Measuring economic ill-being: Evidence for the ‘Philippine Misery Index’

Edsel Beja

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This paper uses the gap between the level of an economy’s well-being and that of a people’s well-being as a measure of the overall economic ill-being in a society. In particular, it argues that such disparity is measurable using objective measures of and subjective measures for inflation and joblessness. The inflation rate in this regard signifies the affordability of goods and services; its subjective counterpart then indicates the sense of whether the people can actually afford goods and services or not. The joblessness rate meanwhile shows the extent to which there is no gainful employment; its subjective counterpart then represents the sense of being jobless as understood by the people. The results indicate that the overall economic ill-being in the Philippines did not change much even with robust economic growth in recent years. This finding unveils a scene that is different from that painted by official statistics from the country.

Keywords: Economic ill-being; well-being; misery index, Philippines (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C43 D60 E24 E31 E66 I31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-11-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap, nep-mac and nep-sea
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:59772

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