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Beyond GDP? Welfare across Countries and Time

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Listed author(s):
  • Charles I. Jones
  • Peter J. Klenow

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 data sets. While welfare is highly correlated with GDP per capita, deviations are often large. Western Europe looks considerably closer to the U.S., 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.

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File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w16352.pdf
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 16352.

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Date of creation: Sep 2010
Publication status: published as Charles I. Jones & Peter J. Klenow, 2016. "Beyond GDP? Welfare across Countries and Time," American Economic Review, vol 106(9), pages 2426-2457.
Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:16352
Note: EFG
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Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • O10 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - General
  • O40 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - General

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