Beyond GDP? Welfare across Countries and Time / Charles I. Jones, Peter J. Klenow.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jones, Charles I.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Klenow, Peter J.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w16352.

NBER working paper series no. w16352

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2010.

Summary:

We propose a summary statistic for the economic well-being of people in a country. Our measure incorporates consumption, leisure, mortality, and inequality, first for a narrow set of countries using detailed micro data, and then more broadly using multi-country data sets. While welfare is highly correlated with GDP per capita, deviations are often large. Western Europe looks considerably closer to the U.S., emerging Asia has not caught up as much, and many developing countries are further behind. Each component we introduce plays a significant role in accounting for these differences, with mortality being most important.

Notes:

Print version record

September 2010.