Beyond GDP? Welfare across Countries and Time

Charles Jones and Pete Klenow

American Economic Review, 2016, vol. 106, issue 9, 2426-57

Abstract: 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 datasets. While welfare is highly correlated with GDP per capita, deviations are often large. Western Europe looks considerably closer to the United States, 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.

JEL-codes: D63 E21 E23 E24 I12 O57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.20110236
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (255)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Beyond GDP? Welfare across Countries and Time (2010)
Working Paper: Beyond GDP? Welfare Across Countries and Time (2010)
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