Trade-Offs in a Multidimensional Human Development Index

Jaya Krishnakumar ()
Additional contact information
Jaya Krishnakumar: University of Geneva

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2018, vol. 138, issue 3, No 7, 1022 pages

Abstract: Abstract This paper deals with the issue of trade-offs in an aggregate measure of well-being and argues for a simple multi-dimensional human development measure which allows no substitutability among the dimensions. From a theoretical point of view, our index is shown to satisfy desirable normative and statistical properties highlighted by the literature as well as the practical requirements of user-friendliness and simplicity. An alternative that is less stringent for policy is also analysed from the point of view of trade-offs, including a comparison of ‘social’ trade-offs with market trade-offs when the latter are available. We end the paper with two empirical illustrations, at macro and micro levels, comparing our index with other commonly used indices in each context.

Keywords: Multidimensional index; Well-being; Human development; Marginal rate of substitution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C43 I31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11205-017-1679-0 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:138:y:2018:i:3:d:10.1007_s11205-017-1679-0

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

DOI: 10.1007/s11205-017-1679-0

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 ().