That exercise forced him to try to think through the implications of economic policy in an age of populism. And while wages may be stagnant for many, and some industries are shedding jobs, Mr. Bernanke is convinced that much of the country hasn’t appreciated just how good the economy is.

“The U.S. has done so much better than most of the rest of the world,” he said. “I mean if you have an international perspective and you travel around the world, then you hear from policy makers or average people in other countries: ‘Boy, the U.S. is doing great. We wish that Europe or Japan could do as well.’”

Still, Mr. Bernanke acknowledged that his view might appear to be one of a globalist or member of the elite.

“I fully acknowledge that doing well on the whole doesn’t mean doing well for everybody, and there are a lot of people who have been left behind or have not done as well as the average,” he said.

That unevenness, he said, has led to much of the populism sweeping the globe.

“I think a lot of the populist reactions in the world, perhaps even more so than in the United States, is against immigration, which reflects cultural anxiety,” he said, explaining that he believes part of the country is asking, “Are we becoming a minority in our own country?”

He said he was struck by a recent economic paper by Anne Case and Angus Deaton of Princeton University looking at the high mortality rate among white men with only a high school education.

“Clearly there is very substantial stress among a large part of the population,” Mr. Bernanke said. “Some of it is cultural-social, and I’m not really an expert on those things. Some of it is economic inequality, disruption from trade and technology, slow productivity growth, which means slow wage growth.”