ИСТИНА

To compare different measurement is a usual research procedure in economics. In history quantitative approach commonly provokes qualitative curiosity. Measurement, by definition, is the assignment of a number to an object or event, which can be compared with other objects or events. So measurement gives rise to comparison. But it's a vital issue that comparisons in economic history are important only if they cover the field broadly. Comparisons in economic history are generally relative (e.g. per capita) than nominal. And still we meet discussions on the worth measuring. Let’s test several indices (like GDP, or HDI, or decile/percentile coefficients) to understand their possibilities as well as limitation. It's important to check what they really show and what they decently hide in historical retrospective. Gregory Clark in his “Farewell to Alms” (2007) asked a question about possibilities to compare different economies: how is it possible to compare the world of the Stone Age with the one of 1800? The most obvious way is to define income per capita. From historical point of view, the most complex problem how to estimate the real income in the absence of direct data. Famous attempt to compute the income in the very long run was contributed by Angus Maddison (2007). Income per capita shows not the real economic lifestyle of the society, but its distributed growth. But it gives a chance to look at the very long run economic development of the world. And three main effects of the economic evolution became visible: Malthusian trap, Industrial revolution, and the Great Divergence. Such mainstream boundaries for economic comparison of modern time states presumes different approaches to study inequality (as well as poverty). One approach is to study Gross Domestic Product (GDP), other approach is to apply Human Development Index principles (HDI includes life expectancy, education, and income per capita), and another one is to use decile (or sometimes percentile) analysis. GDP-approach is developed by Maddison and his project trying to estimate real power of economies in retrospective. Even real GDP estimations usually lack of human dimension of the economic progress, and human capital usually remains underestimated. HDI was created to emphasize that people and their capabilities should be the ultimate criteria for assessing the development of a country, not economic growth alone. HDI-approach gave birth to an important project for creation of Historical Index of Human Development (HIHD) that shows distinctions in the progress of health care, education, and income in different countries, emphasizing human dimension of economic progress (Prados de la Escosura, 2015). Percentile-approach accentuates the distribution of real economic possibilities in societies, showing inequality patterns as a part of historical development, e.g. inequality of labor income is always much less than inequality of capital ownership (Piketty, 2015). European economic history gives examples for comparisons for last 250 years in these three dimensions (GDP, HIHD, Percentile), to understand deficit of each measurement and to give a chance to create a multi-dimensional model.