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Exploiting Ordinal Data for Subjective Well-Being Evaluation

Author

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  • Fattore Marco

    (Department of Statistics and Quantitative Methods, University of Milan – Bicocca, Bicocca, ; Italy)

  • Maggino Filomena

    (Department of Statistics, Informatics, Applications “G. Parenti” (DiSIA), Bicocca, ; University of Florence, Italy)

  • Arcagni Alberto

    (Department of Statistics and Quantitative Methods, University of Milan – Bicocca, Bicocca, ; Italy)

Abstract

The evaluation of subjective well-being, and of similar issues related to quality of life, is usually addressed through composite indicators or counting procedures. This leads to inconsistencies and inefficiency in the treatment of ordinal data that, in turn, affect the quality of information provided to scholars and to policy-makers. In this paper we take a different path and prove that the evaluation of multidimensional ordinal well-being can be addressed in an effective and consistent way, using the theory of partially ordered sets. We first show that the proper evaluation space of well-being is the partially ordered set of achievement profiles and that its structure depends upon the importance assigned to well-being attributes. We then describe how evaluation can be performed extracting information out of the evaluation space, respecting the ordinal nature of data and producing synthetic indicators without attribute aggregation. An application to subjective well-being in Italy illustrates the procedure.

Suggested Citation

  • Fattore Marco & Maggino Filomena & Arcagni Alberto, 2015. "Exploiting Ordinal Data for Subjective Well-Being Evaluation," Statistics in Transition New Series, Statistics Poland, vol. 16(3), pages 409-428, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:vrs:stintr:v:16:y:2015:i:3:p:409-428:n:3
    DOI: 10.21307/stattrans-2015-023
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Alkire, Sabina & Foster, James, 2011. "Counting and multidimensional poverty measurement," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7), pages 476-487.
    2. Mozaffar Qizilbash, 2006. "Philosophical Accounts of Vagueness, Fuzzy Poverty Measures and Multidimensionality," Economic Studies in Inequality, Social Exclusion, and Well-Being, in: Achille Lemmi & Gianni Betti (ed.), Fuzzy Set Approach to Multidimensional Poverty Measurement, chapter 1, pages 9-28, Springer.
    3. David Madden, 2010. "Ordinal and cardinal measures of health inequality: an empirical comparison," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(2), pages 243-250, February.
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