Centre for social policy Herman Deleeck

An important aspect of multidimensional wellbeing distributions is the correlation between different dimensions. We propose two indices for measuring multidimensional inequality, derived from two underlying social evaluation functions. These functions aggregate both across dimensions and across individuals. The social evaluation functions differ only with respect to the sequencing of aggregation.

Abstract In this paper we examine whether, and how, welfare economics should incorpo% rate the insights from happiness and satisfaction studies. Our main point is that measuring well% being by reported satisfaction levels can come in conflict with indi% vidualsnjudgments about their own lives and that these individual judgments should be respected. We propose an alternative measure of welfare in terms of equivalent incomes that does respect individual preferences.

Résumé Cet article examine l'évolution des inégalités du bien-être global entre 1980 et 2010 basée sur trois dimensions: le revenu, la santé et l'éducation. Je compare deux approches différentes pour la mesure des inégalités du bien-être global: une approche «dimension par dimension» et une perspective multidimensionnelle. La première approche analyse les dimensions du bien-être séparément. L'inégalité de chacune de ces dimensions montre une tendance remarquablement différente.

A Fréchet class collects all multivariate joint distribution functions that have the same marginals. Members of a Fréchet class only differ with respect to the interdependence between their marginals. In this paper, I study orders of interdependence on a Fréchet class using two multivariate generalizations of the bivariate rearrangement proposed by Epstein and Tanny (1980)[4] and Tchen (1980)[16].

Abstract: In this paper I investigate the problem of defining a multivariate dependence ordering. First, I provide a characterization of the concordance dependence ordering between multivariate random vectors with fixed margins. Central to the characterization is a multivariate generalization of a well-known bivariate elementary dependence increasing rearrangement.

We consider the evolution of international income inequality over the period 1975-2000. As data we use population-weighted per capita GDPs of 108 countries. We pay special attention to the question of how sensitive conclusions are with respect to the choice of inequality measure. Obviously, different inequality measures disagree on how to compare income distributions. First, inequality measures disagree on how to compare distributions with the same mean.

Abstract: There is a widespread consensus that well-being is a multidimensional notion. To quantify multidimensional well-being, information on the relative weights of the different dimensions is essential. There is, however, considerable disagreement in the literature on the most appropriate weighting scheme to be used. Making use of a recent data set for Flanders, we compare various methods to select a weighting scheme.

In this paper, we use the tools offered by the recent literature on multidimensional inequality measurement to investigate the evolution of the inequality in well-being across different countries during 1975–2000. We focus on three important dimensions of life: standard of living, health, and education. Inequality in the three dimensions shows a different trend during 1975–2000. We propose a flexible measure of well-being to quantify the evolution of overall intercountry well-being inequality.

This paper presents a multidimensional normative framework to evaluate whether the world moved forward between 1980 and 2008. We focus on the robustness of the results when attributing different weights to the different dimensions. Population-weighted international welfare has not worsened over this period. However, the trend in the underlying inequality is ambiguous, once sufficient weight is given to longevity and/or income.

Well-being consists of many dimensions such as income, health and education. A society exhibits greater dependence between its dimensions of well-being when the positions of the individuals in the different dimensions are more aligned or correlated. Differences in dependence may lead to very different societies, even when the dimension-wise distributions are identical. I propose to use a copula-based framework to order societies with respect to their dependence.

Abstract: Multidimensional indices are becoming increasingly important instruments to assess the well-being of societies. They move beyond the focus on a single indicator and yet, are easy to present and communicate. A crucial step in the construction of a multidimensional index of well-being is the selection of the relative weights for the different dimensions. The aim of this paper is to study the role of these weights and to critically survey eight different approaches to set them.

This paper investigates the evolution of global well-being inequality between 1980 and 2010 based on three dimensions: income, health and education. The inequality of each of these dimensions shows a di¤erent pattern over time. To make an overall assessment of the evolution of well-being inequality, I make use of a recently developed multidimensional inequality index which re ‡ects the implicit value judgments of the revised Human Development Index. Multidimensional well-being inequality has decreased over the considered period. However, this result is shown to depend crucially on the weighting scheme selected, the aggregation procedure and the transformation of the income dimension.

We propose to measure inequality of well-being with a multidimensional generalization of the Gini coefficient. We derive two inequality indices from their underlying social evaluation functions. These functions are conceived as a double aggregation functions: one across the dimensions of well-being, and another across the individuals. They differ only with respect to the sequencing of aggregations. We argue that the sequencing that does not exclude the Gini index to be sensitive to the correlation between the dimensions is more attractive. We illustrate both Gini indices using Russian household data on three dimensions of well-being: expenditure, health and education.

Given the inadequacy of minimum incomes and growing poverty in most European welfare states, this paper originates from the overarching questions whether and how the EU could counter these trends. The 'Fund for European Aid to the Most Deprived' (FEAD), launched in 2014, appears to be a concrete case of a united anti-poverty programme with redistributive mechanisms. The fund aims to help people take their first steps out of poverty. It supports local programmes and initiatives providing nonfinancial assistance and social reintegration measures. According to the European Commission FEAD functions as an effective instrument to reduce poverty in Europe and, furthermore, to contribute to the implementation of the 'European Pillar of Social Rights'. This paper seeks to study the operation and impact of the fund in the light of these large-scale objectives. Our findings suggest a relatively high impact of FEAD in poorer countries and an at least noteworthy impact in some wealthier countries.

The European Social Fund (ESF) and the Fund for European Aid to the Most Deprived (FEAD) are instruments by which the European Union (EU) acts as a 'material supporter' of national welfare states. Originally, these funds served social objectives only in a derived form. Today, however, the merger European Social Fund Plus (ESF+), integrating both ESF and FEAD, is presented as the main financial instrument to implement the European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR). This raises the question of what these levers can do in terms of financial support, especially for Member States with greater social needs. Since this question has remained unanswered so far, we aim to fill a gap in the literature by studying this topic. Concretely, in this paper, using the Social Scoreboard indicators that monitor the EPSR implementation, we analyse the size and the distribution of ESF and FEAD allocations according to Member States' economic capacity, social needs, policy outputs and efforts required to meet the European social goals. We find that the funds benefit relatively more the poorer Member States who also tend to have greater social needs. However, especially in the case of ESF, there are significant deviations from this general pattern. Some countries consistently receive less funding than others with similar levels of social needs, and vice versa. Moreover, if we express ESF and FEAD budgets as a percentage of the efforts required to lift all income-poor citizens to the EU-wide 60% poverty line, it appears that countries who need to make the greatest efforts get relatively less funding. This outcome seems to be significantly driven by the funds' allocation rules, which give only little importance to the great social and economic discrepancies between countries. Ultimately, this raises the question whether social needs should be taken more into account in the distribution of the funds, while paying attention to the risk of moral hazard.