OECD: One or Many? Ranking Countries with a Composite Well-Being Indicator

Jesús Peiró-Palomino () and Andres Picazo-Tadeo

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2018, vol. 139, issue 3, No 1, 847-869

Abstract: Abstract This paper provides a composite indicator of well-being for the 35 OECD countries, as well as South Africa, Russia and Brazil for the period 2013–2016, considering data on 10 different well-being domains from the OECD Better Life Index. In a first stage, countries are ranked according to their well-being indicator, constructed combining Data Envelopment Analysis with the Benefit-of-the-Doubt principle and Multi-Criteria-Decision-Making techniques. In a second stage, well-being clubs are identified using hierarchical cluster analysis, revealing that well-being is highly polarised. Moreover, as well-being affects people, population size is accounted for in the cluster analysis, showing that for the largest proportion of people in our sample, well-being is remarkably low.

Keywords: Composite indicators; Data Envelopment Analysis; Hierarchical cluster analysis; Multi-Criteria-Decision-Making; OECD Better Life Index; Well-being (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C14 C61 I31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11205-017-1747-5

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