A contribution to the empirics of welfare growth

Abstract

This paper compares the determinants of economic growth and 'full' income growth. Our main result is that determinants may differ or have very different impact on welfare outcomes as compared to economic outcomes. Human capital plays a bigger role in determining the former, so that policies targeting human capital might have a greater effect on the welfare of societies than one would think by looking at their impact on economic growth alone. The same goes for health institutions and a number of other factors. Initial income has a greater impact on 'full' income growth than on real income per capita growth, implying even faster convergence than previously found, after conditioning for economic, health-related, institutions-related, and geographic cross-country differences. Overall, we strongly reject the hypothesis that the coefficient estimates for the impact of our set of explanatory variables on 'full' income growth is the same as for income growth. We conclude that there exist systematic differences for the impact of a number of factors on economic versus welfare growth outcomes. © 2013 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston.