Growth and Well-being: Introducing Distribution-Weighted Growth Rates to Reevaluate U.S. Post-war Economic Performance

Abstract

In order to improve on the income growth rate as an indicator of changes in well-being, four composite indices of growth and income distribution are introduced and compared. When applied to the United States postwar economic performance, these indicators significantly revise upward the welfare improvements during the 1960s, while for the 1980s they show little expansion and, for some measures, even reductions of well-being. The revisions implied by these conceptually different measures are very similar indicating that the results presented are considerably robust. Copyright 1994 by The International Association for Research in Income and Wealth.