This article tests for convergence over the period 1960 to 1999 in a wide range of fundamental aspects of living standards, namely life expectancy, infant survival, educational enrolment, literacy as well as telephone and television availability. I argue that one should look at convergence in...

Nations generally measure their economic performance using the yardstick of national output and income. It is not widely recognized, however, that conventional measures of national income and output exclude the value of improvements in the health status of the population. The present study...

This paper uses cross-national data from happiness surveys, jointly with data on per capita income and pollution, to examine how self-reported well-being varies with prosperity and environmental conditions. This approach allows us to show that citizens care about prosperity and the environment,...

This paper tests the empirical validity of Easterlin’s paradox, the absolute and relative income theorems which underpin it, and investigates associations between subjective well-being (SWB), economic growth and the factors which shape economic development via a series of multilevel...

This chapter covers the theory and methods for productivity measurement for nations. Labor, multifactor and total factor productivity measures are defined and are related to each other and to gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. Their growth over time and relative counterparts are defined as...

Societal progress is characterized primarily as an improvement in the distribution of wellbeing; however, a small set of additional variables are also necessary. Social indicators based on objective measures are inherently limited by the subjective assessments necessary of "experts" to select...