Is real GDP per person a sufficient measure of well-being? Economists tend to fo

Question

Is real GDP per person a sufficient measure of well-being? Economists tend to focus on real GDP per person as their primary way of comparing living standards among countries. But they are also aware that real GDP per person does not capture many factors that affect the quality of life. Go to the CIA World Factbook's rank-order page at go to https://www.cia.gov/, select Library, Publications, The World Fact Book, and Guide to Country Comparisons. Scroll down to the People section. Click on "Infant mortality rate." Write down the rank and the infant mortality rate for the following four countries: the United States, France, Mexico, and China. Go back to the People section and click on "Life expectancy at birth-total." For each of the four countries, write down its rank and life expectancy at birth. Now compare the data you just wrote down for infant mortality and life expectancy at birth with the GDP per person data shown in Table 21W.1 on page 21W-4, "Selected Socioeconomic Indicators of Development.". Does the country with the highest GDP per person have the lowest infant mortality or the highest life expectancy? Can poorer countries do well on these alternative measures of well-being? Could people be misled about differences in living standards if they only compared different countries' levels of GDP per person?

Explanation / Answer

Required data is extracted as follows

USA has highest GDP per person at $55,800, but its Infant Mortality rate is at 5.87 deaths per 1000 births higher than 3.28 of France. Poorer countries here are China and Mexico since there GDP per capita are 14,100 and 17,500 respectively. There Life expectancy is lower than richer countries and mortality rate is also higher. So these are not doing great.

Only contradiction is US and France about Mortality rate and Life expectancy. Ideally since USA is richest here, it should have good Mortality rate and Life expectancy, but here France is doing better. So yes GDP per capita is misleading.

Infant Mortality Rate Life expectancy Rank - Life Exp GDP / Person US 5.87 79.68 43 55,800 France 3.28 81.75 19 41,200 Mexico 12.23 75.65 95 17,500 China 12.44 75.41 99 14,100

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