Level of development of a country: A possible new approach

Human development is a multidimensional phenomenon. It depends on a number of non-monetary aspects of life (social indicators of development). Per capita gross domestic product (PCGDP) is a means to achieve these nonmonetary aspects of life. To what extent PCGDP of a country is transformed into social development is an important phenomenon. Income elasticities of social indicators with respect to PCGDP reflect such relationship. This study attempts to find income elasticities of eight social indicators of development with respect to per capita real gross domestic product (PCRGDP) adjusted for purchasing power parity and expressed in international dollars for four points of time: 1960, 1970, 1980 and 1990. The income elasticities of social indicators may be identified as necessity, luxury and inferior. On the basis of the nature of the income elasticities of the social indicators of development the level of development of a country may be identified. This paper attempts to identify the level of development of a country on the basis of the nature of the income elasticities of the social indicators of development.     

Focussing on the Extremes of Good and Bad: Media Reporting of Countries Ranked Via Index-Based League Tables

The paper provides the first published evidence for a ‘U’ shaped relationship between country ‘league-table’ ranking based on the Human Development Index and Corruption Perception Index and media reporting. The results suggest that the Extremity Hypothesis proposed by Heath (Glob Environ Change 21(1): 198–208, 1996) applies to such data rather than the alternative of the Centrality Hypothesis. In the Extremity Hypothesis people are more likely to transmit information regarding extremes, perhaps because people value ‘surprisingness’ or think that others do so, and the inevitable polarity of league-tables would appear to invite greater attention on those countries that rank high and low. This is an important finding as it suggests that countries at these extremes could act as exemplars. However, this is not to say that at more regional scales the media may pick-up on differences between ‘peer group’ countries ranked towards the middle of the league-table. Much more attention needs to be given by researchers to the use of indicators and indices and what helps to influence this, especially as it would help inform further development of existing indicators/indices and the creation of new ones.     

Settler Welfare on Tropical Forest Frontiers in Latin America

Because of urgent concerns to protect tropical forests in Latin America, social science research on them has been generally ‘forest-centred.’ This forest-centred approach considers the people who inhabit the frontier as agents of land use change and forest conversion focusing on how their actions affect forest cover. Welfare indicators for forest frontier populations (income, education, health, access to basic services) are addressed only incidentally in terms of how they influence land use. ‘People’ centred research, which asks questions from the perspective of human welfare such as, ‘Are frontier settlers better off than they were before?’ or ‘What kind of socio-economic impacts does frontier life have on the people who live there?” and “How can their lives be improved?,” has been less common. As a result, we know much about the impacts, especially adverse impacts, which settler activity on the frontier has on forest cover but little about the impacts settlement has on settlers, themselves. This paper attempts to shift discussion towards these kinds of questions and a more people centred approach by reviewing existing research that directly addresses the welfare of settlers in tropical forest frontiers in Latin America. We also review research that touches on settler welfare by considering the concept of ‘sustainability’ on the forest frontier and stakes out a comprise position between ‘forest’ and ‘people’ centred questions or concerns. Settler welfare is defined primarily in economic terms. Household income, wealth, and agricultural productivity are interpreted a proxies for welfare in most cases. We also consider welfare in terms of access to basic services (health and education) and living conditions. We particularly consider how settler welfare indicators may change over time on the frontier. Tropical forests, defined as tropical, moist, broadleaf forests, are the main ecological setting of interest. These forests are generally the largest unoccupied areas in many Latin American countries and are thus, also the main ‘agricultural frontier’ or areas of new settlement by small farmers.     

Measures of self-reported well-being: their affective,cognitive, and other components

This investigation begins from the hypothesis that social indicators of perceived well-being — e.g., people's assessment of their own life quality — will, like other attudes, reflect two basic types of influences: affect and cognition. In addition, the indicators were expected to include two other components: unique variance (mainly random measurement error) and correlated measurement error. These ideas are investigated using a structural modeling approach applied to 23 assessments of life-as-a-whole from a national survey of Americans (N=1072) and/or a survey of urban residents in England (N=932). In both sets of data, models that included affective and cognitive factors fit significantly better than more restricted models. Furthermore, as expected, measures of (a) ‘happiness’, ‘fun’, and ‘enjoyment’ tended to be relatively more loaded with affect than were measures of (b) ‘satisfaction’, ‘success’, and ‘meeting needs’; and (c) measures designed to tap both affect and cognition tended to fall between the first two groups. In addition, the results suggest that measures employing relatively many scale points and direct assessments yield more valid indicators of people's evaluations of life-as-a-whole than do measures based on three-point scales or on explicit comparisons with other times or groups. These results contribute to basic knowledge about the nature of life quality assessments, help to explain some previously puzzling relationships with demographic factors such as age and education, and may be useful to designers of future studies of perceived well-being.     

Education Enrollment Level and Income Inequality: A Case of SAARC Economies

This article introduces ‘critical open-mindedness’ as a new sociological construct, which can be employed particularly in the studies of social attitudes and attitude change, social values, social identities, cross-cultural relations and social discrimination. By drawing on the data collected through the 2005 World Values Survey in Australia, we have operationalized the construct into an integrative social index, called ‘critical open-mindedness index’ consisting of five dimensional composite indicators (CIs; i.e. the social, political, cultural, economic, and environmental). We have adopted an integrative approach to constructing these composite indicators in which we pragmatically select and incorporate a variety of techniques with the purpose of maximizing the validity of the end results. The findings with respect to Australians’ critical open-mindedness, both in general and in reference to its five dimensions are discussed. We have also developed and examined a social psychological index of ‘socio-cognitive open-mindedness’ inspired by a number of commonly used international scales and by drawing on the same dataset. We have shown that these two types of open-mindedness are qualitatively different. Our analysis does not support the idea that individuals’ social psychological open-mindedness determines their critical open-mindedness. It is rather the opposite which is the case.     

One Size Fits All? The Validity of a Composite Poverty Index Across Urban and Rural Households in South Africa

Composite indices have been prominently used in poverty research. However, validity of these indices remains subject to debate. This paper examines the validity of a common type of composite poverty indices using data from a cross-sectional survey of 2477 households in urban and rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Multiple-group comparisons in structural equation modelling were employed for testing differences in the measurement model across urban and rural groups. The analysis revealed substantial variations between urban and rural respondents both in the conceptualisation of poverty as well as in the weights and importance assigned to individual poverty indicators. The validity of a ‘one size fits all’ measurement model can therefore not be confirmed. In consequence, it becomes virtually impossible to determine a household’s poverty level relative to the full sample. Findings from our analysis have important practical implications in nuancing how we can sensitively use composite poverty indices to identify poor people.     

The quality of life in large American cities: Objective and subjective social indicators

The concept of ‘quality of life’ as a tool of comparative social indicators research is analyzed. Inter-city comparisons of objective and subjective measures of well being are presented and the distinctiveness of these two dimensions of the quality of life is documented. The paper concludes with some observations on the implications that this distinctiveness has for the use of the concept ‘quality of life’ in future social indicators research.     

Living Near to Attractive Nature? A Well-Being Indicator for Ranking Dutch,Danish, and German Functional Urban Areas

While nature is widely acknowledged to contribute to people’s well-being, nature based well-being indicators at city-level appear to be underprovided. This study aims at filling this gap by introducing a novel indicator based on the proximity of city-residents to nature that is of high-amenity. High-amenity nature is operationalized by combining unique systematic data on people’s perceptions of what are the locations of attractive natural areas with data on natural land cover. The proposed indicator departs from the usual assumption of equal well-being from any nature, as it approximates the ‘actual’ subjective quality of nature near people’s homes in a spatially explicit way. Such indicator is used to rank 148 ‘cities’ in the Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany. International comparability of the indicator is enhanced by the use of a definition of cities as functional urban areas (FUAs), which are consistently identified across countries. Results demonstrate that the average ‘nearness’ of FUA populations to high amenity nature varies widely across the observed FUAs. A key finding, that complements insights from existing city-level indicators, is that while populations of FUAs with higher population densities may live relatively far from nature in general, they also live, on average, closer to high-amenity nature than inhabitants of lower density FUAs. Our results may stimulate policy-debates on how to combine urban agglomeration with access to natural amenities in order to account for people’s wellbeing.     

Refining the Conceptualization and Measurement of Women’s Empowerment in Sub-Saharan Africa Using Data from the 2013 Nigerian Demographic and Health Survey

The measurement of women’s empowerment has long eluded academics and practitioners alike. A key challenge relates to the way researchers construct measures of empowerment, pairing indicators together in either composite indices, or multiple dimensions. This study tests three commonly found measurement models of women’s empowerment using data from the 2013 Nigerian Demographic and Health Survey. Model fit statistics indicate that a seven factor first order Functional Scales of Empowerment model best fits the data. Implications following from this study’s findings include that simplification into composite indices, a commonly used method to aggregate indicators of empowerment may lead to erroneous conclusions regarding the effect of empowerment on development and health outcomes and hamper comparative research. The results from this study contribute to the highly important and often ignored discussion regarding measurement of women’s empowerment.     

Measuring World Better Life Frontier: A Composite Indicator for OECD Better Life Index

The OECD Better Life initiative recently released a comprehensive set of 11 indicators of well-being covering a group of countries. Each individual indicator corresponds to a key topic that is essential to well-being. However, the problem of aggregating them is left to users of this dataset. Using these as individual indicators, we propose a composite indicator of overall well-being, which is intended to measure the performance of each country in terms of providing well-being to its people. The ‘benefit of the doubt’ approach (BOD), a well-known aggregation tool based on a weighed sum, assigns the most favourable weights for each entity under investigation. BOD may also be considered to evaluate the performance of each entity in terms of its efficiency. Regarding individual indicators as outputs, it constructs the benchmark production frontier from observed individual indicators. A composite indicator based on BOD equals the distance between each entity’s individual indicator and the production frontier, indicating its efficiency. It is widely considered that the well-being of a country’s people stems from its productive base, which is characterized by capital assets and social infrastructures. Thus, the productive base can be considered the input used to produce well-being, which is reflected by individual indicators. Therefore, when we apply BOD to aggregate individual well-being indicators across countries, we implicitly assume that all countries have the same productive base, as BOD addresses only the output and neglects the input. This inaccurate assumption leads to a distorted performance measure. Data envelopment analysis (DEA), in which BOD has its roots, is a tool to measure the efficiency of each entity by allowing for differences in inputs as well as outputs across entities. DEA also measures efficiency by using the distance to the production frontier; however, unlike BOD, DEA constructs the production frontier more accurately by utilizing the information of inputs as well as outputs, leading to a better performance measure. We apply DEA to aggregate 11 individual well-being indicators into a composite indicator using the World Bank’s estimates of each country’s productive base. The composite indicator based on BOD is distributed similarly to and is highly correlated with the existing Human Development Indicator (HDI). It is also positively correlated with GDP per capita. On the other hand, we show that the composite indicator based on DEA is negatively correlated with HDI as well as GDP per capita.     

Social class and delinquency in London boroughs

Early empirical studies carried out in the U.S. of geographically distributed or ‘ecological’ delinquency rates have tended to stress the importance of environmental, attitudinal (anomic) variables and institutional factors as the principal determinants of urban delinquency. More recent research however has indicated that delinquency is highly related with socio-economic status, rather than with purely ecological factors or with ‘anomie’. In the present paper we present new evidence, based on published data, on the causal structure of delinquency in metropolitan London boroughs by means of a combined use of two well known multivariate techniques-regression analysis and factor analysis. It is found that 50% of the variance of London annual delinquency rates is explained by two indicators of socio-economic status or class used as independent regression variables. In addition, when social class is controlled for, half of the remaining variance is accounted for by indicators of urban land use and post-war population mobility. Thus 75% of the total observed delinquency variance is explained by the regression equation. Finally, the quantified indicators provide a useful typology of London boroughs which permits a characterisation of urban areas in terms of their crimogenic properties.     

Labor force composition and underemployment trends, 1969–1980

Underemployment indicators are both ‘objective’ indicators of individual well-being and social welfare and ‘normative’ indicators for programmatic use. Components of an underemployment indicator framework, the Labor Utilization Framework (LUF), are operationally defined and shown to be closely related to a family of proposed alternatives. Using CPS data, a 12-year time series of LUF indicators is developed for the U.S. labor force and its key subgroups. The across-time heterogeneity of the labor force is analyzed in relation to a ‘basic’ demographic group-by-LUF-by-time contingency, showing how the complexity of labor force structure that emerges from a multi-state indicator of underemployment can be rigorously modeled. Standard loglinear models, which focus on the temporal aspects of data from repeated cross-sectional surveys, provide the analytic technique. Changes in the demographic composition of the labor force account for about 30% of the overall period variability, and age structure has made the most important contribution to the compositional change.     

Some neglected social indicators

The attention now being given in the social sciences to time series indicators that measure the ‘Social Health’ of the nation is a most welcome development. Too often, sweeping claims of social change have very little hard supporting evidence. The new trend indicators offer the opportunity for more rigorous analysis of diverse subjects than is often employed in the ‘soft sciences’. Public opinion indicators show a decline in favor for U.S. business which has resulted in Congressional legislation of business, labor reform, restrictions on the environment, consumerism, and inflation. More restrictions can be expected if the social indicators are correct. Political indicators tell us that Republican party loyalty and allegiance have steadily declined since the 1950s and perhaps the ‘emerging Republican majority’ is merely a myth. There are vast implications to be derived from indicators that show the birth rate nearing zero population growth; religion steadily losing influence in America over the past 30 years; and, the youth are far more sober than the rebellious few who draw mass media attention. Social indicators have been very predictive of the future but largely ignored. A clearinghouse is needed to systematically monitor existing social indicators to avoid waste, duplication and downright reglect of important information.     

Measuring the Success of Sustainable Development Indices in Terms of Reporting by the Global Press

A variety of indices have been applied to the performance of nation states, both for research and as aids to help guide policy and intervention. While the literature on indices is extensive, the focus to date has been almost entirely on technical issues of index creation. However the success of an index is arguably related at least in part to the use of that index by policy makers and managers. While cause-effect can be difficult to determine, one approach is to measure ‘success’ in terms of the reporting of indices by an intermediary group such as the media, and this paper assesses the reporting of 24 indices by newspapers worldwide until 2012. The results suggest that index success is influenced by a number of factors, including the time it has existed, its focus, extent and quality of publicity, adaptability in terms of the scope for others to change the content and methodology of the index and resonance in terms of the match with ideas/culture/behaviour of people. The paper makes a case for a new research field that seeks to investigate the meaning and factors involved in ‘success’ of indices and how these should help with index development.     

On ‘Consistent’ Poverty

The measurement of poverty as ‘consistent’ poverty offers a solution to one of the primary problems of poverty measurement within Social Policy of the last three decades. Often treated as if they were synonymous, ‘indirect’ measures of poverty, such as low income measures, and ‘direct’ measures, such as indices of material deprivation, identify surprisingly different people as being poor. In response to this mismatch, a team of Irish researchers put forward a measure which identified respondents in as being in poverty when they experienced both a low standard of living, as measured by deprivation indicators, and a lack of resources, as measured by a low income line. Importantly, they argued that the two measures required an equal weight. In this paper, I present a reconsideration of the consistent poverty measure from both conceptual and empirical perspectives. In particular, I examine the claim that low income and material deprivation measures should be given an ‘equal weight’. I argue that, from a conceptual perspective, the nature of the indicators at hand means that a deprivation-led measurement approach might be understood to align with the definition of poverty which Nolan and Whelan outline and, from an empirical perspective, that it is the material deprivation measure—and not the low income measure—which is particularly effective in identifying individuals at risk of multiple forms of deprivation. However, I argue that greater attention needs to be given to the question of whether indicators of material deprivation provide a sufficient measure of material poverty and suggest that advancing the measurement of material deprivation beyond its relatively rudimentary state represents an important priority for poverty research.     

Engel functions revisited

Engel functions for the United States, based on cross-sectional data for 1972–73, are compared with those for 1960–61. Elasticities of expenditure for major categories of consumption are consistent with those found in other countries at various levels of economic development. However, elasticities for specific items within major categories varied markedly. Rental housing emerges as an inferior good. Superior goods are grouped into four major classes based on expenditure elasticities. Low elasticities tended to decline over time and were associated with positive family size elasticities. Expenditure elasticities that were high tended to become still higher over time and were associated with negative family size elasticities. An examination of expenditure elasticities across income classes indicates that ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ families have become more alike with respect to expenditures for ‘necessities’ but more unlike with respect to expenditures for ‘luxuries’ — education, recreation, owner housing, and men's and women's clothing. As incomes have risen, the composition of consumption has changed, as have the meaning and character of poverty. Questions are raised concerning the significance and research implications of the declining achievement/aspiration ratio for certain kinds of goods and services for many consumers within the United States and for most consumers in countries where incomes have risen less relatively and absolutely than have those of families in highly developed economies.     

Conceptualising and Measuring Social Cohesion in Africa: Towards a Perceptions-Based Index

Social cohesion is a key concept in development studies. Weak social cohesion is often related to slow economic growth and (violent) conflict. So far few attempts have been made to measure this complex concept in a systematic manner. This paper introduces an innovative method to measure national-level social cohesion based on survey data from 19 African countries. We distinguish three dimensions of social cohesion; i.e. the extent of perceived inequalities, the level of societal trust, and the strength of people’s adherence to their national identity. Importantly, our Social Cohesion Index (SCI) is based on individuals’ perceptions vis-à-vis these three different dimensions of social cohesion rather than certain macro-level ‘objective’ indicators such as GDP/capita or Gini-coefficients. We develop two social cohesion indices: a national average SCI and a Social Cohesion Index Variance-Adjusted (SCIVA); the latter one takes into account the level of variation across different ethnic groups within countries. The SCI and SCIVA are computed for and compared across nineteen African countries for the period 2005–2012 on the basis of Afrobarometer survey rounds 3, 4 and 5. We also investigate quantitatively the relationship between countries’ levels of social cohesion and the occurrence of a range of conflict events. As expected, we find that countries with low levels of social cohesion in a particular year according to our SCI are more likely to experience a range of different violent conflict events in the subsequent year.     

Corruption and the ‘Paradox of Redistribution’

The existing literature on the determinants of income redistribution has identified a ‘paradox’. Namely, that countries with a high degree of market income inequality redistribute little, which is in disagreement with the median voter theorem. In a first step, this paper outlines several mechanisms that explain why government corruption might be partially responsible for this ‘paradox’. In a second step, different corruption perception indices and an instrumental variable approach are used to provide empirical evidence that indicates a significant negative impact of corruption on redistribution levels for a sample of 148 developing and developed countries. This finding suggests that, next to political and need factors, government corruption explains to some extent the ‘paradox of redistribution’. This is especially true for many developing countries, given that they typically have relatively high degrees of corruption and low levels of redistribution.     

A Benefit Recipiency Approach to Analysing Differences and Similarities in European Welfare Provision

In comparative welfare state research, the question of how to measure and understand cross-country differences and similarities in extents of public welfare provision has led to a major discussion about the indicators that could be used for this purpose. Much scholarly attention approaching this so-called ‘dependent variable problem’ concentrates on social expenditure or on social rights data as indicators of ‘welfare stateness’ or ‘welfare generosity’. However, recently, micro-level data on benefit receipt as another promising but hitherto underused indicator was brought into this discussion. The article at hand extends existing knowledge about the conceptual, methodological and empirical potentials and challenges of this alternative indicator compared to the two prevailing indicators. For the empirical analysis, it uses cash benefit recipiency data from the EU-SILC to investigate differences and similarities in extents of public welfare provision between 29 European countries for the period 2003–2012. The study reveals parallels to findings from research in which indicators of social expenditure and social rights are applied, but it also adds new insights beyond their cost and paper reality. This is mainly the case where priority is given to household-related assistance benefits rather than individual insurance benefits. The main conclusion of the paper is that the benefit recipiency indicator—despite not being flawless and requiring further research—complements existing knowledge on differences and similarities in welfare provision by European welfare states.     

Multidimensional Wellbeing: An Index of Quality of Life in a Developing Economy

Human wellbeing indices can shed light on a society’s quality of life. This study ranks human wellbeing by employing objective and subjective indicators of quality of life for hundred districts of Pakistan. Households level data used for the analysis includes ‘The Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement Survey’ for the year 2006–2007. The human wellbeing is examined in four domains: education, health, living conditions and economic situation. Principal component analysis is employed for indexing human wellbeing, rated in five quintiles are generated. The paper demonstrates the importance of education, health and living condition domains in determining the human wellbeing. Objective indicators of education i.e., adult literacy rate, net primary enrolment and gender equality in education are important variables in ranking of districts. Economic status of the households and communities are important variables in subjective perception of wellbeing. The results indicate substantial variation in human wellbeing among districts of Pakistan It may be considered that disparity in objective condition and in subjective perceptions are adequately depicting wellbeing differences. Finally, it is argued that objective indicators and subjective wellbeing measures are needed in unison to understand human quality of life and to make informed policy decisions.