IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/apandp/v108y2018p477-82.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Empirics of Social Progress: The Interplay between Subjective Well-Being and Societal Performance

Author

Listed:
  • Daniel Fehder
  • Michael Porter
  • Scott Stern

Abstract

Though economists have long recognized that GDP is not by itself a measure of societal well-being, most GDP alternatives incorporate direct measures of economic performance. We propose instead an independently constructed measure, a social progress index, focusing exclusively on noneconomic dimensions of societal performance, highlighting three core dimensions—basic human needs, foundations of well-being, and opportunity. GDP and social progress are correlated but distinct, the social progress dimension least related to GDP (opportunity) is strongly related to subjective well-being, and the relationship between social progress and well-being is greater for individuals at lower relative income and educational attainment.

Suggested Citation

  • Daniel Fehder & Michael Porter & Scott Stern, 2018. "The Empirics of Social Progress: The Interplay between Subjective Well-Being and Societal Performance," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 108, pages 477-482, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:apandp:v:108:y:2018:p:477-82
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/pandp.20181036
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pandp.20181036
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrieve=XyjG7b_Ya_ieZUuPtS7M2o1OqDR4puH4
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrieve=BfX714ac9fOMaF3KryLAzUB624nWHXdx
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert J. MacCulloch & Rafael Di Tella & Andrew J. Oswald, 2001. "Preferences over Inflation and Unemployment: Evidence from Surveys of Happiness," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(1), pages 335-341, March.
    2. William D. Nordhaus & James Tobin, 1973. "Is Growth Obsolete?," NBER Chapters, in: The Measurement of Economic and Social Performance, pages 509-564, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Marc Fleurbaey & Guillaume Gaulier, 2009. "International Comparisons of Living Standards by Equivalent Incomes," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 111(3), pages 597-624, September.
    4. Marc Fleurbaey, 2009. "Beyond GDP: The Quest for a Measure of Social Welfare," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(4), pages 1029-1075, December.
    5. Daniel Kahneman & Alan B. Krueger, 2006. "Developments in the Measurement of Subjective Well-Being," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 20(1), pages 3-24, Winter.
    6. William D. Nordhaus & James Tobin, 1972. "Economic Research: Retrospect and Prospect, Volume 5, Economic Growth," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number nord72-1.
    7. Fleurbaey, Marc & Blanchet, Didier, 2013. "Beyond GDP: Measuring Welfare and Assessing Sustainability," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199767199.
    8. Diane Coyle, 2015. "GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History (Revised and Expanded Edition)," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 2, number 10598.
    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. Boulton, Thomas J., 2022. "Social progress, business formation, and access to investment capital," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).
    2. C. O. Henriques & L. A. Lopez-Agudo & O. D. Marcenaro-Gutierrez & M. Luque, 2021. "Reaching Compromises in Workers’ Life Satisfaction: A Multiobjective Interval Programming Approach," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 22(1), pages 207-239, January.
    3. Jesús Peiró-Palomino & Andrés J. Picazo-Tadeo & Vicente Rios, 2020. "Social Progress Around the World: Measurement, Evolution and Convergence," Working Papers 2006, Department of Applied Economics II, Universidad de Valencia.
    4. Andrea M. Prado & Ronald Arce & Luis E. Lopez & Jaime García & Andy A. Pearson, 2020. "Simulations Versus Case Studies: Effectively Teaching the Premises of Sustainable Development in the Classroom," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 161(2), pages 303-327, January.

    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. Murtin, Fabrice & Boarini, Romina & Cordoba, Juan Carlos & Ripoll, Marla, 2017. "Beyond GDP: Is there a law of one shadow price?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 390-411.
    2. Elena Falcettoni & Vegard Nygaard, 2020. "A Comparison of Living Standards Across the States of America," FEDS Notes 2020-05-28-1, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    3. Luisa Corrado & Giuseppe De Michele, 2016. "Mind the Gap: Identifying Latent Objective and Subjective Multi-dimensional Indices of Well-Being," CEIS Research Paper 386, Tor Vergata University, CEIS, revised 24 Jun 2016.
    4. Günseli BERIK, 2020. "Measuring what matters and guiding policy: An evaluation of the Genuine Progress Indicator," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 159(1), pages 71-94, March.
    5. Luisa Corrado & Giuseppe De Michele, 2019. "Are governments matching citizens’ demand for better lives? A new approach comparing subjective and objective welfare measures," Working Papers 39, European Stability Mechanism.
    6. Savatore Puglisi & Ionuț Virgil Șerban, 2019. "Beyond Gdp: Which Options To Better Represent Modern Socio-Economic Progress?," Sociology and Social Work Review, International Society for projects in Education and Research, vol. 3(1), pages 17-32, June.
    7. Koen Decancq & Erik Schokkaert, 2016. "Beyond GDP: Using Equivalent Incomes to Measure Well-Being in Europe," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 126(1), pages 21-55, March.
    8. Bruno S. Frey & Alois Stutzer, 2009. "Should National Happiness be Maximized?," Chapters, in: Amitava Krishna Dutt & Benjamin Radcliff (ed.), Happiness, Economics and Politics, chapter 14, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    9. Jean-Marc Germain, 2023. "Beyond GDP: A Welfare-Based Estimate of Growth for 14 European Countries and the USA Over Past Decades," Economie et Statistique / Economics and Statistics, Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques (INSEE), issue 539, pages 3-25.
    10. Zhang, Yinjunjie & Xu, Zhicheng Phil & Palma, Marco A., 2017. "Misclassification Errors of Subjective Well-being: A New Approach to Mapping Happiness," 2017 Annual Meeting, July 30-August 1, Chicago, Illinois 258553, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    11. DECANCQ, Koen & FLEURBAEY, Marc & SCHOKKAERT, Erik, 2014. "Inequality, income, and well-being," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2014018, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    12. Olivier Bargain, 2017. "Welfare analysis and redistributive policies," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 15(4), pages 393-419, December.
    13. Yuta J. Masuda & Jason R. Williams & Heather Tallis, 2021. "Does Life Satisfaction Vary with Time and Income? Investigating the Relationship Among Free Time, Income, and Life Satisfaction," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 22(5), pages 2051-2073, June.
    14. Bahadır Dursun & Resul Cesur, 2016. "Transforming lives: the impact of compulsory schooling on hope and happiness," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 29(3), pages 911-956, July.
    15. Brocek, Frantisek & Lalinsky, Tibor, 2017. "Welfare in Slovakia and the EU — an alternative to GDP per capita," MPRA Paper 83456, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. DECANCQ, Koen & NEUMANN, Dirk, 2014. "Does the choice of well-being measure matter empirically? An illustration with German data," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2014050, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    17. V. K. Shrotryia & Shashank Vikram Pratap Singh, 2020. "Measuring Progress Beyond GDP: A Theoretical Perspective," Emerging Economy Studies, International Management Institute, vol. 6(2), pages 143-165, November.
    18. Bruno S. Frey & Alois Stutzer, 2006. "Should We Maximize National Happiness?," IEW - Working Papers 306, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    19. Ida Petrillo, 2018. "Computation of Equivalent Incomes and Social Welfare for EU and Non-EU Countries," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo Group, vol. 64(3), pages 396-425.
    20. Carlos Mendez, 2019. "Lack of Global Convergence and the Formation of Multiple Welfare Clubs across Countries: An Unsupervised Machine Learning Approach," Economies, MDPI, vol. 7(3), pages 1-17, July.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C43 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Index Numbers and Aggregation
    • E01 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General - - - Measurement and Data on National Income and Product Accounts and Wealth; Environmental Accounts
    • E23 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Production
    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being
    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty

    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:aea:apandp:v:108:y:2018:p:477-82. 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: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.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.