Ulhas Joglekar wrote: > > > I was making a simple point that the debate on > economic policy in India has little to do the utility > of PPP numbers. >
But apparently _our_ understanding of that growth has much to do with those PPP numbers. Your post on growth in India incorporated those numbers, and we in the U.S. might not understand your post without Paul's explanation of what those numbers meant. > Paul was trying to show how PPP numbers overstate the > economic growth in the developing countries. I am not > sure I understand how he has reached that conclusion. Paul suggests (or this is what I get from his posts) that the proper way to estimate a nation's economic growth is to measure the well-being of (say) the worst-off 20% of its population. How does the infant mortality rate of that part of the Indian population compare to the infant mortality rate of that part of the French or German or U.S. populations? Without such comparisons, not of statistical creations but of actual lives, we can't judge _real_ economic growth, which in material terms can only mean the economic improvement of those who are worst off. There are some passages in Charles Dickens's novel, _Hard Times_, which bring this out very dramatically. Similarly, in measuring the present economy in the U.S., we should not look at the unemployment rates or the average GNP per capita but examine the life conditions of the worst-off 20% of the u.s. population. And as I drive through the west side of Bloomington Illinois on a summer day, the quality of life of that segment of the population does not look very good. Is that (lower 20%) of the population of India (measured by infant mortality, available medical care, etc.) worse or better off than those neighborhoods in west Bloomington? Carrol > > Ulhas > > ________________________________________________________________________ > Yahoo! India Careers: Over 65,000 jobs online > Go to: http://yahoo.naukri.com/
