A Quantile Composite-Indicator Approach for the Measurement of Equitable and Sustainable Well-Being: A Case Study of the Italian Provinces

Cristina Davino (), Pasquale Dolce (), Stefania Taralli () and Vincenzo Esposito Vinzi ()
Additional contact information
Cristina Davino: University of Macerata
Pasquale Dolce: University of Naples Federico II
Stefania Taralli: Istat, Italian National Institute of Statistics
Vincenzo Esposito Vinzi: ESSEC Business School

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2018, vol. 136, issue 3, No 8, 999-1029

Abstract: Abstract An interesting measure for equitable and sustainable well-being has been proposed recently by the National Institute of Statistics in Italy and the National Council for Economy and Labour. It is called BES (from the Italian Benessere Equo e Sostenibile). A set of indicators, partitioned into several domains and themes, is used for measuring the BES. Taking into account prior knowledge of both the structure of this set of indicators and the relationships among them, the paper proposes a hierarchical composite model for measuring and modeling the BES of the Italian provinces. This hierarchical model allows us to synthesize individual indicators into single indexes in order to construct composite indicators at a global and a partial level. Moreover, we analyze the relationships among the different domains and themes as well as the effects of these on equitable and sustainable well-being, in order to search for strongly influential factors. In order to estimate the parameters of the model, we use both Partial Least Squares path modeling and a new method, called Quantile Composite-based path modeling. In particular, Partial Least Squares path modeling is used to estimate average effects in the network of relationships between variables, while with Quantile Composite-based path modeling we investigate whether the magnitude of these effects changes across different parts of the variable distributions, providing a more complete picture and uncovering specific local leveraging factors for improvement. A final ranking of the Italian provinces, according to the BES composite indicator, is also provided at the national level and for different geographic areas of Italy.

Keywords: Equitable and sustainable well-being; Composite indicators; Hierarchical composite model; Partial Least Squares path modeling; Quantile regression (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11205-016-1453-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
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:spr:soinre:v:136:y:2018:i:3:d:10.1007_s11205-016-1453-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11135

DOI: 10.1007/s11205-016-1453-8

Access Statistics for this article

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement is currently edited by Filomena Maggino

More articles in Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().