IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/qed/wpaper/1356.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Utilitarian Measure Of Economic Growth

Author

Listed:
  • Dan Usher

    (Department of Economics, Queen's University)

Abstract

A utilitarian measure of economic growth combines changes in the distribution ofincome with changes in real income per person to show how much better off people are becoming over time. It is the rate of growth of the dollar value of average utility of income. As such , it is seen differently by people with different utility of income functions. A growth rate in U.S. household income of 0.63% per year as ordinarily measured disappears altogether - is transformed into a decline of 0.086% per year - when the utility of income function is sufficiently concave. Strengths, weaknesses and implicit assumptions of the utilitarian measure are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Dan Usher, 2016. "A Utilitarian Measure Of Economic Growth," Working Paper 1356, Economics Department, Queen's University.
    • Handle: RePEc:qed:wpaper:1356
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econ.queensu.ca/sites/econ.queensu.ca/files/qed_wp_1356.pdf
    File Function: First version 2016
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Blackorby,Charles & Bossert,Walter & Donaldson,David J., 2005. "Population Issues in Social Choice Theory, Welfare Economics, and Ethics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521532587.
    2. John C. Harsanyi, 1955. "Cardinal Welfare, Individualistic Ethics, and Interpersonal Comparisons of Utility," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 63, pages 309-309.
    3. Ng, Yew-Kwang, 1986. "Social criteria for evaluating population change: An alternative to the Blackorby-Donaldson criterion," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 375-381, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Stavros A. Drakopoulos, 2024. "Value Judgements, Positivism and Utility Comparisons in Economics," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 189(3), pages 423-437, January.
    2. John Komlos, 2016. "Growth of income and welfare in the U.S, 1979-2011," NBER Working Papers 22211, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. de la Croix, David & Doepke, Matthias, 2021. "A soul’s view of the optimal population problem," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 98-108.
    2. Charles Shaw & Silvio Vanadia, 2022. "Utilitarianism on the front lines: COVID-19, public ethics, and the "hidden assumption" problem," Papers 2205.01957, arXiv.org.
    3. Pierre Pestieau & Gregory Ponthiere, 2017. "Optimal fertility under age-dependent labour productivity," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 30(2), pages 621-646, April.
    4. Antoinette Baujard, 2016. "Utilitarianism and anti-utilitarianism," Chapters, in: Gilbert Faccarello & Heinz D. Kurz (ed.), Handbook on the History of Economic Analysis Volume III, chapter 40, pages 576-588, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Stelter, Robert, 2014. "Over-aging: Are present human populations too old?," Thuenen-Series of Applied Economic Theory 137, University of Rostock, Institute of Economics.
    6. Hammitt, James K., 2022. "Prevention, Treatment, and Palliative Care: The Relative Value of Health Improvements under Alternative Evaluation Frameworks," TSE Working Papers 22-1339, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    7. Marc Fleurbaey, 2010. "Assessing Risky Social Situations," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(4), pages 649-680, August.
    8. BLACKORBY, Charles & BOSSERT, Walter & DONALDSON, David, 2006. "Population Ethics," Cahiers de recherche 2006-15, Universite de Montreal, Departement de sciences economiques.
      • BLACKORBY, Charles & BOSSERT, Walter & DONALDSON, David, 2006. "Population Ethics," Cahiers de recherche 14-2006, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
    9. Asheim, Geir B. & Zuber, Stéphane, 2016. "Evaluating intergenerational risks," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 104-117.
    10. Marc Fleurbaey & Stéphane Zuber, 2021. "Universal social welfare orderings and risk," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-03289160, HAL.
    11. McCarthy, David & Mikkola, Kalle & Thomas, Teruji, 2016. "Utilitarianism with and without expected utility," MPRA Paper 72578, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Fleurbaey, Marc & Zuber, Stéphane, 2015. "Discounting, beyond utilitarianism," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 9, pages 1-52.
    13. Cockburn, John & Duclos, Jean-Yves & Zabsonré, Agnès, 2014. "Is global social welfare increasing? A critical-level enquiry," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 151-162.
    14. Jean-Yves DUCLOS & Bouba HOUSSEINI, 2015. "Quality, Quantity and Duration of Lives," Working Papers P118, FERDI.
    15. Piacquadio, Paolo G., 2020. "The ethics of intergenerational risk," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 186(C).
    16. Cordoba, Juan Carlos & Liu, Xiying, 2018. "Efficiency with Endogenous Population and Fixed Resources," ISU General Staff Papers 201811010700001062, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    17. John A Weymark, 2012. "Social Welfare Functions," Vanderbilt University Department of Economics Working Papers vuecon-sub-13-00018, Vanderbilt University Department of Economics.
    18. Pierre-André Jouvet & Gregory Ponthiere, 2011. "Survival, reproduction and congestion: the spaceship problem re-examined," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 13(3), pages 233-273, October.
    19. Aurélie Méjean & Antonin Pottier & Marc Fleurbaey & Stéphane Zuber, 2020. "Catastrophic climate change, population ethics and intergenerational equity," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 163(2), pages 873-890, November.
    20. Fleurbaey, Marc & Gajdos, Thibault & Zuber, Stéphane, 2015. "Social rationality, separability, and equity under uncertainty," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 13-22.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    National Income; Utilitarian; Certainty-equivalence;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • O40 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:qed:wpaper:1356. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Mark Babcock (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/qedquca.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.