IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/soinre/v119y2014i2p581-598.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Measurement of Non-economic Inequality in Well-Being Indices

Author

Listed:
  • Lauri Peterson

Abstract

This paper is a critical review of composite well-being indices that account for inequality. Many well-being indices build upon the idea that while income and wealth are important, they do not constitute a person’s actual quality of life. However, first of all, the analysis finds that while well-being indices aim to go “beyond GDP” and other primarily economic indicators, many of them, unfortunately, do not focus on inequality at all. Secondly, most indices which include inequality in their measurement, only account for economic inequality. Thirdly, the article finds that the most comprehensive wellbeing index in terms of inequality is the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index which adjusts for economic, health and education inequality. This article finds that well-being indices should make further strides to ensure the capture of non-economic inequality in terms of education and health. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Suggested Citation

  • Lauri Peterson, 2014. "The Measurement of Non-economic Inequality in Well-Being Indices," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 119(2), pages 581-598, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:soinre:v:119:y:2014:i:2:p:581-598
    DOI: 10.1007/s11205-013-0513-6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11205-013-0513-6
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11205-013-0513-6?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Abdel-Hameed Nawar, 2013. "Poverty and Inequality in the Non-income Multidimensional Space: a Critical Review in the Arab States," Working Papers 103, International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth.
    2. Wagstaff, Adam & Paci, Pierella & van Doorslaer, Eddy, 1991. "On the measurement of inequalities in health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 33(5), pages 545-557, January.
    3. Harold Alderman & John Hoddinott & Bill Kinsey, 2006. "Long term consequences of early childhood malnutrition," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 58(3), pages 450-474, July.
    4. John Strauss & Duncan Thomas, 1998. "Health, Nutrition, and Economic Development," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 36(2), pages 766-817, June.
    5. Bommier, Antoine & Stecklov, Guy, 2002. "Defining health inequality: why Rawls succeeds where social welfare theory fails," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 497-513, May.
    6. Francisco H. G. Ferreira & Jérémie Gignoux, 2014. "The Measurement of Educational Inequality: Achievement and Opportunity," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 28(2), pages 210-246.
    7. Stephen Knack & Philip Keefer, 1997. "Does Social Capital Have an Economic Payoff? A Cross-Country Investigation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(4), pages 1251-1288.
    8. repec:dau:papers:123456789/1552 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Craig, Neil, 2005. "Exploring the generalisability of the association between income inequality and self-assessed health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(11), pages 2477-2488, June.
    10. Aaberge, Rolf & Mogstad, Magne & Peragine, Vito, 2011. "Measuring long-term inequality of opportunity," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(3), pages 193-204.
    11. Gasper, D.R., 2004. "Human well-being : concepts and conceptualizations," ISS Working Papers - General Series 19148, International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam (ISS), The Hague.
    12. Andrew G. Berg & Jonathan D. Ostry, 2017. "Inequality and Unsustainable Growth: Two Sides of the Same Coin?," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 65(4), pages 792-815, November.
    13. Chen, Zhuo & Eastwood, David B. & Yen, Steven T., 2007. "A decade's story of childhood malnutrition inequality in China: Where you live does matter," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 139-154.
    14. Alesina, Alberto & La Ferrara, Eliana, 2002. "Who trusts others?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(2), pages 207-234, August.
    15. Van de Kerk, Geurt & Manuel, Arthur R., 2008. "A comprehensive index for a sustainable society: The SSI -- the Sustainable Society Index," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(2-3), pages 228-242, June.
    16. Erreygers, Guido & Clarke, Philip & Van Ourti, Tom, 2012. "“Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who in this land is fairest of all?”—Distributional sensitivity in the measurement of socioeconomic inequality of health," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 257-270.
    17. repec:hal:pseose:halshs-00646594 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Des Gasper, 2004. "Human Well-being: Concepts and Conceptualizations," WIDER Working Paper Series DP2004-06, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    19. Maria Ana Lugo & Koen Decancq, 2009. "Measuring Inequality of Well-Being with a Correlation-Sensitive Multidimensional Gini Index," Economics Series Working Papers 459, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    20. François Bourguignon & Francisco H. G. Ferreira & Marta Menéndez, 2007. "Inequality Of Opportunity In Brazil," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 53(4), pages 585-618, December.
    21. Giorgina Brown & John Micklewright & Sylke V. Schnepf & Robert Waldmann, 2007. "International surveys of educational achievement: how robust are the findings?," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 170(3), pages 623-646, July.
    22. Arnaud Lefranc & Nicolas Pistolesi & Alain Trannoy, 2008. "Inequality Of Opportunities Vs. Inequality Of Outcomes: Are Western Societies All Alike?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 54(4), pages 513-546, December.
    23. Zhang, Yingqiang & Eriksson, Tor, 2010. "Inequality of opportunity and income inequality in nine Chinese provinces, 1989-2006," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 21(4), pages 607-616, December.
    24. Brent Bleys, 2012. "Beyond GDP: Classifying Alternative Measures for Progress," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 109(3), pages 355-376, December.
    25. Case, Anne & Fertig, Angela & Paxson, Christina, 2005. "The lasting impact of childhood health and circumstance," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 365-389, March.
    26. Fajnzylber, Pablo & Lederman, Daniel & Loayza, Norman, 2002. "Inequality and Violent Crime," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 45(1), pages 1-40, April.
    27. Thomas, Vinod & Wang, Yan & Fan, Xibo, 2001. "Measuring education inequality - Gini coefficients of education," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2525, The World Bank.
    28. Géraldine Thiry, 2015. "Beyond GDP: Conceptual Grounds of Quantification. The Case of the Index of Economic Well-Being (IEWB)," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 121(2), pages 313-343, April.
    29. World Bank, 2009. "World Development Indicators 2009," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 4367.
    30. repec:bla:scandj:v:97:y:1995:i:4:p:603-20 is not listed on IDEAS
    31. Sabina Alkire, James Foster, 2010. "Designing the Inequality-Adjusted Human Development Index (HDI)," OPHI Working Papers 37, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford.
    32. Wagstaff, Adam & van Doorslaer, Eddy, 2000. "Chapter 34 Equity in health care finance and delivery," Handbook of Health Economics, in: A. J. Culyer & J. P. Newhouse (ed.), Handbook of Health Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 34, pages 1803-1862, Elsevier.
    33. Francisco H. G. Ferreira & Jérémie Gignoux, 2011. "The Measurement Of Inequality Of Opportunity: Theory And An Application To Latin America," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 57(4), pages 622-657, December.
    34. Wilkinson, Richard G. & Pickett, Kate E., 2007. "The problems of relative deprivation: Why some societies do better than others," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 65(9), pages 1965-1978, November.
    35. Morgan Kelly, 2000. "Inequality And Crime," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 82(4), pages 530-539, November.
    36. A. B. Atkinson & F. Bourguignon, 1982. "The Comparison of Multi-Dimensioned Distributions of Economic Status," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 49(2), pages 183-201.
    37. Abdel-Hameed Nawar, 2013. "Poverty and Inequality in the Non-Income Multidimensional Space: A Critical Review in the Arab States," One Pager 187, International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth.
    38. Costa-Font, Joan & Hernández-Quevedo, Cristina, 2012. "Measuring inequalities in health: What do we know? What do we need to know?," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 106(2), pages 195-206.
    39. Erreygers, Guido & Van Ourti, Tom, 2011. "Measuring socioeconomic inequality in health, health care and health financing by means of rank-dependent indices: A recipe for good practice," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 685-694, July.
    40. Sudhir Anand and Amartya Sen, 1994. "Human development Index: Methodology and Measurement," Human Development Occasional Papers (1992-2007) HDOCPA-1994-02, Human Development Report Office (HDRO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
    41. Luis Lopez-Calva & Eduardo Ortiz-Juarez, 2012. "A Household-Based Distribution-Sensitive Human Development Index: An Empirical Application to Mexico, Nicaragua and Peru," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 109(3), pages 395-411, December.
    42. Lars Osberg & Andrew Sharpe, 2010. "The Index of Economic Well-Being," Challenge, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(4), pages 25-42.
    43. Suman Seth, 2013. "A class of distribution and association sensitive multidimensional welfare indices," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 11(2), pages 133-162, June.
    44. Milorad Kovacevic, 2010. "Measurement of Inequality In Human Development - A Review," Human Development Research Papers (2009 to present) HDRP-2010-35, Human Development Report Office (HDRO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
    45. Atkinson, Anthony B., 1970. "On the measurement of inequality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 244-263, September.
    46. James Foster & Luis Lopez-Calva & Miguel Szekely, 2005. "Measuring the Distribution of Human Development: methodology and an application to Mexico," Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 6(1), pages 5-25.
    47. Serge-Christophe Kolm, 1977. "Multidimensional Egalitarianisms," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 91(1), pages 1-13.
    48. A. Atkinson, 2003. "Multidimensional Deprivation: Contrasting Social Welfare and Counting Approaches," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 1(1), pages 51-65, April.
    49. Biggs, Brian & King, Lawrence & Basu, Sanjay & Stuckler, David, 2010. "Is wealthier always healthier? The impact of national income level, inequality, and poverty on public health in Latin America," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 71(2), pages 266-273, July.
    50. Palma, J.G., 2011. "Homogeneous middles vs. heterogeneous tails, and the end of the ‘Inverted-U’: the share of the rich is what it's all about," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1111, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    51. Behrman, Jere R & Birdsall, Nancy, 1983. "The Quality of Schooling: Quantity Alone is Misleading," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(5), pages 928-946, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cantone, Giulio Giacomo & Tomaselli, Venera, 2024. "On the Coherence of Composite Indexes: Multiversal Model and Specification Analysis for an Index of Well-Being," MetaArXiv d5y26, Center for Open Science.
    2. Doris Fuchs & Bernd Schlipphak & Oliver Treib & Le Anh Nguyen Long & Markus Lederer, 2020. "Which Way Forward in Measuring the Quality of Life? A Critical Analysis of Sustainability and Well-Being Indicator Sets," Global Environmental Politics, MIT Press, vol. 20(2), pages 12-36, May.
    3. Simon Medcalfe, 2018. "Economic Well-Being in U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Areas," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 139(3), pages 1147-1167, October.
    4. Aleksandar Stanojević & Jože Benčina, 2019. "The Construction of an Integrated and Transparent Index of Wellbeing," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 143(3), pages 995-1015, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Suman Seth, 2013. "A class of distribution and association sensitive multidimensional welfare indices," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 11(2), pages 133-162, June.
    2. Patrizia Luongo, 2015. "Inequality of Opportunity in Educational Achievements: Cross-country and Intertemporal Comparisons," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2015-043, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    3. Francisco H. G. Ferreira & Vito Peragine, 2015. "Equality of opportunity: Theory and evidence," Working Papers 359, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    4. Koen Decancq, 2017. "Measuring Multidimensional Inequality in the OECD Member Countries with a Distribution-Sensitive Better Life Index," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 131(3), pages 1057-1086, April.
    5. Patrizia Luongo, 2015. "Inequality of opportunity in educational achievements: Cross-country and intertemporal comparisons," WIDER Working Paper Series 043, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    6. Aizawa, Toshiaki, 2019. "Ex-ante Inequality of Opportunity in Child Malnutrition: New Evidence from Ten Developing Countries in Asia," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 144-161.
    7. Syrovátka, Miroslav & Schlossarek, Martin, 2019. "Measuring development with inequality: How (should) aggregate indicators of development account for inequality?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 1-1.
    8. Croci Angelini, Elisabetta & Michelangeli, Alessandra, 2012. "Axiomatic measurement of multidimensional well-being inequality: Some distributional questions," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 41(5), pages 548-557.
    9. Guido Erreygers & Roselinde Kessels, 2017. "Socioeconomic Status and Health: A New Approach to the Measurement of Bivariate Inequality," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 14(7), pages 1-23, June.
    10. Nicolas Ruiz, 2018. "Measuring The Joint Distribution Of Household’S Income, Consumption And Wealth Using Nested Generalized Mean," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 63(03), pages 759-785, June.
    11. Zhong, Hai, 2009. "A multivariate analysis of the distribution of individual's welfare in China: What is the role of health?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(6), pages 1062-1070, December.
    12. ANDREOLI Francesco & HAVNES Tarjei & LEFRANC Arnaud, 2014. "Equalization of opportunity: Definitions, implementable conditions and application to early-childhood policy evaluation," LISER Working Paper Series 2014-12, Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER).
    13. Antonio Abatemarco, 2017. "Evaluating Economic Mobility under Opportunity Egalitarianism," International Journal of Economics and Finance, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 9(12), pages 260-277, December.
    14. Juan C. Palomino & Gustavo A. Marrero & Juan G. Rodríguez, 2019. "Channels of Inequality of Opportunity: The Role of Education and Occupation in Europe," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 143(3), pages 1045-1074, June.
    15. Andrea Brandolini, 2008. "On applying synthetic indices of multidimensional well-being: health and income inequalities in selected EU countries," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 668, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    16. Suman Seth and Maria Emma Santos, 2018. "Multidimensional Inequality and Human Development," OPHI Working Papers ophiwp114_2.pdf, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford.
    17. Alain Trannoy & Sandy Tubeuf & Florence Jusot & Marion Devaux, 2010. "Inequality of opportunities in health in France: a first pass," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(8), pages 921-938, August.
    18. Bosmans, Kristof & Decancq, Koen & Ooghe, Erwin, 2015. "What do normative indices of multidimensional inequality really measure?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 94-104.
    19. FLEURBAEY, Marc & SCHOKKAERT, Erik, 2011. "Equity in health and health care," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2011026, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    20. Kristof Bosmans & Z. Emel Öztürk, 2021. "Measurement of inequality of opportunity: A normative approach," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 19(2), pages 213-237, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:soinre:v:119:y:2014:i:2:p:581-598. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.