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You are here: Home / Whitehall Watch / Never mind measuring happiness, how about the misery index?

Never mind measuring happiness, how about the misery index?

Colin Talbot By Colin Talbot Filed Under: Whitehall Watch Posted: February 26, 2011

In the 1970s the US economist Arthur Okan came up with the concept to measure the social costs of simultaneous high inflation and unemployment, until then a relatively unknown phenomena. The idea is simple – add together the unemployment rate and the rate of price increases as a measure of how much ‘misery’ the people are suffering. Read the full story on False Economy blog

 

About Colin Talbot

Colin Talbot is a Professor of Government, a former Specialist Advisor to the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee and the Public Administration Select Committee and has appeared as expert witness many times in Parliament, the Scottish Parliament and NI Assembly. He's also advised Governments from the USA to Japan.

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