Growth rates vs income growth curves : a step towards the measurement of societal progress

Overall growth rates mean different things to different people. Hence, they can easily misrepresent what happens to living standards and "quality of life". This paper focuses on patterns and interrelationships between the size and the distribution of the dividends of growth, not on summary coefficients. The analysis is based on Income-Growth-Curves, which allow to re-connect the macro with the micro perspective and, hence, to plot "distributive vistas" which uncover not just how sustained growth was, but also the distribution of its dividends; and, consequently, to judge progress against a broader analytical approach centered on "quality" and "whose growth".