Measuring economic progress is wading into murky water

Washington

WHERE are living standards the highest? You might think that's an easy question to answer. Just take a country's total income (in the United States, that's now about US$18 trillion) and divide that by the nation's population (the US now has about 320 million people). The result is per capita income (now about US$56,000 for every man, woman and child in the US).

Compare that with other countries' per capita incomes and you can see, at least crudely, who has the highest living standards.