Investigating Regional Disparities in Italy’s Well-Being Since Unification (1871–2011)

The paper investigates the wellbeing development of Italian regions since 1871. To this aim we use 4 aggregating methods (arithmetic mean, geometric mean, Leontief production functions, adjusted Mazziotta and Pareto index) to summarize 22 indicators over 6 domains of wellbeing from a multidimensional perspective; this approach allows us to assess differences arising from the adopted aggregation method. Over the 140 years under investigation and selected sub-periods we study $$\sigma $$ σ -, $$\gamma $$ γ - and $$\beta $$ β - convergence and we shed new light on the relative performance and historical development of Italian regions, with convergence occurring only in selected domains.