Routledge Dictionary of Economics, Second Edition
The total satisfaction residents of a country receive from the consumption of available goods and services. Increasingly there have been attempts to move beyond NATIONAL INCOME measures as a proxy estimate of economic welfare to the use of a wider range of social and economic indicators so that EXTERNALITIES and the subtleties of human tastes can be taken into account.
Total welfare conferred by the production of goods and services must be viewed alongside welfare losses, e.g. more income is judged within the context of the amount of leisure enjoyed by workers. A high-welfare country usually has a high proportion of the population owning the major types of consumer durable, e.g. washing machines and television sets; a low-welfare country has poor housing, much pollution and long working hours.
Dissatisfaction with an economy has several indirect indicators, including the incidence of alcoholism, the rate of suicide, infant mortality rates, life expectancy, disease and disability rates.
See also: measure of economic welfare; social welfare
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