This note points to certain similarities of orientation and outcome between Derek Parfit’s quest for a theory of beneficence and Amartya Sen’s quest for a suitable real-valued representation of poverty. It suggests that both projects, in a certain...
In a heterogeneous population which can be partitioned into well-defined subgroups, it is plausible that the extent of measured aggregate poverty should depend upon the distribution of poverty across the subgroups. A judgment in favour of an equal...
This paper introduces two composite indices of globalization. The first is based on the Kearney/Foreign Policy magazine and the second is obtained from principal component analysis. They indicate the level of globalization and show how globalization...
The study uses an asset index of consumer durables to track changes in household wealth in Ghana during the recent period of strong growth. Using the Ghana Living Standards Survey of 1998 that contains both wealth data and consumer durable data, the...
This paper surveys the various composite well-being indices that have been inter-country assessments over the last 40 or so years, including the well known Human Development Index (HDI). A number of issues are considered, including the choice of...
The human development index (HDI) developed by the United Nations Development Programme is computed as the average of three equally weighted outcome measures: life expectancy (LI), educational attainment (EI) and income (WI). However, this...
This paper attempts to provide a comprehensive analysis of interrelationships among the determinants of the quality of life (QOL). We show that various measures of well-being are highly sensitive to domains of QOL that are considered in the...
This study, relying on an economic-theoretical approach to index numbers, proposes a framework for incorporating environmental indicators to the measurement of human well-being. Furthermore this study also proposes an improvement index which...
This paper reviews the theory and application of decomposition techniques in the context of spatial inequality. It establishes some new theoretical results with potentially wide applicability, and examines empirical evidence drawn from a large number...
Summary measures of human well-being are increasingly used to compare and monitor performance within and across countries. The UNDP's Human Development Index (HDI) is one of a number of measures which have done much to refocus attention on the...
Changes in relative prices of commodities consumed in different shares across income groups can be expected to alter real income differentials between these groups. Using Mozambican household budget survey and price data from 2002/03 and 2008/09, we...
This paper attempts to measure the extent of inequality within households and its contribution to overall levels of inequality in child well-being. The paper analyses the distribution of resources (outcomes) between girls and boys for four indicators...
This study explores the question of structural change and inclusive development in South Africa and Brazil. Using Census data from the two countries, the analysis combines a household level multidimensional indicator of well-being with the...
This paper aims at measuring and analysing for the first time inequality in the distribution of expenditures among households in Togo according to the characteristics of household heads. The study is based on the most recent survey (QUIBB 2006) and...
This paper, using a new set of social development indices, explores the measurement of social development across Africa, and how this relates to broader development patterns and measurement. Development practitioners worldwide increasingly recognize...
Changes in the relative prices of commodities consumed in different shares across income groups are known to influence real measures of inequality. Using household budget survey and price data in Mozambique from 2002/03 and 2008/09, we show that...
Changes in relative prices of commodities consumed in different shares across income groups can be expected to alter real income differentials between these groups. Using Mozambican household budget survey and price data from 2002/03 and 2008/09, we...
It is often argued that multi-dimensional measures of well-being and poverty—such as those based on the capability approach and related views—are ad hoc. Rankings based on them are not, for this reason, robust to changes in the selection of weights...
The need for monitoring countries’ overall performance in sustainable development (SD) is widely recognized, but the methods for aggregating vast amounts of empirical data remain rather crude. This paper examines the so-called ‘benefit of doubt’...
International comparisons of average national incomes omit important information about leisure, home production, health, etc. They are also bedevilled by index number problems. This paper suggests ways of combining working hours and life-expectancy...
This paper studies growth and inequality in China and India—two economies that account for a third of the world’s population. By modelling growth and inequality as components in a joint stochastic process, the paper calibrates the impact each has on...
The contribution of the ‘new economy’ to economic growth in developing countries has so far been minimal. Despite the recent hype, the ‘old economy’ will for long be the fundamental force behind economic growth in transition economies. Nonetheless...
Tony Addison As the snow continues to lie deep across Helsinki, UNU-WIDER is putting the last touches to the ReCom results meeting on ‘aid and the...
Recent years have seen a proliferation of ‘composite indicators’ or ‘indexes’ of governance. Such measures can be useful tools for analysing governance, making public policy, building scientific knowledge, and even influencing ruling elites, but some...
We are now into 2015, and the year is already gathering speed. 2015 is of course the 70th anniversary of the United Nations, and a major year in...
Part of Journal Special Issue A Collection of UNU-WIDER articles in Chinese
Part of Journal Special Issue Well-being Achievements in Pacific Asia
Part of Journal Special Issue Well-being Achievements in Pacific Asia
Part of Journal Special Issue The Rise of China and India
Part of Journal Special Issue Spatial Inequality and Development
This paper proposes a framework for incorporating longitudinal distributional changes into poverty decomposition. It is shown that changes in the Sen-Shorrocks-Thon index over time can be decomposed into two components—one component reflects the...
We examine the measurement of individual poverty in an intertemporal context. Our aim is to capture the importance of persistence in a state of poverty and we characterize a corresponding individual intertemporal poverty measure. Our first axiom...
This paper explores pitfalls in regression-based inequality decompositions. A simple procedure is developed for rectifying these pitfalls. The procedure does not impose any restrictions on the underlying regression model and it can be applied to any...
We provide an axiomatic treatment of the measurement of economic insecurity, assuming that individual insecurity depends on the current wealth level and its variations experienced in the past. The first component plays the role of a buffer stock to...
Part of Journal Special Issue Vulnerability in Development
Part of Journal Special Issue Vulnerability in Development
Part of Journal Special Issue Health and Development
In response to the need expressed by the UN General Assembly, an economic vulnerability index (EVI) has been defined by the Committee for Development Policy. The present paper, which refers to this index, first examines how a structural economic...
While much attention has been focused on the so-called ‘digital divide’ between Africa and the industrialized world, very scant attention has been devoted to the wide variations in the levels of digitalization of African countries. Whereas countries...
In recent years there has been a growing literature that analyses the threat which Chinese exports pose to the exports of other developing countries. The paper provides a critique of the standard measures of export similarity which have been used to...
This paper is derived from our ongoing research on fragile states funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) to help policymakers and analysts make decisions on where and how to allocate aid, especially in fragile state...
The international donor community has grave concerns about the prospects for poverty reduction in what it terms fragile states. A state is classified as fragile if its country policy and institutional assessment (CPIA) score falls below a particular...
In this paper, economic vulnerability is defined as the exposure of an economy to exogenous shocks, arising out of economic openness, while economic resilience is defined as the policy-induced ability of an economy to withstand or recover from the...
Existing indicators of entrepreneurial activity (such as the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, Entrepreneurship Barometer, FORA’s Entrepreneurship Index, OECD and Economic Commission’s sets of indicators, among others) and several variables that have...
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