Preliminary Estimates of Good Life Time (GLT) in Canada Using the General Social Survey

Michael Wolfson and Kar-Fai Gee

No 2015-14, CSLS Research Reports from Centre for the Study of Living Standards

Abstract: There has been a recent resurgence of interest in measures of social progress and well-being that go beyond the conventional System of National Accounts measures, especially GDP and GDP per capita. In this context, Wolfson and Rowe (2010) have proposed Good Life Time (GLT) as an alternative / complement to traditional economic measures. GLT is based on a generalization of life expectancy and a person is said to be in GLT if they have adequate amounts of health, money, and the time to enjoy them. In this study, we develop a simple approach using public microdata from the 1992, 1998, 2005, and 2010 General Social Surveys. We conclude that issues related to high item non-response rates and lack of time series consistency in many of the key questionnaire items, especially in the money and health domains, likely overwhelm any time series trends obtained in this manner. Microsimulation or synthetic matching are therefore the recommended methods to obtain time series trends of GLT.

Keywords: Well-Being; Health; Leisure Time; Income; Life Expectancy; Disabilities; Elderly Population (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I00 I10 I19 I30 I31 I39 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-09
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