Income-based measures of average well-being

Arbeitspapier

Internation comparisons of average national incomes omit important information about leisure, home production, health, etc. They are also bedevilled by index number problems. This paper suggests ways of combining working hours and life-expectancy with income comparisons, and shows that the fixed-price indexes of real income, such as those in the Penn World Table, substantially understate the income gaps between the poorest and richest countries.

Object Details

• ISBN: 9291906077
• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: WIDER Research Paper ; No. 2004/24

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium: General ; General Welfare; Well-Being ; Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence
• Subject: income comparisons ; well-being ; life expectancy ; exchange rate bias ; Geary-Khamis bias ; the Afriat index ; Lebensstandard ; Sozialprodukt ; Sozialer Indikator ; Vergleich ; Welt

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Dowrick, Steve
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): The United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER)
• (where): Helsinki
• (when): 2004

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/63467
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET