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Good Societies, Financial Inequality and Secrecy, and a Good Life: from Aristotle to Piketty

Author

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  • Alex C. Michalos

    (University of Northern British Columbia)

  • P. Maurine Hatch

Abstract

In this paper we show that for a dataset of 105 countries, four candidate objective indexes (Human Development Index (HDI), Weighted Index of Social Progress (WISP), Social Progress Index (SPI) and Sustainable Society Index (SSI)) and one subjective index (World Happiness Survey (WHS)) of at least aspects of the quality of life or human well-being have good convergent validity among themselves and expected statistically significant negative correlations with Gini measures of wealth and income, and a measure of political jurisdictions’ institutionalized financial secrecy (Financial Secrecy Scores (FSS)). A measure of offshore wealth as a fraction of GDP (FOW) showed only a couple significant correlations with one overall quality of life index (SSI). When we combined the four objective indexes to the subjective index to create overall measures of the quality of life (including Happy Life Years (HLY)), the correlations among the indexes increased. Most of the correlations increased again when we used Gini indexes to create wealth-equality overall quality of life indexes and these correlations were higher on average than those among income-equality overall quality of life indexes. Combining results using 21 quality of life/well-being indexes, we rank ordered 105 countries from best to worst. The top 10 in order were Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Australia, Finland, Netherlands, Slovakia, Belgium, Sweden and Denmark. This is the first time anyone has built the array of index options presented here based on a handful of originals. We offer them as another potential starting point for the next generation of researchers.

Suggested Citation

  • Alex C. Michalos & P. Maurine Hatch, 2020. "Good Societies, Financial Inequality and Secrecy, and a Good Life: from Aristotle to Piketty," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 15(4), pages 1005-1054, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:ariqol:v:15:y:2020:i:4:d:10.1007_s11482-019-09717-0
    DOI: 10.1007/s11482-019-09717-0
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Alex Michalos, 1997. "Combining Social, Economic And Environmental Indicators To Measure Sustainable Human Well-Being," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 40(1), pages 221-258, January.
    2. Alex Michalos, 1986. "An application of multiple discrepancies theory (MDT) to seniors," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 18(4), pages 349-373, November.
    3. Alex Cobham, Petr Janský, and Markus Meinzer, 2015. "The Financial Secrecy Index: Shedding New Light on the Geography of Secrecy - Working Paper 404," Working Papers 404, Center for Global Development.
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    17. Atkinson, Anthony B., 2015. "Inequality: what can be done?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 101810, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    18. Alex Michalos & P. Kahlke & Karen Rempel & Anu Lounatvuori & Anne MacDiarmid & Heather Creech & Carolee Buckler, 2015. "Progress in Measuring Knowledge, Attitudes and Behaviours Concerning Sustainable Development Among Tenth Grade Students in Manitoba," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 123(2), pages 303-336, September.
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    1. Eirini Leriou, 2023. "Understanding and Measuring Child Well-being in the Region of Attica, Greece: Round Five," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 16(4), pages 1395-1451, August.
    2. Eirini Leriou, 2022. "Understanding and Measuring Child Well-being in the Region of Attica, Greece: Round four," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 15(6), pages 1967-2011, December.

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