ABSTRACT
Russia and Ukraine show a precipitous drop in social welfare from 1988 to 1995 and then recover to different degrees. Other East European countries show such a sudden fall in social welfare, but do not recover. In 2010 reciprocal social welfare in the United States, as measured by Q5Q1, was 6.5 per cent, while in Germany in the same year it was over 21 per cent, more than three times the US value. In Iran in 2013 reciprocal social welfare was 15.2, more than twice the US value, more than 150 per cent greater. Dynamic graphs of Q5Q1 enable us to distinguish social welfare for two countries with nearly identical RP values, for example, Russia and Iran. The Aristotelian Social Welfare Function proves to be more relevant than contemporary measures of social welfare that focus on the condition of the individual rather than the society.
