Horizontal and Vertical Equity Objectives of Child Benefit Systems: An Empirical Assessment for European Countries

The present study investigates the determinants of life expectancy in the presence of economic misery using Pakistan’s time series data over the period of 1972–2012. The stationary properties of the variables are examined by applying unit root test accommodating structural breaks. The ARDL bounds testing approach to cointegration is applied to examine the long run relationship between the variables. Our findings show that cointegration between the variables is confirmed. Moreover, health spending improves life expectancy. Food supply contributes to life expectancy. A rise in economic misery deteriorates life expectancy. Urbanization enhances life expectancy while illiteracy declines it. The causality analysis reveals that life expectancy is Granger cause of health spending, food supply, economic misery, urbanization and illiteracy. This paper opens up new insights for policy making authorities to consider the role of economic misery while formulating comprehensive economic policy to improve life expectancy in Pakistan.     

Inequality in Human Development across the Globe

The Human Development Index is the world's most famous indicator of the level of development of societies. A disadvantage of this index is however that only national values are available, whereas within many countries huge subnational variation in development exists. We therefore have developed the Subnational Human Development Index (SHDI), which shows within-country variation in human development across the globe. Covering more than 1,600 regions within 161 countries, the SHDI and its underlying dimension indices provide a 10 times higher resolution picture of human development than previously available. The newly observed within-country variation is particularly strong in low- and middle-developed countries. Education disparities explain most SHDI inequality within low-developed countries, and standard of living differences are most important within the more highly developed ones. Strong convergence forces operating both across and within countries have compensated the inequality enhancing force of population growth. These changes will shape the twenty-first century agenda of scientists and policy-makers concerned with global distributive justice.     

Inequality Assessment by Probabilistic Development Indices

Social Indicators Research - This paper analyses the Human Development Index (HDI) time series from 2010 to 2017. An alternative index is studied, which combines the same components of the HDI by...     

Urbanization and Income Inequality in China: An Empirical Investigation at Provincial Level

This study focuses on the homeless population in the Netherlands, as an indicator of social exclusion. By applying the capture-recapture (CRC) methodology to three registers, not only the size of the homeless population could be estimated, but also its composition in terms of gender, age, place of living, and origin could be depicted. Because of the use of three registers and the availability of background characteristics for each of the registers, the usual stringent assumptions of capture recapture methodology is circumvented. This advanced application of CRC to estimate the homeless population on the national level, has led to official figures for five subsequent reference dates (January 1st of 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013). In 2009 the size of the total homeless population in the Netherlands was estimated at 17,767, of which 5169 were registered on one of the three lists. Between 2009 and 2012 the estimated size of the population increased, which was largely due to the financial crisis. For all reference dates, the composition of this population showed that generally more men than women were registered and that homeless people in the age category of 30–49 years old were registered more than the younger or older age groups. Compared to the general Dutch population, the homeless population includes relatively many men, many people aged 30–49 years and people with a non-western background.     

An Assessment of the Measurement Properties of the Human Development Index

One of the more important determinants of the competitiveness of a nation is the quality of its human capital. The Human Development Index (HDI) is the most widely used yardstick of human development. It measures human development for all the countries of the world, through the use of three factors – longevity, knowledge and GDP measured in purchasing power. This paper evaluates HDI's contribution towards measuring the quality of the human capital component of a nation's competitiveness. Two primary issues under study are the HDI's information properties vis-a-vis its components and its measurement properties as an index. The primary conclusion of the study is that the HDI carries useful information about a country's current development, but not about the future level of development. Hence, further refinements in its construction as well as additional theoretical support as a quantitative measure are needed.     

Educational Inequality in Adult Mortality: An Assessment with Death Certificate Data from Michigan

Education was added to the U.S. Standard Certificate of Death in 1989. The current study uses Michigan’s 1989–1991 death certificates, together with the 1990 Census, to evaluate the quality of data on education from death certificates and to examine educational differences in mortality rates. With log-rates modeling, we systematically analyze the variability in educational differences in mortality by race and sex across the adult life cycle. The relative differences in mortality rates between educational levels decline with age at the same pace for all sex and race categories. Women gain a slightly greater reduction in mortality than men by reaching the secondary-education level, but a modestly smaller reduction by advancing beyond it. Blacks show a reduction in predicted mortality rates comparable to whites’ by moving from the secondary to the postsecondary level of education but experience less reduction than whites by moving from the primary to the secondary level. Thus, the secular decline in mortality rates that generally accompanies historical improvements in education might actually be associated with an increase in the relative differences between blacks’ and whites’ mortality. We discuss limitations of the data and directions for future research.     

Human Development Over Time: An Empirical Comparison of a Dynamic Index and the Standard HDI

Social Indicators Research - This research uses panel data to explore inferences about human development associated with two different formulations of the Human Development Index (HDI). The first...     

A Household-Based Distribution-Sensitive Human Development Index: An Empirical Application to Mexico, Nicaragua and Peru

In measuring human development, one of the main concerns relates to the inclusion of a measure that penalizes inequalities in the distribution of achievements across the population. Using indicators from nationally representative household surveys and census data, this paper proposes a straightforward methodology to estimate a household-based distribution-sensitive human development index aggregated through generalized means. The evidence shows that the losses in human development due to inequality reach up 22, 29 and 57% in Mexico, Peru and Nicaragua, respectively. Among dimensions, the loss in the income index reaches up 61% in Nicaragua, while the education index appears as the most sensitive in the case of Mexico and Peru, with a percentage of loss between 38 and 48%. The importance of household-level calculations is highlighted when we compare the indices computed from the entire distribution with those existing indices computed for quintiles of the distribution, which minimizes the losses due to inequality. Overall, the estimations evidence a higher sensitivity of the index to inequality, and therefore an important space for public action to reduce inequality that could involve positive development returns.     

Development Disparities and Peculiarities: An Empirical Investigation

The vast, sprawling and densely populated province of Punjab, while predominantly agricultural, is marked by considerable regional disparities. An attempt has been made in this paper to see to what extent the differences in the human and social development in its various districts is there. The study exhibits that those regions which are ranked as lagging districts have high disparities in terms of human development and social development with high urban and rural poverty estimates. It is clearly revealed that aggregate national figures mask vast sub regional disparities and speedy development in some regions may not necessarily elevate lagging regions.     

Exploring Wider Well-Being in the EU-15 Countries: An Empirical Application of the Stiglitz Report

We draw on the recommendations of the Stiglitz Report to select a set of economic and social variables that can be used to make cross-country comparisons of wider well-being. Using data for the EU-15 countries for 1999 and 2005, we show how three-way analysis can be used to extract synthetic information from a large data set to determine the main latent explanatory factors. In our case, we identify one dominant factor that we term the development profile, which is positively associated with the level of education outputs, technological progress and female labour market participation and negatively associated with the level of pollution. We rank the countries according to this factor and compare these rankings with simpler GDP comparisons and find that the two rankings are only weakly correlated.     

The Richer, the Happier? An Empirical Investigation in Selected European Countries

This study analyses the relationship between subjective and objective measures of well-being in selected European countries using the data of the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). In the first part of the paper, we develop a random-effect ordered probit model, separately for each country, relating the subjective measure of income satisfaction to actual income, and controlling for some individual and household socio-demographic fixed effects. In the second part of the paper, we fit a Bayesian cross-classified multilevel model, in order to control for intra-family correlation in subjective well-being, which actually appears to be present. The research was financially supported by the Italian Ministry of University and Scientific Research and by the 5th European Research Programme (FELICIE – Future Elderly Living Conditions In Europe, No. QLRT-2001-02310, http://www.felicie.org). We gratefully acknowledge the contribution of an anonymous referee.     

Development and Governance in the Ex-Soviet Union: An Empirical Inquiry

The widespread adoption of the concept of wellbeing in the social sciences literature has allowed researchers to move beyond a narrow economic focus on income and consumption as the primary measure of inequality and poverty. Although statistical measurement and analyses of wellbeing have become increasingly feasible due to the availability of rich datasets, the empirical literature on wellbeing remains deficient in a number of ways. In this paper we argue that it is necessary that empirical studies of wellbeing encompass multiple. Applying Sen’s capability approach as our theoretical model we subsequently develop a modelling framework that applies the polychoric principal component analysis (PCA) method for the calculation of objective wellbeing and wellbeing inequality using household asset, education, health and housing dimensions. Findings from our case study of Vietnam challenge previous single dimensional analyses and reveal a number of layers to our understanding of wellbeing inequality in Vietnam. We argue that our use of polychoric PCA is especially suited to the analysis of wellbeing by explicitly incorporating the analysis of both cardinal and ordinal variables and overcoming deficiencies established in the literature relating to the use of standard PCA.

     

An Empirical Assessment of Households Livelihood Vulnerability: The Case of Rural Ghana

The recent years witnessed a sharp drop in China’s demographic dividend; therefore, some reform measures about China’s fertility policy have been adopted to optimize population structures and to maintain demographic dividend. However, our simulation results reveal that the new two-child fertility policy cannot effectively deal with population ageing, and that China’s fertility policy needs further adjustment. Specifically, we find that the new two-child fertility policy will deteriorate demographic dividend before 2050, through combination of simulation results and formula derivation. Aiming to stabilize demographic dividend at ideal range all the time, we build nonlinear integer programming model to propose an appropriate reforming path for China’s fertility policy. Then, we simulate and compare demographic developments under the proposed reforming path with those under three possible fertility policies: one-child, two-child and no fertility restriction, verifying that the proposed reforming path has better performance on stabilizing demographic dividend than these three fertility policies have. Finally, sensitivity analysis of upper bound of research interval is conducted to evaluate the effect of the upper bound on proposed reforming path. Based on these results, we suggest that China should continue to execute current strict fertility policy before 2032, then begin to relax it gradually especially during 2036–2041, and completely cancel fertility policy after 2065.     

Illicit Financial Flows: Another Road Block to Human Development in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Social Indicators Research - This article analysed the relationship between illicit financial flows (IFFs) and human development, as measured with the United Nations Human Development Index (HDI),...     

基于地区和社区视角下老年健康与不平等的实证分析

随着人口老龄化进程的加速,老年健康成为学界关注的一大领域。探究老年健康不平等及其影响机理,准确理解老年人健康指标的变化趋势,对于实现健康老龄化的目标具有积极的意义。本文采用中国健康与养老追踪调查(China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study,CHARLS)数据,运用分层线性模型考察老年人健康水平的影响因素和群际差异。本文还利用SF-36量表,基于主成分分析方法构建涵盖主客观健康指标,在地区和社区层面重点探究教育程度、个人收入等因素对于健康不平等的影响机理。分析结果显示,个人和家庭的社会经济条件对于老年健康有积极的作用,物质资源越丰富的老人越健康;地区层面,经济发展给健康带来了正向的外部性,经济越发达老年人健康指数越高;社区层面,老年人生活的社区经济水平越高,其健康水平分化越严重。从受教育水平来看,老年健康体现为社区层面"低度平均,高度不均",个体层面"低度不均,高度平均",收入水平在个体层面和社区层面产生了相反的影响。     

中国农村儿童健康不平等及其影响因素研究——基于CHNS数据的经验研究

本文使用“中国家庭营养与健康调查”（CHNS）数据,测度了中国农村儿童健康不平等程度,重点计算了收入、医疗保险、母亲教育水平等因素对健康不平等的贡献。回归基础上的集中系数及其分解结果显示：我国农村地区存在亲富人的健康不平等,高收入家庭儿童的健康状况更好;健康不平等主要的贡献因素是父母亲收入、母亲教育程度、母亲工作状况、父亲身高等：收入对于儿童健康不平等的贡献最大,但不同的收人类型表现出一定的差异。父母亲的工资收入对于儿童健康不平等的贡献为正,收入不平等会扩大健康不平等;医疗保险的不平等程度不断扩大,进一步强化了健康不平等。     

Trends in Inequality of Opportunity for Developing Countries: Does the Economic Indicator Matter?

Social Indicators Research - The aim of this paper is to shed some light on the behaviour of Inequality of Opportunity (IOp henceforth) in developing countries. The analysis is carried out using...     

与收入相关的老人健康不平等及其分解——基于中国城镇和农村的经验研究

本文使用“中国老年人健康长寿影响因素调查”（CLHLS）数据,测度了中国老人健康不平等程度,重点计算了收入、婚姻状况、居住安排等因素对健康不平等的贡献。回归基础上的集中系数及其分解结果显示：我国存在亲富人的健康不平等,高收入人群的健康状况更好;城镇地区,健康不平等主要的贡献因素为收入、婚姻状况、医疗保险、经常锻炼,居住安排对健康不平等的贡献为负。农村地区,收入因素对于健康不平等的贡献最大,这就意味着消除农村健康不平等的关键是要降低收入不平等。在城镇和农村地区医疗保险的不平等程度更甚,进一步强化了健康不平等。因此如果政策想要降低健康不平等,首先要降低穷人获得医疗保险的经济门槛,增加医疗保健服务的可及性。     

Human Capabilities Versus Human Capital: Guaging the Value of Education in Developing Countries

The purpose of this study is to defend the view that education should be evaluated in terms of the capability to achieve valued functionings, rather than mental satisfaction or resources. In keeping with Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach we argue that mental satisfaction provides an inaccurate metric of well-being because of the phenomenon of adaptive preferences. Equally, resources cannot be used as a metric of well-being because of inequalities in the ability to convert income and commodities into valued functionings. Hence, interpreting education as a means to create human capital is also impoverished because it evaluates education solely in terms of the accumulation of resources. In order to provide evidence in support of the human capabilities approach we statistically examine the channels through which educational attainment affects the health functionings implied by life expectancy. Using panel data analysis for 35 developing countries for the years 1990, 1995 and 2000 we compare the health functionings (as indicated by life expectancy) that are achieved by the income growth generated by educational attainment, with the total health functionings that are achieved by educational attainment. We find that educational attainment (as indicated by average years of schooling) has a significant effect on life expectancy independently of its effect by way of income growth. A 1% increase in per capita income increases life expectancy by 0.073954% while a 1% increase in average years of schooling directly increases life expectancy by 0.055324%. Because it shows that income underestimates the health functionings achieved by educational attainment, our empirical findings lend support to the claim that the value of education should be measured in terms of the capability for functioning, rather than resources.