher GDP indicates more economic activity and potential wealth, it does not necessarily translate to greater well-being for all individuals. GDP does not account for income distribution, inequality, quality of life, or non-economic factors like health and education.

Reasoning (R): "GDP, which is the sum total of the value of goods and services created within the geographical boundary of a country in a particular year, gets distributed among the people as incomes (except for retained earnings)." This reasoning is true. GDP measures the total value of goods and services produced within a country and can be distributed as incomes to individuals, although this distribution is not always equitable.