Yesterday I finished and submitted the abstract below for the 18th Annual Conference of the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies (ISQOLS 2020), to be held in Rotterdam in August.
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Wasted and
wasteful growth in the USA
If the
purpose of economic growth is to improve human welfare, then assessments should
be made as to whether or not growth in fact contributes to improved welfare. By
investigating Gross Domestic Product (GDP)/Gross National Income (GNI), Human
Development Index (HDI) and inequality data, this article evaluates to what
extent economic growth in the United States of America (USA) has benefited its
population since 1990, the year in which HDI was launched. Comparisons are made
with the Nordic countries. These are about as rich as the USA, but known for an
alternative model of development, the Nordic welfare model, which is known for
being focused on equality and equal opportunities. A notion of wasted growth,
defined as real GDP/GNI per capita growth not accompanied by improved non-income
Human Development, is introduced. Furthermore, the phenomenon of wasteful
growth, understood as GDP/GNI per capita growth that only results in
marginal improvements in non-income Human development, is investigated. The
investigation is performed by looking into the components of HDI, namely
average income, life expectancy and number of school years, and by comparing nonincome
HDI values with GDP/GNI per capita growth rates. I further calculate nonincome
IHDI values, i.e. inequality-adjusted nonincome Human Development values, for
the period covered, to look into what difference inequality makes in
evaluations of wasted and wasteful growth. The rather mediocre HDI performance
of the USA in recent years begs the question: Is US growth wasted on the rich?
