2024-03-28T09:26:01
112861
Thu Mar 28 09:26:02 EDT 2024
Replication data for: Beyond GDP? Welfare across Countries and Time
Charles I. Jones
Peter J. Klenow
112861
https://doi.org/10.3886/E112861V1
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.
D63 Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
E21 Macroeconomics: Consumption; Saving; Wealth
E23 Macroeconomics: Production
E24 Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
I12 Health Behavior
O57 Comparative Studies of Countries