Looking at a wider range of measures, economist Bill Easterly explored “Life During Growth” and discovered that the rate of improvement in almost all of the quality-of-life indicators that he studied was only weakly related to the rate of economic growth. Overall, Easterly’s study found that for only eight of sixty-nine indicators was there any statistically significant positive relationship between income and change in quality of life—being richer doesn’t necessarily equate with higher quality of life. And his study suggested that income change was a driving factor behind improvements in only
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