IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolet/v107y2010i2p266-269.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Has the world moved forward? A robust multidimensional evaluation

Author

Listed:
  • Decancq, Koen
  • Ooghe, Erwin

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Decancq, Koen & Ooghe, Erwin, 2010. "Has the world moved forward? A robust multidimensional evaluation," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 107(2), pages 266-269, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:107:y:2010:i:2:p:266-269
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165-1765(10)00056-X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gary S. Becker & Tomas J. Philipson & Rodrigo R. Soares, 2005. "The Quantity and Quality of Life and the Evolution of World Inequality," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 277-291, March.
    2. Angus Deaton, 2005. "Measuring Poverty in a Growing World (or Measuring Growth in a Poor World)," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(1), pages 1-19, February.
    3. Angus Deaton, 2005. "ERRATUM: Measuring Poverty in a Growing World (or Measuring Growth in a Poor World)," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(2), pages 395-395, May.
    4. Farhad Noorbakhsh, 2006. "International Convergence or Higher Inequality in Human Development?: Evidence for 1975 to 2003," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2006-15, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    5. Anthony B. Atkinson & Andrea Brandolini, 2010. "On Analyzing the World Distribution of Income," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank Group, vol. 24(1), pages 1-37, January.
    6. World Bank, 2009. "World Development Indicators 2009," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 4367, December.
    7. Decancq, Koen & Decoster, André & Schokkaert, Erik, 2009. "The Evolution of World Inequality in Well-being," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 11-25, January.
    8. Bart Capéau & Andre Decoster, 2004. "The Rise or Fall of World Inequality: A Spurious Controversy?," WIDER Working Paper Series DP2004-02, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    9. Sudhir Anand & Paul Segal, 2008. "What Do We Know about Global Income Inequality?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 46(1), pages 57-94, March.
    10. Serge-Christophe Kolm, 1977. "Multidimensional Egalitarianisms," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 91(1), pages 1-13.
    11. Steve Dowrick & Muhammad Akmal, 2005. "Contradictory Trends In Global Income Inequality: A Tale Of Two Biases," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 51(2), pages 201-229, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. DECANCQ, Koen & FLEURBAEY, Marc & SCHOKKAERT, Erik, 2014. "Inequality, income, and well-being," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2014018, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    2. Kontbay-Busun, Sine & Peichl, Andreas, 2014. "Multidimensional affluence in income and wealth in the eurozone: A cross country comparison using the HFCS," ZEW Discussion Papers 14-124, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    3. Bosmans, Kristof & Decancq, Koen & Ooghe, Erwin, 2015. "What do normative indices of multidimensional inequality really measure?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 94-104.
    4. Andreas Peichl & Nico Pestel, 2013. "Multidimensional affluence: theory and applications to Germany and the US," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(32), pages 4591-4601, November.
    5. Giuliano Resce & Fritz Schiltz, 2021. "Sustainable Development in Europe: A Multicriteria Decision Analysis," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 67(2), pages 509-529, June.
    6. Koen Decancq, 2017. "Measuring Multidimensional Inequality in the OECD Member Countries with a Distribution-Sensitive Better Life Index," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 131(3), pages 1057-1086, April.
    7. Koen Decancq & Luc Van Ootegem & Elsy Verhofstadt, 2013. "What If We Voted on the Weights of a Multidimensional Well‐Being Index? An Illustration with Flemish Data," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 34, pages 315-332, September.
    8. Savaglio, Ernesto, 2011. "On multidimensional inequality with variable distribution mean," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(4-5), pages 453-461.
    9. Nicholas Rohde & Ross Guest, 2018. "Multidimensional Inequality Across Three Developed Countries," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 64(3), pages 576-591, September.
    10. Nesson, Erik T. & Robinson, Joshua J., 2015. "An information theory based framework for the measurement of population health," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 17(C), pages 86-103.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Leandro Prados de la Escosura, 2023. "Inequality Beyond GDP: A Long View," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 69(3), pages 533-554, September.
    2. Jordá, Vanesa & Niño-Zarazúa, Miguel, 2019. "Global inequality: How large is the effect of top incomes?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 1-1.
    3. Clare Leaver & Paul Segal, 2014. "The Global Distribution of Income," Economics Series Working Papers 714, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    4. Thomas Goda, 2013. "Changes in income inequality from a global perspective: An overview," Working Papers PKWP1303, Post Keynesian Economics Society (PKES).
    5. Christoph Lakner & Branko Milanovic, 2016. "Global Income Distribution: From the Fall of the Berlin Wall to the Great Recession," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 30(2), pages 203-232.
    6. La-Bhus Fah Jirasavetakul & Christoph Lakner, 2020. "The Distribution of Consumption Expenditure in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Inequality Among All Africans," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 29(1), pages 1-25.
    7. Angus Deaton, 2010. "Price Indexes, Inequality, and the Measurement of World Poverty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(1), pages 5-34, March.
    8. Decancq, Koen & Decoster, André & Schokkaert, Erik, 2009. "The Evolution of World Inequality in Well-being," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 11-25, January.
    9. Pinkovskiy, Maxim L., 2013. "World welfare is rising: Estimation using nonparametric bounds on welfare measures," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 176-195.
    10. Branko Milanovic, 2012. "Global inequality recalculated and updated: the effect of new PPP estimates on global inequality and 2005 estimates," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 10(1), pages 1-18, March.
    11. Facundo Alvaredo & Leonardo Gasparini, 2013. "Recent Trends in Inequality and Poverty in Developing Countries," CEDLAS, Working Papers 0151, CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata.
    12. Jordá, Vanesa & Niño-Zarazúa, Miguel, 2019. "Global inequality: How large is the effect of top incomes?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 1-1.
    13. Anthony B. Atkinson & Andrea Brandolini, 2010. "On Analyzing the World Distribution of Income," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 24(1), pages 1-37, January.
    14. Darvas, Zsolt, 2019. "Global interpersonal income inequality decline: The role of China and India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 16-32.
    15. repec:pri:rpdevs:deaton_price_indexes_inequality_and_the_measurement_of_world_poverty_aer. is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Ingvild Almas, 2012. "International Income Inequality: Measuring PPP Bias by Estimating Engel Curves for Food," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(2), pages 1093-1117, April.
    17. Ximing Wu & Andreas Savvides & Thanasis Stengos, 2008. "The Global Joint Distribution of Income and Health," Working Papers 0807, University of Guelph, Department of Economics and Finance.
    18. Mauricio De Rosa & Joan Vilá, 2022. "Beyond tax-survey combination: inequality and the blurry household-firm border," Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) 22-10, Instituto de Economía - IECON.
    19. DECANCQ, Koen & FLEURBAEY, Marc & SCHOKKAERT, Erik, 2014. "Inequality, income, and well-being," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2014018, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    20. Markus Brückner & Antonio Ciccone, 2011. "Rain and the Democratic Window of Opportunity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 79(3), pages 923-947, May.
    21. Channing Arndt & Kristi Mahrt, 2017. "Is inequality underestimated in Mozambique? Accounting for underreported consumption," WIDER Working Paper Series 153, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:107:y:2010:i:2:p:266-269. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolet .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.