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A History of the Standard of Living in the United States

Richard H. Steckel, Ohio State University

Methods of Measuring the Standard of Living

During many years of teaching, I have introduced the topic of the standard of living by asking students to pretend that they would be born again to unknown (random) parents in a country they could choose based on three of its characteristics.  The list put forward in the classroom invariably includes many of the categories usually suggested by scholars who have studied the standard of living over the centuries:  access to material goods and services; health; socio-economic fluidity; education; inequality; the extent of political and religious freedom; and climate.  Thus, there is little disagreement among people, whether newcomers or professionals, on the relevant categories of social performance.

Components and Weights 

Significant differences of opinion emerge, both among students and research specialists, on the precise measures to be used within each category and on the weights or relative importance that should be attached to each.  There are numerous ways to measure health, for example, with some approaches emphasizing length of life while other people give high priority to morbidity (illness or disability) or to yet other aspects of health quality of life while living (e.g. physical fitness).  Conceivably one might attempt comparisons using all feasible measures, but this is expensive and time-consuming and in any event, many good measures within categories are often highly correlated.

Weighting the various components is the most contentious issue in any attempt to summarize the standard of living, or otherwise compress diverse measures into a single number.  Some people give high priority to income, for example, while others claim that health is most important.  Economists and other social scientists recognize that tastes or...