Well-being Inequality in the Long Run

Leandro Prados de la Escosura ()

No 131, Working Papers from European Historical Economics Society (EHES)

Abstract: This paper provides a long-run view of well-being inequality at world scale based on a new historical dataset. Trends in social dimensions alter the view on inequality derived from per capita GDP. While in terms of income, inequality increased until the third quarter of the twentieth century; in terms of well-being, inequality fell steadily since World War I. The spread of mass primary education and the health transitions were its main drivers. The gap between the West and the Rest explains only partially the evolution of well-being inequality, as the dispersion within the developing regions has increasingly determined its evolution.

Keywords: Well-being; Inequality; Life Expectancy; Health Transition; Education; per capita GDP (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I00 N30 O15 O50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 73 pages
Date: 2018-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gro, nep-hap, nep-hea, nep-his and nep-knm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.ehes.org/wp/EHES_131.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Well-being Inequality in the Long Run (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hes:wpaper:0131

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from European Historical Economics Society (EHES) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Paul Sharp ().