Correlating Growth with Well-Being during Economic Reforms Evidence from India and China

This paper investigates the hypothesis that economic growth is critical in inducing well-being during economic reforms. The regional (16 Indian states and 28 Chinese provinces) level study of India and China show that the quality of growth has been essential for well-being. We estimate level of economic well-being by aggregating different socio- economic indicators through multivariate statistical method of factor analysis. We estimate economic growth (per capita income, real) along with their well-being level for four different sub-periods since 1978/80-2001 for all regions. Our empirical results confirm that differential level of well-being across regions is correlated with the quality of growth.