Sincerely, Ju-chang He
SHENZHEN, P.R. CHINA Welcome to My Homepage <http://sites.netscape.net/juchang/> -----Original Message----- From: J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. <rosserjb at jmu.edu> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Saturday, September 04, 1999 3:41 AM Subject: Re: GDP is unscientific and unfair for poor people.
>Ju-Chang,
> Some economists have attempted to come up
>with other measures. About 20 years ago, William
>Nordhaus came up with NEW (Net Economic Welfare)
>that took GDP and adjusted it for a bunch of things that
>were in it that shouldn't be and others that weren't in it
>that should be. He found those about washed out. He
>did not include income distribution.
> The United Nations has a Physical Quality of Life
>Index (PQLI) that is probably closer to what you would
>like to see. It does a better job of dealing with income
>distribution, but not perfectly so. There are countries with
>low GDPs but high PQLIs. I mentioned Sri Lanka in my
>previous post precisely because it is such a one and also
>has a fairly equal distribution of income by such measures
>as Gini coefficients and decile ratios, etc.
> There have been some more recent efforts by other
>economists to come up with such measures, although
>many of these measures are subject to criticisms for
>alleged arbitrariness, etc.
> Personally I think that looking at per capita GDP is
>pretty useful. But I also certainly want to look income
>distribution measures and also some more specific
>physical indicators such as life expectancy, level of
>womens' education, and so forth. Doing that one can
>get a pretty good picture of what is going on in a society.
>GDP is not the whole picture, and it has many problems,
>but it is very far from being useless. It tells one quite a lot.
>Barkley Rosser