IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/iwhdps/iwh-13-16.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Multidimensional Well-being and Regional Disparities in Europe

Author

Listed:
  • Döpke, Jörg
  • Knabe, Andreas
  • Lang, Cornelia
  • Maschke, Philip

Abstract

Using data from the OECD Regional Well-Being Index - a set of quality-of-life indicators measured at the sub-national level, we construct a set of composite well-being indices. We analyse the extent to which the choice of five alternative aggregation methods affects the well-being ranking of regions. We find that regional inequality in these composite measures is lower than regional inequality in gross-domestic product (GDP) per capita. For most aggregation methods, the rank correlation across regions appears to be quite high. It is also shown that using alternative indicators instead of GDP per capita would only have a small effect on the set of regions eligible for aid from EU Structural Funds. The exception appears to be an aggregation based on how individual dimensions of welfare relate to average life satisfaction across regions, which would substantially change both the ranking of regions and which regions would receive EU funds.

Suggested Citation

  • Döpke, Jörg & Knabe, Andreas & Lang, Cornelia & Maschke, Philip, 2016. "Multidimensional Well-being and Regional Disparities in Europe," IWH Discussion Papers 13/2016, Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:iwhdps:iwh-13-16
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/130225/1/856223395.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bruno S. Frey & Alois Stutzer, 2000. "Maximising Happiness?," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 1(2), pages 145-167, May.
    2. Adam Okulicz-Kozaryn, 2012. "Income and Well-being Across European Provinces," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 106(2), pages 371-392, April.
    3. Nicole Lawless & Richard Lucas, 2011. "Predictors of Regional Well-Being: A County Level Analysis," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 101(3), pages 341-357, May.
    4. Sonja C. Kassenboehmer & Christoph M. Schmidt, 2010. "Beyond GDP and Back: What is the Value-Added by Additional Components of Welfare Measurement?," RatSWD Working Papers 167, German Data Forum (RatSWD).
    5. Moore, Nils aus dem & Schmidt, Christoph M., 2013. "On the Shoulders of Giants: Tracing Back the Intellectual Sources of the Current Debate on “GDP and Beyond” to the 19th Century," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, pages 266-290.
    6. Denis Huschka & Gert G. Wagner, 2010. "Sind Indikatoren zur Lebensqualität und zur Lebenszufriedenheit als politische Zielgrößen sinnvoll?," RatSWD Research Notes 43, German Data Forum (RatSWD).
    7. Koen Decancq & María Ana Lugo, 2013. "Weights in Multidimensional Indices of Wellbeing: An Overview," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(1), pages 7-34, January.
    8. Dominik Schraff, 2014. "Buying turnout or rewarding loyalists? Electoral mobilization and EU structural funding in the German Länder," European Union Politics, , vol. 15(2), pages 277-288, June.
    9. Marc Fleurbaey, 2009. "Beyond GDP: The Quest for a Measure of Social Welfare," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(4), pages 1029-1075, December.
    10. Florence Bouvet & Sandy Dall'Erba, 2010. "European Regional Structural Funds: How Large is the Influence of Politics on the Allocation Process?," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(3), pages 501-528, June.
    11. Kitty Stewart, 2005. "Dimensions Of Well-Being In Eu Regions: Do GDP And Unemployment Tell us All We Need To Know?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 73(2), pages 221-246, September.
    12. Diane Coyle, 2014. "GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 10183.
    13. Charles I. Jones & Peter J. Klenow, 2016. "Beyond GDP? Welfare across Countries and Time," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(9), pages 2426-2457, September.
    14. Ed Diener & Eunkook Suh, 1997. "Measuring Quality Of Life: Economic, Social, And Subjective Indicators," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 40(1), pages 189-216, January.
    15. Grant Duncan, 2010. "Should Happiness-Maximization be the Goal of Government?," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 11(2), pages 163-178, April.
    16. Berlage, Lodewijk & Terweduwe, Dirk, 1988. "The classification of countries by cluster and by factor analysis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 16(12), pages 1527-1545, December.
    17. Alois Stutzer & Bruno S. Frey, 2004. "Reported Subjective Well-Being: A Challenge for Economic Theory and Economic Policy," Schmollers Jahrbuch : Journal of Applied Social Science Studies / Zeitschrift für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, vol. 124(2), pages 191-231.
    18. Florence Bouvet & Sandy Dall'Erba, 2010. "European Regional Structural Funds: How Large is the Influence of Politics on the Allocation Process?," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(3), pages 501-528, June.
    19. William D. Nordhaus & James Tobin, 1972. "Economic Research: Retrospect and Prospect, Volume 5, Economic Growth," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number nord72-1, June.
    20. Achim Kemmerling & Thilo Bodenstein, 2006. "Partisan Politics in Regional Redistribution," European Union Politics, , vol. 7(3), pages 373-392, September.
    21. Loek Groot & Erik Zonneveld, 2013. "European Union Budget Contributions and Expenditures: A Lorenz Curve Approach," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(4), pages 649-666, July.
    22. Lisa Maria Dellmuth & Michael F Stoffel, 2012. "Distributive politics and intergovernmental transfers: The local allocation of European Union structural funds," European Union Politics, , vol. 13(3), pages 413-433, September.
    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. Daniele Archibugi & Rinaldo Evangelista & Antonio Vezzani, 2021. "Centripetal and centrifugal forces in technological activities: linking regional innovation performances to EU Science & Technology policies," Working Papers 47, Birkbeck Centre for Innovation Management Research, revised Jan 2021.
    2. Peiró-Palomino, Jesús & Picazo-Tadeo, Andrés J. & Tortosa-Ausina, Emili, 2021. "Measuring well-being in Colombian departments. The role of geography and demography," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    3. Pietrovito, Filomena & Pozzolo, Alberto Franco & Resce, Giuliano & Scialà , Antonio, 2022. "Fiscal decentralization and income (re)distribution in OECD countries' regions," Economics & Statistics Discussion Papers esdp22086, University of Molise, Department of Economics.
    4. Jesús Peiró‐Palomino & Andrés J. Picazo‐Tadeo & Vicente Rios, 2020. "Well‐being in European regions: Does government quality matter?," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 99(3), pages 555-582, June.
    5. Alexandru Pavel & Bogdan Andrei Moldovan & Karima Kourtit & Peter Nijkamp, 2020. "Urban or Rural: Does It Make A Difference for Economic Resilience? A Modelling Study on Economic and Cultural Geography in Romania," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(9), pages 1-39, May.
    6. Jesús Peiró-Palomino & Andrés J. Picazo-Tadeo & Vicente Rios, 2020. "Social Progress Around the World: Measurement, Evolution and Convergence," Working Papers 2006, Department of Applied Economics II, Universidad de Valencia.
    7. Bonasia, Mariangela & Napolitano, Oreste & Spagnolo, Fabio & Spagnolo, Nicola, 2022. "The economic and welfare state determinants of well-being in Europe," International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 49-57.
    8. Jesús Peiró-Palomino & Andrés J. Picazo-Tadeo & Emili Tortosa-Ausina, 2020. "The Geography of Well-being in Colombia," Working Papers 2020/03, Economics Department, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón (Spain).

    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. V. K. Shrotryia & Shashank Vikram Pratap Singh, 2020. "Measuring Progress Beyond GDP: A Theoretical Perspective," Emerging Economy Studies, International Management Institute, vol. 6(2), pages 143-165, November.
    2. Bianka Dettmer & Thomas Sauer, 2019. "Implementation of European Cohesion Policy at the sub‐national level: Evidence from beneficiary data in Eastern Germany," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 98(1), pages 167-189, February.
    3. Enrico Ivaldi & Guido Bonatti & Riccardo Soliani, 2016. "The Construction of a Synthetic Index Comparing Multidimensional Well-Being in the European Union," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 125(2), pages 397-430, January.
    4. Lisa Maria Dellmuth & Dominik Schraff & Michael F. Stoffel, 2017. "Distributive Politics, Electoral Institutions and European Structural and Investment Funding: Evidence from Italy and France," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(2), pages 275-293, March.
    5. Nicola Francesco Dotti, 2016. "Unwritten Factors Affecting Structural Funds: The Influence of Regional Political Behaviours on the Implementation of EU Cohesion Policy," European Planning Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(3), pages 530-550, March.
    6. Jale Tosun, 2014. "Absorption of Regional Funds: A Comparative Analysis," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(2), pages 371-387, March.
    7. Muraközy, Balázs & Telegdy, Álmos, 2016. "Political incentives and state subsidy allocation: Evidence from Hungarian municipalities," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 324-344.
    8. Diane Coyle & Leonard Nakamura, 2019. "Towards a Framework for Time Use, Welfare and Household-centric Economic Measurement," Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE) Discussion Papers ESCoE DP-2019-01, Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE).
    9. Bart Los & Marcel P. Timmer, 2020. "Measuring Bilateral Exports of Value Added: A Unified Framework," NBER Chapters, in: Challenges of Globalization in the Measurement of National Accounts, pages 389-421, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Gianluigi Coppola & Sergio Destefanis & Giorgia Marinuzzi & Walter Tortorella, 2021. "Regional policies and sectoral outputs in the Italian regions. A multi-input multi-output counterfactual approach," Discussion Paper series in Regional Science & Economic Geography 2021-08, Gran Sasso Science Institute, Social Sciences, revised May 2021.
    11. Carlos Mendez, 2019. "Lack of Global Convergence and the Formation of Multiple Welfare Clubs across Countries: An Unsupervised Machine Learning Approach," Economies, MDPI, vol. 7(3), pages 1-17, July.
    12. Sechel, Cristina, 2021. "The share of satisfied individuals: A headcount measure of aggregate subjective well-being," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 186(C), pages 373-394.
    13. Andrés Rodríguez-Pose & Julie Courty, 2018. "Regional lobbying and structural funds. Do regional representation offices in Brussels deliver?," Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography (PEEG) 1809, Utrecht University, Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Group Economic Geography, revised Feb 2018.
    14. Novosák Jiří & Hájek Oldřich & Novosáková Jana & Koleňák Jiří, 2018. "Spatial Dimension of Czech Enterprise Support Policy: Where are Public Expenditures Allocated?," Review of Economic Perspectives, Sciendo, vol. 18(4), pages 333-351, December.
    15. Oleg A. Kryzhanovskij & Natalia A. Baburina & Anastasia O. Ljovkina, 2021. "How to Make Digitalization Better Serve an Increasing Quality of Life?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(2), pages 1-11, January.
    16. Jean-Marie Baland & Guilhem Cassan & Benoit Decerf, 2021. "The Poverty-Adjusted Life Expectancy index: a consistent aggregation of the quantity and the quality of life," DeFiPP Working Papers 2101, University of Namur, Development Finance and Public Policies.
    17. Martin Gross, 2022. "Does Anyone Care? Cohesion Policy Issues in Sub‐national Politics," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(6), pages 1538-1555, November.
    18. Nicholas Charron, 2016. "Explaining the allocation of regional Structural Funds: The conditional effect of governance and self-rule," European Union Politics, , vol. 17(4), pages 638-659, December.
    19. Gordon Anderson, Alessio Farcomeni, Maria Grazia Pittau and Roberto Zelli, 2019. "Multidimensional Nation Wellbeing, More Equal yet More Polarized: An Analysis of the Progress of Human Development Since 1990," Journal of Economic Development, Chung-Ang Unviersity, Department of Economics, vol. 44(1), pages 1-22, March.
    20. Guido Bonatti & Enrico Ivaldi, 2016. "Un indicatore per la misurazione della partecipazione culturale e sociale nelle regioni italiane," ECONOMIA E DIRITTO DEL TERZIARIO, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2016(2), pages 283-302.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    well-being; regional economic policy; EU structural funds; composite index;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C31 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Cross-Sectional Models; Spatial Models; Treatment Effect Models; Quantile Regressions; Social Interaction Models
    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being
    • R10 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:zbw:iwhdps:iwh-13-16. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: . General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iwhhhde.html .

    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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iwhhhde.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.