In
the late 1990s, the authors developed the Index of Economic Well-being (IEWB), . The
salient feature of this index was that itwhich organized
the idea of economic
well-being domain into four dimensions:
consumption flows, stocks of wealth, equality, and economic security.
Since
then we have greatly advanced our research program on the measurement of
economic well-being, both conceptually and empirically. The
objective of this paper is to present summarize this new research on and
estimates of the Index of Economic Well-being. The paper discussesthe progress that we have made on
methodological issues associated with the construction of the index,
(in
particular the adoption of a linear scaling procedure), to . The
advantages and disadvantages of this technique will be discussed. The paper also
presents new estimates of the Index of
Economic Well-being and its domains and components for Canada for the 1981-2005
period and to discusses
the factors behind these trends.
The main findings are that that the Index of Economic Well-being advanced at a 1.30 per cent average annual growth rate between 1981 and 2005, below the 1.68 per cent growth for GDP per capita. The consumption flow and stocks of wealth domains of the Index experienced solid advances over the period, but these developments were offset somewhat by falls in economic equality and, more importantly, in economic security. Increased income inequality accounted for the fall in economic equality while the rise in the private health expenditures, as a share of personal disposable income, accounted for all the decline in economic security.