Multilateral and multidimensional comparison of a group’s subjective well-being is problematic when its responses are ordinal and cardinally intangible. Arbitrary attribution of cardinal measure to ordinal categories engenders ambiguity when alternative equally valid scales are contemplated...

The problem considered here is that of dealing with the "incompleteness" property of Stochastic Dominance Orderings by quantifying the extent to which distributions differ when there is no dominant distribution at a given order. For example consider a policymaker's choice problem when facing a...

Underlying the unresolved debate over whether the gap between rich and poor country GNP per capita has narrowed is a concern for wellbeing. The issue is really about the changing shapes of distributions of wellbeing indicators. As limiting cases con- vergence between rich and poor country groups...

The Chinese government implemented the One Child Policy (OCP) in an attempt to ameliorate the population explosion and its potential negative economic consequences on their infant economy in 1979. Here the consequences of this policy for marital matching and family size decisions are examined. A...

Interest in Economic and Social Mobility is rooted in a societal aspiration for equal opportunity. The aspiration is based upon an Egalitarian Political Philosophy which approves of differential outcomes when they are the consequence of differential effort and disapproves of differential...

This paper explores some difficulties encountered in multidimensional measures of wellbeing. In particular, it highlights the need for such indices to (i) incorporate information on individual preferences, (ii) be robust with respect to estimation assumptions given the 'curse of dimensionality'...

In the late 1970s China embarked upon a period of wide-ranging reforms, amongst which the Economic Reforms and the Open Door Policy can be counted. This article is to investigate ensuing patterns and trends in the interCity per-capita income distribution in China in the 1990s, after the reforms...