Question

janet,a mother of two, decides to reduce her working hours to spend more time with her children. By itself, assumint everything else being the same, this development has necessarily resulted in a lower quality of life for janet due to a fall in income (and resultant fall in economic activity as measured by GDP). True or false, why?

Answer 1

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Ans) There are two concepts÷ QOL i.e Quality of Life and GDP.

Measuring well being is not an exact science. In general, GDP is used to measure well being. But GDP is not enough. It is because it excludes many factors, which are important for humans, viz, health, education, job satisfaction, leisure, happiness etc. These measures are included in QOL. Further, level of income is more relevant here rather than just income. If she is able to maintain her standard of life with reduced income too then her QOL is hardly affected.

Note that higher income does not necessarily mean higher QOL.

So, when the income of Janet decreases, GDP will reduce but it is not necessary that QOL has also decreased. As it depends upon various factors and not just the income. So, her QOL might have increased, decreased or remained same.

(You could understand this by the example of USA and Norway. Though USA has much higher GDP than Norway, Norway tops the HDI ranking)

False.