IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cor/louvrp/3350.html

Well-being measurement with reference consumption

Author

Listed:
  • Maniquet, François

    (Université catholique de Louvain, LIDAM/CORE, Belgium)

  • Moramarco, Domenico

    (Universit´a degli studi di Bari “Aldo Moro”)

Abstract

We axiomatically study how to measure well-being when individuals have heterogeneous preferences and consumption bundles are evaluated by comparison with some reference bundle (a poverty line bundle, an index of needs, the average consumption in a reference group, etc.). Our key requirement is that well-being remains constant if the reference bundle changes towards a bundle that the individual deems equivalent. Accounting for preferences may lead two individuals with identical consumption and reference bundles to have unequal well-being levels. To limit this inequality, we study four axioms based on the lattice structure of the set of indifference contours. We define and characterize five measures. One prominent measure corresponds to the ratio between equivalent incomes at consumption and at reference, where prices are chosen to minimize the difference between these incomes.

Suggested Citation

  • Maniquet, François & Moramarco, Domenico, 2026. "Well-being measurement with reference consumption," LIDAM Reprints CORE 3350, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    • Handle: RePEc:cor:louvrp:3350
    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00199-026-01706-3
    Note: In: Economic Theory, 2026
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • I30 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:cor:louvrp:3350. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Alain GILLIS (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/coreebe.html .

    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.