The Evolution of World Inequality in Well-being

Koen Decancq, André Decoster and Erik Schokkaert

World Development, 2009, vol. 37, issue 1, 11-25

Abstract: Summary In this paper, we use the tools offered by the recent literature on multidimensional inequality measurement to investigate the evolution of the inequality in well-being across different countries during 1975-2000. We focus on three important dimensions of life: standard of living, health, and education. Inequality in the three dimensions shows a different trend during 1975-2000. We propose a flexible measure of well-being to quantify the evolution of overall intercountry well-being inequality. The empirical results are sensitive to different normative choices on the trade-offs between the different dimensions. Especially the concave transformation of income turns out to be decisive for the evolution of world inequality in well-being.

Keywords: multidimensional; inequality; measurement; index; of; well-being; inter-country; inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (54)

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Related works:
Working Paper: The evolution of world inequality in well-being (2009)
Working Paper: The evolution of World inequality in Well-being (2007)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:37:y:2009:i:1:p:11-25

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