Living Standards in Southeast Asia

Anne Booth graduated from Victoria University, Wellington, and then did graduate work at the Australian National University. She subsequenty taught at the University of Singapore for three years before returning to the ANU as a research fellow. In 1991, she accepted a chair at SOAS, University of London, and worked there until she retired in 2014. She was awarded a Lee Kong Chian fellowship in 2015/16, which allowed her to carry out research for this monograph at Stanford University and the National University of Singapore.

"Living Standards in Southeast Asia is an indispensable resource for anyone interested in South East Asian development over the last century. It is a highly useful introduction to an overwhelming body of literature; no one knows more about the measurement of long-run living standards in South East Asia than Booth, and this book proves it. Moreover, the book contains clear warnings against the uncritical use of quantitative estimates of living standards, not only for scholars working on South East Asia but for economists and economic historians more generally. Indeed, it is a recommended read for all those quantitatively-inclined researchers working with (historical) development measures."- Pim de Zwart, Wageningen University, South East Asia Research (2022) "Economic history is one of those rare academic disciplines where scholarly impact and creative insights tend to improve with the author’s age. Now in her seventies, Anne Booth exemplifies this tendency nicely. Her fifth solely authored book under review here is chock-a-block full of methodological critiques of the status of poverty studies, and development economics more broadly. Only a seasoned scholar would have the depth of experience, and confidence, to lay out not just what the statistical record shows about improvements in Southeast Asian living standards over the ‘long century’ from 1900 to 2015, but also what is wrong with those statistics (a lot!) and with the conceptual underpinnings of the measurements themselves." - C. Peter Timmer, Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, Vol. 56, No. 2 "Living standards is a book for experts. It is a paragon of careful, cautious, fully caveated scholarship, which experts rightfully admire; and which undergraduate students, policymakers, and general audiences typically cannot abide. Booth never jumps to conclusions. She tiptoes, very carefully. [...] The book requires careful, slow reading to fully take in Booth’s vital arguments. For all that, it is a landmark analysis of the living standards across Southeast Asia over the twentieth century. If there is still good social science—and economic history—being done throughout the twenty-first century and beyond, Living standards will be a cornerstone of such work." - Eric C. Thompson, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 53, Iss. 3

• Preface Chapter One: Assessing Changes in Living Standards in Southeast Asia in the 20th and Early 21st Centuries: What Indicators Should We Look At? Chapter Two: The Colonial Period: Population and Output Growth in Agricultural and Non-agricultural Sectors Chapter Three: The Colonial Period: Measures of Welfare and Changing Living Standards Chapter Four: Confronting the Challenges of Independence Chapter Five: Estimating Poverty and Inequality: Country Estimates from the 1950s to the 1970s Chapter Six: The 1980s and the 1990s: The Fast and the Slow in Southeast Asia Chapter Seven: Growth, Poverty and Distribution in the Early 21st Century The Impact of Accelerated Growth after 2004: The Evidence from National Poverty Lines Creating Internationally Comparable Poverty Estimates Trends in Inequality: 2005-15 Flaws in the Household Surveys Should Monetary Estimates be Abandoned? Human Development Rankings Inequality in Non-monetary Indicators Chapter Eight: Government Policy Interventions Chapter Nine: What Have We Learned? Concluding Comments Bibliography Index