GDP Is Well-Being! Results in the USA and China - Open Journal of Social Sciences

JSS > Vol.7 No.12, December 2019

Open Journal of Social Sciences

Volume 7, Issue 12 (December 2019)

ISSN Print: 2327-5952 ISSN Online: 2327-5960

Google-based Impact Factor: 1.63 Citations

GDP Is Well-Being! Results in the USA and China ()

HTML XML

Download as PDF (Size: 349KB) PP. 189-204

DOI: 10.4236/jss.2019.712014 597 Downloads 2,197 Views Citations

Author(s)

Gordon Bechtel

Affiliation(s)

Warrington College of Business, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA.

ABSTRACT

This article quality assures GDP and then links it to well-being in the world’s two largest economies. Despite the global plethora of national indexes, there has been little quality assurance of the unidimensionality of their component indicators. Unidimensional index theory constructs a weighted composite from a 2-level principal components analysis of its several indicators. This weighted composite evaluates its unweighted counterpart, and informs governments about the allocation of resources over its composite indicators. Two axioms predict that weighted and unweighted indexes are perfectly correlated over successive yearly populations in the USA and China. Under these axioms, fractional polynomial regressions of any criterion on these weighted and unweighted indexes perfectly predict this criterion. We confirm the unidimensionality of American and Chinese GDP indexes and their near-perfect prediction of the United Nation’s Human Development Index (HDI). This application discovers that HDI computation can be carried out from a nation’s GDP alone, i.e., without survey sampling, questionnaire interrogation, probabilistic inference, significance testing, or even HDI data.

KEYWORDS

Country Specificity of Fractional Polynomial Regressions, Internal Consistency of Keynesian Indicators, 2-Level Principal Components Analysis, Unidimensional Index Theory, Prediction of HDI from Weighted and Unweighted GDP

Share and Cite:

Bechtel, G. (2019) GDP Is Well-Being! Results in the USA and China. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 7, 189-204. doi: 10.4236/jss.2019.712014.

Cited by

[1]	GDP Alone Predicts Income and Survival
	2021

[2]	GDP Almost Perfectly Predicts Survival
	2021

[3]	Digging for Growth? Which infrastructure development should African countries prioritise?
	2021

[4]	GDP and Human Development
	2020

[5]	Global Well-Being
	2020

Journals Menu

Follow SCIRP

	customer@scirp.org
	+86 18163351462(WhatsApp)
	1655362766

	Paper Publishing WeChat

Journals Menu

Home

About SCIRP

Service

Policies