The Fallacy of Macroeconomic Indicators

Abstract

Chapter 2 undertakes an holistic analysis of Cambodia’s recent growth and contemporary endowments, in order to highlight the shortcomings of traditional economic indicators of inequality in the context of translocal livelihoods. It argues that traditional measures such as the Gini coefficient and the Palma and Thiel indices share a static conception of wealth which fails to reflect the translocal livelihoods of contemporary Cambodians. To exemplify this point, the chapter subsequently explores how widely noted inequalities in physical capital are produced and sustained by mobile livelihoods. Finally, inequities in the educational and health dimensions of human capital are examined in order to demonstrate the inadequacy of economic measures at capturing the embodied and intergenerational nature of translocal inequality.