This paper shows how distance functions, a tool typically employed in production economics to measure the distance between a set of inputs and a set of outputs, can be employed to approximate a composite measure encompassing the many dimensions of well-being. It also illustrates how to implement...

Economic measures of income have ignored large areas of human well-being and are poor measures of well-being in the areas to which they attend. Despite increased recognition of those distortions, ‘GNP per capita continues to be regarded as the quintessential indicator of a country’s living...

This essay aims at a broad, main-stream account of the literature on inequality and poverty measurement in the space of income and, additionally, deals with measures of disparity and deprivation in the more expanded domain of capabilities and functionings. In addition to an introductory and a...

This paper relates Amartya Sen’s capability approach to the literature on equivalence scales. Synthetic indicators of well-being are constructed by adjusting individual incomes for differences in functionings. An exploratory comparative application to Italian and Belgian data illustrates the...

This study appraises non-monetary multidimensional poverty in Nigeria using the novel first order dominance approach developed by Arndt et al. (2012). It examines five dimensions of deprivation: education, water, sanitation, shelter, and energy-using comparable datasets, the Nigeria Demographic...

We use data from two rounds of the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) to study the determinants of subjective well-being in China over the period 2005-2010 during which self-reported happiness scores show an increase across all income groups. Ordered probit regression analysis of well-being...

This paper applies the German Socio-Economic Panel to analyse the effect of within household in-come comparison on individual life satisfaction. Our estimates indicate, a primary breadwinner wifedecreases spousal individual happiness by roughly nine per cent. To state the economic...

This paper explores a new theoretical and empirical approach to the assessment of human well-being, relevant to current challenges of social fragmentation in the presence of globalization and technological advance. We present two indexes of well-being - solidarity (S) and agency (A) - to be...

Per capita GDP has limited use as a well-being indicator because it does not capture many dimensions that imply a "good life," such as health and equality of opportunity. However, per capita GDP has the virtues of easy interpretation and can be calculated with manageable data requirements....

Per capita GDP has limited use as a well-being indicator because it does not capture many dimensions that imply a "good life", such as health and equality of opportunity. However, per capita GDP has the virtues of easy interpretation and can be calculated with manageable data requirements....