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Income-based Measures of Average Well-being

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  • Steve Dowrick

Abstract

International 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.

Suggested Citation

  • Steve Dowrick, 2004. "Income-based Measures of Average Well-being," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2004-24, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    • Handle: RePEc:unu:wpaper:rp2004-24
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    File URL: https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/rp2004-024.pdf
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    13. Steve Dowrick & Muhammad Akmal, 2005. "Contradictory Trends In Global Income Inequality: A Tale Of Two Biases," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 51(2), pages 201-229, June.
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    Cited by:

    1. Paul Johnson & Chris Papageorgiou, 2020. "What Remains of Cross-Country Convergence?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 58(1), pages 129-175, March.
    2. Cifuentes, Myriam Patricia & Doogan, Nathan J. & Fernandez, Soledad A. & Seiber, Eric E., 2016. "Factors shaping Americans’ objective well-being: A systems science approach with network analysis," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 38(6), pages 1018-1039.

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