Missed opportunities? Human welfare in Western Europe and the United States, 1913-1950

Principal Investigator(s):  View help for Principal Investigator(s) Daniel Gallardo-Albarrán, University of Groningen

Version:  View help for Version V1

Name File Type Size Last Modified
  Replication_Missed_Opportunities 11/28/2018 08:44:AM

Project Citation: 

Gallardo-Albarrán, Daniel. Missed opportunities? Human welfare in Western Europe and the United States, 1913-1950. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2018-11-28. https://doi.org/10.3886/E107501V1

Project Description

Summary:  View help for Summary GDP suggests that the period 1913-1950 is one of missed opportunities for improving living standards in Europe. However, life in Europe during these years improved significantly, as citizens experienced dramatic declines in mortality, working time and inequality. To measure the contribution of these aspects to broader welfare, I apply a new theoretically-grounded indicator that, contrary to previous measures used in the literature, allows for a direct comparison with GDP across countries and time. I find that income underestimates welfare growth significantly (up to 2.2 percent annually) and that cross-country differences are larger and more persistent than other welfare measures imply. This article calls for a reappraisal of the evolution of living standards during the period 1913-1950 and, more generally, presents an application of a new indicator to measure multi-dimensional welfare in historical contexts.

Scope of Project

Subject Terms:  View help for Subject Terms economic history; welfare; health


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V1 [2018-11-28]

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