ASSIGNMENT | Standard of Living Essay

Option #2
GDP (or GDP per capita) is a common measure for a country’s standard of living. Discuss the shortcomings of using GDP in this way.
Adhere to the following standards:
Your paper should be two or three pages in length, not including the title or references pages.
Review the grading rubric, which is be found in the Week 4 folder.
Incorporate at least three scholarly references that are not required readings for this module. The CSU-Global Library is a good place to find these references.
Be sure to follow the CSU-Global Guide to Writing and APA Requirements.
Each paper should include an introduction, a body with at least two fully developed paragraphs, and a conclusion.

SAMPLE SOLUTION

Limitations of GDP as A Measure of Standard of Living

Standard of living is described as the level of comfort, necessities, material goods and wealth that is associated with a particular population in a country. A country’s standard of living is defined by various factors such as affordable housing, poverty rate, affordable healthcare services, inflation rate and class disparity among others. Measures of standard of living include real income per person that is computed by dividing GDP by the country’s population (Philipsen, 2015). Although GDP is commonly applied as a measure of country’s standard of living, a number of shortcomings are associated with this approach. The first limitation of applying GDP as a measure of a nation’s standard of living is that this approach treats natural disasters, crime and divorce as economic gains. Natural disasters affect the economic activities of country in a big way due to the costly reconstruction processes associated with such occurrences. For example, the Hurricane Andrews that hit Florida in 1992 resulted in billions of dollar boom in the local…