For Your Economists: Measuring Worth - Relative Worth Calculators and Data Sets

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Link: Measuring Worth - Relative Worth Calculators and Data Sets

 

Present worth of a past amount

 

The Merriam-Webster dictionary says a comparator is “a device for comparing something with a similar thing or with a standard measure.” The principle of the MeasuringWorth is that there is no one standard measure for comparing what a monetary value in the past is worth today. The best measure depends on the question asked.

 

Our comparators can provide several alternative answers with a guide to the best choice. Many websites and other resources will give you one answer in terms of a consumer price index. This simplification can be misleading, as any transaction is valued in different ways by different people and indifferent contexts. Thus, when making comparisons over time, these alternative ways of understanding value must be taken into account.

 

At present, we have comparators that give you seven answers for the United States (from 1774 on), five for the United Kingdom (from 1270 on), five for Australia (from 1828 on). These dates are determined by the limits of available data.

 

There are also two comarators for five for Japan (from 1879 to 2011), and three for China (from 1952 to 2011). These last two have not been updated recently, because we do not have anyone who wants to take charge of them.

 

For a guide to how to choose which answer is the best for your question, please refer to Choosing the Best Indicator to Measure Relative Worth.