Underlying the unresolved debate over whether the gap between rich and poor country GNP per capita has narrowed is a concern for wellbeing. The issue is really about the changing shapes of distributions of wellbeing indicators. As limiting cases con- vergence between rich and poor country groups...

Multilateral and multidimensional comparison of a group’s subjective well-being is problematic when its responses are ordinal and cardinally intangible. Arbitrary attribution of cardinal measure to ordinal categories engenders ambiguity when alternative equally valid scales are contemplated...