IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v15y2023i3p2324-d1048217.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Study on Temporal and Spatial Differences in Women’s Well-Being in an Ecologically Vulnerable Area in Northwest China

Author

Listed:
  • Jinjing Ma

    (College of Urban and Environmental Science, Northwest University, Xi’an 710127, China)

  • Min Lei

    (College of Urban and Environmental Science, Northwest University, Xi’an 710127, China)

  • Huan Yu

    (College of Urban and Environmental Science, Northwest University, Xi’an 710127, China)

  • Rui Li

    (College of Urban and Environmental Science, Northwest University, Xi’an 710127, China)

Abstract

As an important driving force for economic development and social progress, women have become an important subject of well-being research. Human well-being is the state of physical and mental health as well as material affluence and includes a variety of factors, such as wealth, education, health, safety, amenities, way of life, and happiness. Based on the established research framework of the Women’s Development Index (WDI) in Northwest China, this paper first measured the objective well-being level of women in Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia, and Xinjiang from 2003 to 2020 under the influence of ecological factors. In addition, spatial disaggregation and comparative analyses of the spatial imbalance of women’s well-being in Northwest China were carried out using the Theil index and Dagum Gini coefficient. The results show that (1) the WDI in ecologically vulnerable areas in Northwest China increased from 0.525 in 2003 to 0.690 in 2020, indicating an overall increase in well-being. (2) The WDI in the five provinces gradually increased with fluctuations. Among them, Shaanxi always remained in first place in terms of the WDI. (3) From 2003 to 2020, the spatial imbalance of women’s well-being as measured according to the WDI in Northwest China first increased and then decreased. However, the gap in women’s well-being in Northwest China was smaller than the economic gap. (4) From 2003 to 2020, the well-being gap measured by the WDI among the 10 groups of provinces in Northwest China gradually decreased, and the development gap between the provinces and Shaanxi was the largest.

Suggested Citation

  • Jinjing Ma & Min Lei & Huan Yu & Rui Li, 2023. "A Study on Temporal and Spatial Differences in Women’s Well-Being in an Ecologically Vulnerable Area in Northwest China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(3), pages 1-24, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:3:p:2324-:d:1048217
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/3/2324/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/3/2324/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nathan Kettlewell & Jack Lam, 2022. "Retirement, social support and mental well-being: a couple-level analysis," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 23(3), pages 511-535, April.
    2. Amal Ray, 2008. "Measurement of social development: an international comparison," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 86(1), pages 1-46, March.
    3. Marco Filippo Torchio & Umberto Lucia & Giulia Grisolia, 2020. "Economic and Human Features for Energy and Environmental Indicators: A Tool to Assess Countries’ Progress towards Sustainability," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(22), pages 1-19, November.
    4. Cengiz Türe & Yiğit Türe, 2021. "A model for the sustainability assessment based on the human development index in districts of Megacity Istanbul (Turkey)," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 23(3), pages 3623-3637, March.
    5. Xiaoming Song & Ze Tian & Chenhui Ding & Chao Liu & Wei Wang & Ronggai Zhao & Yingchun Xing, 2022. "Digital Economy, Environmental Regulation, and Ecological Well-Being Performance: A Provincial Panel Data Analysis from China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(18), pages 1-21, September.
    6. Min Song & Lynn Huntsinger & Manman Han, 2018. "How does the Ecological Well-Being of Urban and Rural Residents Change with Rural-Urban Land Conversion? The Case of Hubei, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-22, February.
    7. Kazuhiko Kakamu, 2016. "Simulation Studies Comparing Dagum and Singh–Maddala Income Distributions," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 48(4), pages 593-605, December.
    8. Eileen Trzcinski & Elke Holst, 2012. "Gender Differences in Subjective Well-Being In and Out of Management Positions," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 107(3), pages 449-463, July.
    9. Tri Wahyu Nugroho & Nuhfil Hanani & Hery Toiba & Sujarwo Sujarwo, 2022. "Promoting Subjective Well-Being among Rural and Urban Residents in Indonesia: Does Social Capital Matter?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(4), pages 1-16, February.
    10. M. Pilar Matud & Marisela López-Curbelo & Demelza Fortes, 2019. "Gender and Psychological Well-Being," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(19), pages 1-11, September.
    11. Hoda Jradi & Oraynab Abouabbas, 2017. "Well-Being and Associated Factors among Women in the Gender-Segregated Country," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 14(12), pages 1-9, December.
    12. Martyna Kobus, 2015. "Erratum to: Polarization measurement for ordinal data," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 13(3), pages 485-485, September.
    13. Hongsong Liang & Yinshan Tang & Xuexi Huo, 2014. "Liushou Women’s Happiness and its Influencing Factors in Rural China," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 117(3), pages 907-918, July.
    14. Verhofstadt, E. & Van Ootegem, L. & Defloor, B. & Bleys, B., 2016. "Linking individuals' ecological footprint to their subjective well-being," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 80-89.
    15. Jianxiu Yang & Xing Ma & Xueyan Zhao & Wenqing Li, 2022. "Spatiotemporal of the Coupling Relationship between Ecosystem Services and Human Well-Being in Guanzhong Plain Urban Agglomeration," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(19), pages 1-19, October.
    16. Moh Shadiqur Rahman & Novil Dedy Andriatmoko & Moh Saeri & Herman Subagio & Afrizal Malik & Joko Triastono & Renie Oelviani & Juliana C. Kilmanun & Helena da Silva & Marietje Pesireron & Rein Estefanu, 2022. "Climate Disasters and Subjective Well-Being among Urban and Rural Residents in Indonesia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(6), pages 1-14, March.
    17. Martyna Kobus, 2015. "Polarization measurement for ordinal data," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 13(2), pages 275-297, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Allanson, Paul, 2017. "Monitoring income-related health differences between regions in Great Britain: A new measure for ordinal health data," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 72-80.
    2. Stephen P. Jenkins, 2021. "Inequality Comparisons with Ordinal Data," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 67(3), pages 547-563, September.
    3. Yalonetzky, Gaston, 2022. "Consistent and inconsistent inequality indices for ordinal variables," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 219(C).
    4. Nicolas Gravel & Brice Magdalou & Patrick Moyes, 2021. "Ranking distributions of an ordinal variable," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 71(1), pages 33-80, February.
    5. Suman Seth and Gaston Yalonetzky, 2018. "Assessing Deprivation with Ordinal Variables: Depth Sensitivity and Poverty Aversion," OPHI Working Papers ophiwp123.pdf, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford.
    6. Tugce Cuhadaroglu, 2023. "Evaluating ordinal inequalities between groups," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 21(1), pages 219-231, March.
    7. Kobus, Martyna & Kurek, Radosław, 2018. "Copula-based measurement of interdependence for discrete distributions," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 27-39.
    8. Sandip Sarkar & Sattwik Santra, 2020. "Extending the approaches to polarization ordering of ordinal variables," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 18(3), pages 421-440, September.
    9. Ramses H. Abul Naga & Christopher Stapenhurst & Gaston Yalonetzky, 2024. "Inferring inequality: Testing for median-preserving spreads in ordinal data," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(2-4), pages 156-174, April.
    10. Martyna Kobus & Radoslaw Kurek, 2017. "Copula-based measurement of interdependence for discrete distributions," Working Papers 431, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    11. Debasmita Basu & Sandip Sarkar, 2023. "Polarization in Indian Education: An Ordinal Variable Approach," Journal of Quantitative Economics, Springer;The Indian Econometric Society (TIES), vol. 21(3), pages 569-591, September.
    12. Asis Kumar Banerjee, 2025. "Inequality ranking of ordered categorical distributions: A status-based approach," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 23(1), pages 71-89, March.
    13. Paul Allanson, 2016. "Monitoring income-related health differences between regions in Great Britain: a new measurement framework," Dundee Discussion Papers in Economics 292, Economic Studies, University of Dundee, revised Jul 2016.
    14. Martyna Kobus & Olga Półchłopek & Gaston Yalonetzky, 2019. "Inequality and Welfare in Quality of Life Among OECD Countries: Non-parametric Treatment of Ordinal Data," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 143(1), pages 201-232, May.
    15. Valérie Bérenger & Jacques Silber, 2022. "On the Measurement of Happiness and of its Inequality," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 23(3), pages 861-902, March.
    16. Suman Seth & Gaston Yalonetzky, 2021. "Assessing Deprivation with an Ordinal Variable: Theory and Application to Sanitation Deprivation in Bangladesh," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 35(3), pages 793-811.
    17. Frank A Cowell & Martyna Kobus & Radoslaw Kurek, 2017. "Welfare and Inequality Comparisons for Uni- and Multi-dimensional Distributions of Ordinal Data," STICERD - Public Economics Programme Discussion Papers 31, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
    18. Silber, Jacques & Yalonetzky, Gaston, 2021. "Measuring welfare, inequality and poverty with ordinal variables," GLO Discussion Paper Series 962, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    19. Gordon Anderson, 2018. "Measuring Aspects of Mobility, Polarization and Convergence in the Absence of Cardinality: Indices Based Upon Transitional Typology," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 139(3), pages 887-907, October.
    20. GAO Tianming & Anna Ivolga & Vasilii Erokhin, 2018. "Sustainable Rural Development in Northern China: Caught in a Vice between Poverty, Urban Attractions, and Migration," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(5), pages 1-20, May.

    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:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:3:p:2324-:d:1048217. 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: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    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.