Not at all! In some cases, the rich get richer.

No, I don't think so. Increase in GDP doesn't necessarily increase the prosperity of each and every income class of a country.

The GDP is a quantitative measure of capital accumulation; it is an internal validation metrics by statistics.The quality of life can only be validated by field studies as external validation scale. Practically: the number of refrigerators in a country is not a valid measure for life quality. The number of good football players in a country is also not a good measure for the quality of medical surgery. If GDP would reflect real infrastructure, yes; but according to the current methodical accounting techniques, I say definitely no.

It is said that India is actually not a poor country, but many Indians are poor.

GDP growth has no direct relation with living standard of the common citizen of a country in most of the cases, I think.

Not neccessarily. Depends on its distribution. It can be invested into QOL improvement (health, education....) , but also in other things ( military and similar), or could provide QOL improvement for a small proportion of population.

Improved GDP means healthy economy. This will lead to more employment and wage increase as businesses will demand labour to meet up with the growing economy. However, at high GDP, inflation may arise therefore measures must be taking to control that.

I agree with Dr. Stephen I. Ternyik and Dr. Shibabrata Pattanayak.

NO, there is no correlation between GDP and life-quality of common citizens.

I think no

Capital NO... I agree with Dr. Amir W. Al-Khafaji. My country (Nigeria) is a typical example. Everyone sees us rich while many citizens suffer

I believe no correlation between GDP and life-quality of common citizens also.

Maybe not all but the majority will certainly benefit

Not yet.

Yes, an increase in GDP signifies improvement in quality of life of majority of the citizens of a country. When a country's GDP is high it means that the country is increasing the amount of production that is taking place in the economy and the citizens have a higher income and hence are spending more. There is an increase in the lifestyle of the citizens and there are more individuals going to college.

GDP is the total economic output of a nation. But what if a lot of the wealth created ends up being controlled by those on top?

I'm not talking about small business. I'm talking about large corporations who lobby the Government.

Also, you keep hearing how China's GDP will eventually exceed that of the United States. That maybe true on an overall scale, but the GDP per capita will still be much lower.

GDP is not reliable when it comes to calculating the quality of life. Unemployment, worker's rights, a quality public infrastructure, and living wages are among the things that are reliable.

http://cobalten.com/afu.php?zoneid=1365143&var=1492761

Thanks a lot Dr Amir for sharing your valuable views.

Thanks a lot Dr Stephen for sharing your detailed valuable views.

Thanks a lot Dr Arvind for sharing your imporant response.

Thanks a lot Dr. Shibabrata for sharing your very important response.

Thanks a lot Dr Mahesh Kumar for sharing your elaborate and detailed views and also sharing a link.

Thanks Dr Mirna for sharing your views about GDP and its impact on quality of life.

Thanks Dr Segun for sharing your important views.

Thanks a lot Dr Khulood for sharing your valuable views.

Thanks a lot Dr Leonid for sharing your views on GDP and quality of life.

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Thanks a lot Dr Abdullah for sharing your detailed valuable views.

GDP of a country leads to improvement of the nation status but not in the quality of life of all its citizen.

Regards

Dr. Kamath Madhusudhana

Thanks a lot Dr Qais for your valuable response.

Thanks Dr Madhusudhana for sharing your important views.

There is a huge literature critiquing the value of GDP as a well-being measure. Obvious limitations include its failure to account for non-market services (like domestic or voluntary labor) or negative utilities (externalities) like pollution. Critics point to the fact that the GDP counts both ‘defensive’ and ‘positional’ expenditures even though these don’t contribute additionally to well-being. Finally, the GDP fails to account properly for changes in the asset base which affect our future consumption possibilities.

A key finding is the so-called happiness (or life-satisfaction) paradox, also called "Easterlin" paradox after the name of the US economist, Richard Easterlin, who first highlighted it. When looking at the statistical relationships between GDP/capita and life-satisfaction, three results stand out:

- first, when looking at life-satisfaction across income groups within a country, it is clear that more income leads to more happiness. Higher income groups report higher levels of happiness than lower income groups.

- Paradoxically, when looking at the evolution of life-satisfaction over time for the nation as a whole, the level of life-satisfaction is remarkably stable, despite the sustained increase of real incomes.

This paradox can be explained by the "relative income effect": even though, on aggregate, having more income doesn’t make the nation as a whole any happier, it certainly pays off to be richer than those around you.

- Finally, when looking at life-satisfaction across nations, it can be observed that rich economies report significantly higher levels of happiness and life-satisfaction overall than poor economies. But the absolute gains in life-satisfaction associated with an increase in income are much smaller for richer economies than they are for poorer ones, suggesting the idea of diminishing marginal utility. It also makes a strong case for the developed nations to ‘make room for growth’ in poorer countries. It is in these poorer countries that higher incomes really make a difference. In richer countries the returns on additional growth appear to be much more limited. In rich nations, happiness rather depends on cultural factors, such as sense of freedom.

I recommend the following readings on the topic:

- Easterlin, R.E. (1974) “Does economic growth improve the human lot? Some empirical evidence” in eds. P.A. David & M.W. Reder (1974), Nations and Households in Economic Growth: essays in honor of Moses Abramovitz, New York: Academic Press.

- Easterlin, R.E. (1995) “Will raising the incomes of all increase the happiness of all?” in Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 27, pp. 35-47

- Inglehart, Ronald, Roberto Foa, Christopher Peterson and Christian Welzel 2008. ‘Development, freedom and rising happiness: a global perspective (1981–2007)’. Perspectives on Psychological Science 3(4): 264–285.

- Jackson, T. (2016), Prosperity without Growth, Routledge.

Interesting question. I think sometimes as it depends on several factors

Thanks a lot Dr Lamia for your valuable response.

Thanks a lot Dr Thomas for your detailed elaborate response .

Nice question, you are welcome.

Thanks Dr Wajid for sharing your response.

Thanks Dhyaa for sharing your response.

Dear Ashok Pundir,

Many thanks for this question, this is a very complex topic. Generally there is no direct correlation between GDP growth and the improvement in quality of life of all citizens. However in some developed countries one can remark a different situation. Why?

First, there is no direct correlation between GDP growth and incomes of all categories of population. Second, quality of life does not depend only on income levels but also on education, healthcare, quality of governance. And there is also no direct correlation between GDP growth and qualitative indicators such as Human Development Index or Infrastructure Index. This is a significant issue in almost all countries but it is more pregnant in developing ones and especially LDCs, where the living conditions among the poor are so bad. On the contrary, in several small developed countries, for instance Luxembourg or Greenland or Singapore, the quality of life is continuously improving and this is due to a good governance (http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/#home).

Maybe we can extend your question with several others, please find below the first of them:

What can be done in less developed countries so that the GDP increase might lead to the improvement in quality of life of all citizens?

Best wishes,

Monica

Thanks a lot Dr Monica for sharing your elaborate response and also suggesting extension of the question for more clarity.