NEW HAVEN, Connecticut -- The new Penn World Table, Version 6.2, comparing standards of living across countries, has just been released. The latest figures are for 2004, and, because of data lags, not all countries are included. Yet these numbers are valuable because they are of exceptional quality and they correct systematically for relative price differences across countries, which sometimes leads to surprising results.
Among the 82 countries for which 2004 data are now available, there is good news: Real per capita gross domestic product rose by an average of 18.9 percent between 2000 and 2004, or 4.4 percent per year. People generally were a lot better off than they were just a few years earlier. At that rate, real per capita GDP will double every 16 years.
Many people who could not afford a car in 2000 had one in 2004, and people who could afford only one car in 2000 had two. People who could not afford to send their children to a good school or college could. And so it was with many different goods and services that people consume.