We assess whether the value of humanity (or global social welfare) has improved in the last decades despite (or because of ) the substantial increase in global population sizes. We use for this purpose a relatively unknown but simple and attractive social evaluation approach based on...

The measurement of well-being in its multidimensional aspects has become ever more prominent in monitoring development over the last three decades. This note discusses some of the properties of a recent multidimensional index proposed by the UNDP. Unlike most of its predecessors, UNDP’s...

We assess whether the value of humanity (or global social welfare) has improved in the last decades despite (or because of ) the substantial increase in global population sizes. We use for this purpose a relatively unknown but simple and attractive social evaluation approach based on...

This paper proposes a methodology for testing for whether tax reforms are pro-poor. This is done by extending stochastic dominance techniques to identify tax reforms that will be deemed absolutely or relatively pro-poor by a wide spectrum of poverty analysts. The statistical properties of the...

The evaluation of development processes and of public policies often involves comparisons of social states in which populations differ in size and longevity. This requires social evaluation principles to be sensitive to both the number and the length of lives. This paper explores the use of...

The importance of taking into account multiple dimensions of wellbeing in the measurement of poverty has been emphasized in the recent literature. The poverty alleviation literature has not, however, yet addressed the important issue of policy design for efficient multidimensional poverty...

Income mobility is often thought to equalize permanent incomes and thereby to improve social welfare. The welfare analysis of mobility often fails, however, to account for the cost of the variability of periodic incomes around permanent incomes. This paper assesses the net welfare benefit of...

The federal government announced in its 2012 budget its intention to delay the age of eligibility for Old Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement from 65 to 67 years. By the time the policy is fully implemented (i.e., in 2030), this delay will have increased net revenues of the fedral...

We use simulation methods to analyze the impacts of certain proposed reforms to improve the coverage of longevity risk. This risk, which may in principle be adequately covered by classic defined-benefit pension plans, has been of particular interest in Quebec for some years now, notably due to...

Nous présentons dans ce document la conception et la structure de COMPAS, un modèle de microsimulation dynamique portant sur l’état et l’utilisation de soins de santé des Québécois. Ce modèle comporte deux dimensions importantes : un composante dynamique, qui permet une évo- lution...