A dominance approach to the appraisal of the distribution of well-being across countries

Christophe Muller and Alain Trannoy

Journal of Public Economics, 2011, vol. 95, issue 3, 239-246

Abstract: This paper proposes a dominance approach to study inequality of well-being across countries. We consider a class of well-being indices based on the three attributes used in the HDI (Human Development Index). Indices are required to satisfy: preference for egalitarian marginal distributions of income, health and education, ALEP substitution of attributes and priority to poor countries in allocating funds to enhance health and education. We exhibit sufficient conditions for checking dominance over the defined class of well-being indices. We apply our method to country data from 2000 to 2005. The deterioration in health conditions in poor countries is why welfare improvements at the world level cannot be ascertained.

Keywords: Multidimensioned welfare; Stochastic dominance; Human Development Index (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (32)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272710001556
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Journal Article: A dominance approach to the appraisal of the distribution of well-being across countries (2011)
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:eee:pubeco:v:95:y:2011:i:3:p:239-246

DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2010.10.012

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Public Economics is currently edited by R. Boadway and J. Poterba

More articles in Journal of Public Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().