Estimating Quality of Life and Place with Location Theory: The McBucks Index

This paper explores the changes in inequality and welfare between EU regions at the NUTS 3 level over the 2003–2011 period. Changes in absolute and relative inequalities are broken down into components explaining the effects of population change, re-ranking of regions and income growth between regional per capita incomes. Each component of inequality change is further decomposed by subgroup, revealing the contributions arising from changes within subgroups and from changes between subgroups. The decomposition of the change in absolute inequality is used to develop a decomposition of the change in welfare between EU regions.     

Does regional variation affect ecological mortality research? An examination of mortality, income inequality and health infrastructure in the Mississippi Delta

Mortality research has often focused on individual-level, socioeconomic, and demographic factors indicating health outcomes. Consistent with a recent trend in the public health field, this research examines mortality at the aggregate, contextual level. Based on Wilkinson’s relative income hypothesis, specifically being manifest through an underinvestment in social goods including health infrastructure, the focus of this study is a regional examination in the effects of income inequality on mortality at the county level. Health infrastructure is included as a mediating variable in the relationship between income inequality and mortality, relating back to Wilkinson’s work. Unlike previous research, regional differences in this relationship are examined to identify variation at the county level in health outcomes. The Mississippi Delta is an adequate test bed to examine the relationship between these variables based on its socioeconomic, demographic, and high inequality characteristics. It is hypothesized that Delta-designated counties within the three-state Delta region distinguish a significant positive relationship between income inequality and mortality, that this relationship is stronger than in non-Delta classified counties, and that health infrastructure significantly mediates the relationship between income inequality and mortality.     

Measurement of socio-economic inequality using the Life-Quality Index

As income inequality presents a narrow view of overall inequality prevailing in a society, the paper focuses on its much broader definition, referred to as socio-economic inequality, which considers the disparities in income as well as in mortality, and standard of living. The paper presents a new method for measuring the socio-economic inequality using a composite social indicator, Life-Quality Index, derived from two principal indicators of development, namely, the Real Gross Domestic Product per person and the life expectancy at birth. Income inequality and the associated life expectancy variations are integrated into a quality adjusted income (QAI), to account for the observed differentials in life-quality of various quintiles of the population. The Gini coefficient of the distribution of QAI is introduced as a measure of socio-econmic inequality. The proposed approach is illustrated using data on life expectancy of five income quintiles in urban Canada. It is found that the magnitude of inequality in Canada is higher than that reflected by the traditional measure, the Gini coefficient of income.     

The Evolution of Well-Being in Spain (1980–2001): A Regional Analysis

Evaluations of regional welfare conventionally rely on Gross Value Added (GVA) per capita as an indicator of well-being. This paper attempts to re-address the regional welfare issue using alternative indicators to per capita income. With this aim, a database for the Spanish regions (NUTS II) has been constructed for the period 1980–2001 and an augmented version of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Index (HDI) has been estimated incorporating indicators of health, education and per capita income. The results show that, whereas regional income per capita disparities have remained constant, regional convergence in the Augmented Human Development Index (AHDI) was achieved between 1980 and 2001. None the less, there is no evidence of intra-distributional mobility (leap-frogging) across regions in the AHDI     

A New Generalized Variance Approach for Measuring Multidimensional Inequality and Poverty

The paper suggests a new generalized variance concept for measuring multidimensional inequality of a stratified society, based on multivariate statistical methods, where the members of society form a cloud in the oblique space of dimensions of inequality, such as income, expenditure and property. The cloud presents the multidimensional inequality capsulized in the cloud. The goal is to condense all the inequality information embodied by the cloud into a composite compact metric characterizing both the shape and the inner structure of the cloud. Contrary to the conventional literature that considers multidimensionality as a unidimensional weighted combination of the dimensions, our new composite index measures the inequality of the configuration of the points in the cloud. Our aim is twofold. First, we introduce the Inequality Covariance Matrix (ICM) assigned to the cloud, with elements measuring the correlations among dimensions. Having ICM, we propose the Generalized Variance (GV) of ICM to measure the composite Generalized Variance Inequality (GVI) level. Second, to evaluate the stratum-specific structure of the overall inequality, we suggest a new two-stage procedure. In the first stage, we divide the total GVI into between-groups and within-groups effects. Then, in the second stage the contributions of the strata to the within-groups inequality and, the contributions of the dimensions to the between-groups inequality are calculated. This GVI approach is sensitive to the correlation system, decomposable into stratum effects and, the number of dimensions is not limited. Moreover, including the log-dimensions in the analysis, GVI yields an Entropy Covariance Matrix giving a new Generalized Variance Entropy index. Finally, the GVI of censored poverty indicators means multidimensional poverty measurement. This special complex task is not yet solved in the traditional literature so far.

     

Income,deprivation and economic stress in the enlarged European Union

At risk of poverty indicators based on relative income measures suggest that within the enlarged EU societies located at quite different points on a continuum of affluence have similar levels of poverty. Substantial differences in levels of income between societies do not in themselves invalidate this approach. However, the relative income approach fails to capture the fact that, if countries are grouped in terms of level of GDP, between economic cluster differences in life-style deprivation are sharper at lower income levels. Support for the argument relating to restricted reference groups is found in relation to the contrast between the twelve most affluent EU countries and all others. The limitations of relative income poverty lines have little to do with the process of enlargement as such. Instead the major problem involves the weak association between income and deprivation in the more affluent countries. However, as a consequence of such difficulties, such indicators do not provide entirely meaningful comparisons of levels of disadvantage across economic clusters. The current analysis, rather than supporting the alternative of a focus on absolute income or an EU wide poverty line, suggests that we should take the argument for adopting a multidimensional approach to the measurement of poverty more seriously.     

基于二阶段嵌套锡尔系数的人口分布的差异研究

文章首先提出了人口分布锡尔系数的概念及其一阶、二阶分解方法,接着以江苏省为研究区域,基于三大地带（苏南、苏中和苏北）、13个地级市、106个县（县级市、市辖区）三级结构的地域行政单元,分别运用一次、二次分解对全省的人口分布的区域差异进行细分测度．将江苏省人口分布的差异性分解为苏南、苏中、苏北三大地带闯的差异、三大地带内地级市之间的差异以及各地级市的内部差异三部分。其主要结论为：以地级市为计算单元的一阶段分解结果显示．苏南、苏中和苏北三个地带间人口分布的差异性是造成一阶段分解的全省人口分布差异的主要原因;以县级行政单元的二阶段分解结果表明．地级市内部的差异是江苏省人口分布的整体差异的主要构成部分;通过运用局部G统计量对各县级单元人口分布的热点探测发现,“热点”地区的人口分布差异性大．“冷点”地区的差异性小．     

生命周期视角下与收入相关的健康不平等分析——基于组群分析的方法

本文利用中国健康与营养调查数据,从生命周期的视角对与收入相关的健康不平等的年龄特征和变动进行了基于组群分析的实证研究。研究结果表明：与收入相关的健康不平等随着年龄的增长不断扩大：不同年龄段的健康不平等均呈现不断扩大的变动趋势,45岁以上人群的变动幅度要相对大于45岁以下人群;教育、收入和医疗的不平等是与收入相关的健康不平等扩大的主要原因,但是对45岁以下人群健康不平等的影响要大于45岁以上人群;此外,本文还进一步分析了年龄老化对健康不平等变化的影响路径。     

Capability Approach and Multidimensional Well-Being: The Italian Case of BES

This paper lies within the debate on GDP and beyond and provides an empirical assessment of the Italian equitable and sustainable well-being (BES) as a composite measure of multidimensional well-being. From a policy perspective, the goal is to deliver a reading of the Italian BES able to shed light on its usability. The aim is to offer a suitable method for making the information included in the BES more viable for policy design. To this end, the paper is grounded in an interpretation of the Italian BES through the lens of the capability approach and investigates the relations among BES indicators and life domains. The empirical assessment uses Italian data from the national survey “Aspects of daily life” and applies the Structural Equation Model to estimate several life capabilities and their causal path. Outcomes show the interrelated nature of multi-dimensional well-being and prove the role of exogenous causes in the determination of capabilities. Moreover, the paper provides a final ranking analysis where Italian regions are compared based on their position per capability and income performance. Results confirm, on one hand, the disparity of income and well-being measurements and the importance of multidimensional assessment for human development and, on the other, the importance of focusing on the single components of multidimensional well-being and their interconnections.     

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。     

An Assessment of EU 2020 Strategy: Too Far to Reach?

In 2010, EU adopted a new growth strategy which includes three growth priorities and five headline targets to be reached by 2020. The aim of this paper is to investigate the current performance of the EU member and candidate states in achieving these growth priorities and the overall strategy target by allocating the headline targets into the priorities and the priorities into the strategy by the use of a composite indicator methodology. The paper determines how far away each member and candidate state is from the targeted levels of the priorities and the strategy by making a distinction between EU 15 and relatively new member states as well. The developed composite indices enable the observation of the performances of the member and candidate states in a single indicator for the overall strategy and each growth priority. The results of the strategy index and three growth priority indices show that Nordic states possess the highest index scores already having reached many of the targets; many new member states performed as good as EU 15 and some EU 15 states are placed at the bottom of the ranking with quite poor performance in reaching the EU 2020 strategy.     

Drivers of Youth Labour Market Integration Across European Regions

Territorial disparities and youth labour markets have been often considered as separated themes, due to challenges in data availability. Comparative regional or sub-regional research on youth labour market integration (YLMI) have been therefore scarce. In this article, we address this gap by presenting a composite measure of YLMI that covers a wide range of indicators and sheds light on the EU territorial divide of young peoples’ opportunities at regional level. In order to build the YLMI index, we use benefit-of-the-doubt-weighting, a seminal methodology on composite indicators (CI) that combines sequence with conditional weights based on the range of each sub-indicator. To proof the usefulness of YLMI, we analyze the evolution of regional YLMI in the EU before and after the economic crisis; and the trends of homogenization or differentiation across EU territories. Furthermore, we investigate to what extent employment conditions, skills supply and technological resources explain cross-regional variations in YLMI.

     

Economic Disparities and Life Satisfaction in European Regions

This paper investigates the role of economic variables in predicting regional disparities in reported life satisfaction of European Union (EU) citizens. European subnational units (regions) are defined according to the first-level EU nomenclature of territorial units. We use multilevel modeling to explicitly account for the hierarchical nature of our data, respondents within regions and countries, and for understanding patterns of variation within and between regions. Main findings are that personal income matters more in poor regions than in rich regions, a pattern that still holds for regions within the same country. Being unemployed is negatively associated with life satisfaction even after controlled for income variation. Living in high unemployment regions does not alleviate the unhappiness of being out of work. After controlling for individual characteristics and modeling interactions, regional differences in life satisfaction still remain, confirming that regional dimension is relevant for life satisfaction.     

我国城乡居民收入差距的影响因素分析

本文对我国城乡居民收入差距的主要解释变量作了定量研究,认为农业与二、三产业比较劳动生产率的不断扩大是造成城乡收入差距不断扩大的最重要原因,农村居民与城市居民人力资本的差距拉大是根本的原因,过去若干年来所推进的就业结构转变和城市化,客观上起到了拉大城乡收入差距的作用,而政府财政支出对城乡差距的扩大起到了一定的遏制效果。本文对这种现象进行了理论解释,提出了政府在城乡政策制定上应注意把握的问题。     

Speculation on a Flexicurity Index for Disabled People: The Italian Case

The aim of this paper is to analyze a flexicurity index for disabled people by using Italian regional data. To this purpose, the empirical results are based on a composite index denoted as Mazziotta-Pareto Index. Our results show that Northern Italy regions show a higher flexicurity degree than Southern Italy ones. In addition, by estimating an augmented matching function, we verify that flexicurity increases the probability of finding employment for a disabled person. In particular, we test that the flexicurity indicator that gives more weight to the economic independence of disabled people represents the indicator that most favors the labour matching process.     

Measurement Assessment in Cross-Country Comparative Analysis: Rasch Modelling on a Measure of Institutional Quality

This paper uses recent multidimensional well-being measurements to examine multidimensional well-being and inequality across the European regions in 2000 and 2014 with the use of eleven well-being indicators from the OECD Better Life Index. We use generalized mean aggregation method with alternative parameters to allow different substitutability and complementarity levels between well-being dimensions, which range between perfect substitutability and some degree of complementarity between the dimensions, to examine well-being and inequality across the European regions. Accounting for the interactions between the well-being dimensions matters for the multidimensional well-being and inequality across the European regions. The results show that the multidimensional well-being across the European regions are relatively lower when the dimensions are more seen as complements compared to the case when they are considered to be perfect substitutes. Furthermore, there is also a higher degree of multidimensional inequality across the European regions when the dimensions are considered to have some complementarity. Changes in well-being dimensions between 2000 and 2014 indicates that multidimensional well-being improved and inequality decreased in the personal and community well-being categories, but remained unchanged in material well-being category across the European regions irrespective of interaction levels between well-being dimensions. Policy implications of these multidimensional well-being indices are also evaluated by using these indices to determine the eligible regions for the European Union structural funds where the number eligible regions shows some variation depending on whether the dimensions are perfect substitutes or more of complements.

     

Multidimensional Racial Inequality in the United States

This paper measures racial inequalities in the US using a multidimensional ‘wellbeing’ approach that simultaneously considers the distributions of income, health and education. The primary objective is to examine trends in US wellbeing inequality with an emphasis on changes in racial composition. Data is taken from 1990 to 2007 and we observe increases in income inequality, a decline in education inequality and unchanged health inequality over the period. Taken together, these results show a slight increase in the dispersion in multidimensional wellbeing. Stratifying by racial groups shows that this increase is due to widening intra-racial inequalities while inter-racial differences remained unchanged. The method is also used to evaluate wellbeing across groups and we estimate black wellbeing to average around 76 % of whites, while persons from other races average approximately 93 %. Some other changes in composition occur through time and the results are shown to be robust to a number of changes in parametric weightings.     

Equality,economic resources,and structural diferentiation: Dimensions of development in the Northeast United States

This note describes a factor analysis of indicators of income equality, income, employment, and the diversity of commercial, transportation, organization, and other institutions in 300 counties and 94 substate planning and development districts in the Northeast. There were three factors at each level of analysis, representing income equality, economic resources, and structural differentiation. This finding underlines the need to consider the multidimensional character of development in planning and evaluating development programs. Moreover, comparative analysis of the dimensions of development in counties or districts may complement the traditional case study approach to industrialization.     

The Multidimensional Gender Inequalities Index (MGII): A Descriptive Analysis of Gender Inequalities Using MCA

This paper constructs a weighted measure of the multidimensional concept of gender inequality: the Multidimensional Gender Inequality Index (MGII). Multiple Correspondence Analysis is used to rank the separate forms in which gender inequality appears in developed and developing countries respectively. Eight dimensions were identified as relevant for economic purposes: identity, physical integrity, intra-family laws, political activity, education, health, access to economic resources, and economic activity. In the 109 developing countries considered, gender inequality in the identity and family dimensions are particularly severe for women: these dimensions hence have greater weight in the MGII. However, in OECD countries gender inequality occurs mainly in the political and family dimensions. Nevertheless, the family sphere remains particularly important for gender inequality, whatever the level of development. The MGII is a non-linear weighted composite indicator of gender inequality which yields a country ranking. The South-Asian region is calculated to be the most unequal.     

Education Expansion, Educational Inequality, and Income Inequality: Evidence from Taiwan, 1976–2003

The expansion of higher education in Taiwan starting from the late 1980s has successfully raised the average level of education. Using the concept of the education Gini, we find that the educational inequality declined as average schooling rose during the period of 1976–2003. The impacts of a rising average schooling and a declining educational inequality are also tested empirically in this paper. The evidence supports that a higher level of average schooling will generate a lower income inequality. On the other hand, a lower educational inequality, as measured by education Gini coefficient, will also cause a lower income inequality. Skill-biased technological change that shifts the labor demand from unskilled workers toward skilled workers is the most likely cause for the rising income inequality in Taiwan. However, the trend of rising income inequality could be reversed due to possible future over-education and unemployment in the labor market.