Just how good is unemployment as a measure of welfare? A policy note

Emmanuel de Dios () and Katrina Dinglasan
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Katrina Dinglasan: Philippine Center for Economic Development, Diliman, Quezon City

No 201401, UP School of Economics Discussion Papers from University of the Philippines School of Economics

Abstract: The government is rightly concerned with employment generation to make growth inclusive. The use of the open unemployment rate to measure its success, however, is misplaced. In a developing country with a large informal sector and in the absence of unemployment insurance, open unemployment is primarily a middle-class phenomenon: the unemployed are not predominantly poor, and the poor are not predominantly unemployed. Measures of productivity and shifts of labour across sectors may contain more information.

Keywords: unemployment; underemployment; labour force; welfare; poverty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I32 J21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 14 pages
Date: 2014-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ias, nep-iue and nep-sea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published as UPSE Discussion Paper No. 2014-01, January 2014

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