International Comparisons of Living Standards by Equivalent Incomes

Marc Fleurbaey and Guillaume Gaulier ()

Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 2009, vol. 111, issue 3, pages 597-624

Abstract: We propose a measure of living standards for international comparisons. Based on GDP per capita, the measure incorporates corrections for international flows of income, labor, risk of unemployment, healthy life expectancy, household demography and inequalities. The method for comparing populations that differ in some non-income dimension consists of computing the equivalent variation of income that would make each population indifferent between its current situation and a reference situation with respect to the non-income dimension. This is applied to 24 OECD countries. The obtained ranking of countries differs substantially from the GDP ranking. Copyright © The editors of the "Scandinavian Journal of Economics" 2009. .

Date: 2009

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Working Paper: International Comparisons of Living Standards by Equivalent Incomes (2007)
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