The evolution of world inequality in well-being

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

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.

2011

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.

2018

This paper provides a long-run view of well-being inequality at world scale based on a new historical dataset. Trends in social dimensions alter the view on inequality derived from per capita GDP. While in terms of income, inequality increased until the third quarter of the twentieth century; in terms of well-being, inequality fell steadily since World War I. The spread of mass primary education and the health transitions were its main drivers. The gap between the West and the Rest explains only partially the evolution of well-being inequality, as the dispersion within the developing regions has increasingly determined its evolution.

2018

This paper provides a long-run view of well-being inequality at world scale based on a new historical dataset. Trends in social dimensions alter the view on inequality derived from per capita GDP. While in terms of income, inequality increased until the third quarter of the twentieth century; in terms of well-being, inequality fell steadily since World War I. The spread of mass primary education and the health transitions were its main drivers. The gap between the West and the Rest explains only partially the evolution of wellbeing inequality, as the dispersion within the developing regions has increasingly determined its evolution.

Review of Income and Wealth, 2021

The study of international well-being and its distribution remains focused on income. This paper addresses multidimensional well-being from a capabilities perspective during the last one-and-a-half centuries. Relative inequality (population-weighted) fell in health and education since the late 1920s, due to the globalisation of mass schooling and the health transition, but only dropped from 1970 onwards in terms of political and civil liberties, and declined since 1900 for augmented human development. These results are at odds with per capita income inequality that rose over time and only shrank from 1990 onwards. Relative and absolute well-being distribution behaved differently, with the distance between countries shrinking in relative terms but widening in absolute terms. Countries in the middle and lower deciles of the world distribution achieved the largest relative gain over the last century. Education and political and civil liberties were the main contributors to the evolution of augmented human development inequality, although longevity made a substantial contribution until the 1920s.

Review of Development Economics, 2017

In this paper we compute inequality measures over the distribution of a subjective well-being variable constructed from a life satisfaction question included in the Gallup World Poll in almost all countries in the world. We argue that inequality in subjective well-being may be a better proxy for the degree of unfairness in a society than income inequality. We find evidence that inequality in subjective well-being has an inverse-U relationship with per capita GDP, but it is monotonically decreasing with respect to mean subjective well-being. We argue that this difference might be associated to inequality aversion in the space of utility.

Today we have an impressive array of indicators of economic well-being and economic inequality across many countries. However, as I will argue, we have not yet found a way of integraJng these data sets into a coherent whole. There are two problems. One is the problem of how to combine income and wealth data. From an income-and-wealth data set we could derive an overall inequality measure, which would give us an accurate indication of overall inequality. We know how to do this, but it is difficult to do and has rarely been done. The other problem is how to combine average income-and-wealth with the inequality measure for income-and-wealth. The Sen Welfare Index provides a model of how this might be done, but it has not yet been done. It is an overall goal of public policy to increase average income-and-wealth while reducing income-and-wealth inequality. But, because we lack the types of measurement I have described, we cannot determine whether this goal is being achieved.

Economic Inquiry, 2018

The link between happiness and overall inequality is best studied using an index that incorporates different aspects of inequality, and is measured consistently in different countries. One such index is the degree to which happiness itself varies among individuals. Its correlation with both happiness levels and social trust is substantially stronger than the corresponding correlation for income inequality. This remains so after allowing for bounded scale reporting, including a purely ordinal measure of dispersion. Moreover, the correlation is stronger for individuals who profess to care most about inequality. The link between happiness and inequality may thus be stronger than previously appreciated.

2018

Rising trends in GDP per capita are often interpreted as reflecting rising levels of general wellbeing. But GDP per capita is at best a crude proxy for wellbeing, neglecting important qualitative dimensions. This column explores the long-term trends in global wellbeing inequality using a new dataset. Inequality indices reflecting various aspects of wellbeing are shown to have been declining since WWI, unlike real GDP per capita inequality. Leandro de la Escosura (Universidad Carlos III) writes on his recent paper for the

2009

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.