The evolution of World inequality in Well-being

Koen Decancq, André Decoster and Erik Schokkaert

Working Papers of Department of Economics, Leuven from KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), Department of Economics, Leuven

Abstract: In this paper we investigate the evolution of the inequality in well-being across different countries between 1975 and 2000. We treat well-being as a multidimensional concept focusing on three important dimensions of life: standard of living, health and education. Inequality in the three dimensions shows a different trend between 1975 and 2000. We propose a flexible measure of well-being and use the tools offered by the recent literature on multidimensional inequality measurement to quantify the evolution of overall intercountry well-being inequality. The empirical results are nuanced, and sensitive to different normative choices on the trade-offs between the different dimensions. In particular 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)
JEL-codes: D31 D63 I31 O50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap
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Related works:
Journal Article: The Evolution of World Inequality in Well-being (2009)
Working Paper: The evolution of world inequality in well-being (2009)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ete:ceswps:ces0704

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