Tyranny of numbers

Are living standards as poor as they say?

Western journalists who  travel to Iran get an earful of complaints about how bad things economic are.  The World Bank disagrees.  Iranian GDP per capita in 2007 stood at $10432 (in 2005 Purchasing Power Parity dollars), which is only one-forth that of the of the United States, and less than a thousand dollars below Turkey’s.  In terms of average growth rate of GDP per capita, Iran has actually done better than in the ten year period 1997-2007,  3.5% compared to 2.5% for Turkey. These numbers are readily available from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators website.

There is no shortages of complaints one can have about Iran’s economy (high youth unemployment, high inflation, and stagnant productivity, to name a few) , but a low standard of living is not one of them. (more…)