OECD: one or many?. Ranking countries with a composite well-being indicator

This paper provides a composite indicator of well-being for the 35 OECD countries, South Africa, Russia and Brazil for the period 2013-2016, considering data on ten different wellbeing domains from the OECD Better Life Index (BLI). In a first stage, countries are ranked according to their well-being indicator, constructed combining Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) with the Benefit-of-the-Doubt (BoD) principle and Multi-Criteria-Decision-Making (MCDM) techniques. In a second stage, well-being clubs are identified using hierarchical cluster analysis, finding that wellbeing is highly polarised. Moreover, as well-being affects people, population size is accounted for in the cluster analysis, showing that for the largest proportion of people in our sample well-being is remarkably low

Is Social Capital Green? Cultural Features and Environmental Performance in the European Union

This paper analyses the r elationship between social capita l and environmental performance in the European Union. In a first stage, environmental performance is measured by an index of eco - efficiency at the country level , computed using Data Envelopment Ana lysis (DEA) techniques and data for the year 2013 . In a second stage, the influence of s ocial capital and other relevant control variables on eco - efficiency is assessed by means of truncated regressions and bootstrapping, as proposed by Simar and Wilson (2007 ) . For several model specifications, tests fail to reject the hypothesis of no effect of social capital on environ- mental performance, and the main driver of environmental performance is found to be the le vel of eco- nomic development, measured by GDP p er capita. Furthermore , this result is robust to different defini- tions of social capital and sample periods

Well-being and the Great Recession in Spain

none3This letter assesses the impact of the Great Recession on well-being in Spanish provinces using two alternative composite indicators of objective well-being that include somewhat different dimensions. Whereas the crisis notably eroded economic well-being, its impact on overall well-being–which in addition to economic dimensions also includes non-economic ones–was imperceptible. This result points to the need to carefully define and assess well-being in empirical analyses.restrictedPeiro-Palomino J.; Perugini F.; Picazo-Tadeo A.J.Peiro-Palomino, J.; Perugini, F.; Picazo-Tadeo, A. J

Social progress around the world: trends and convergence

This paper assesses social progress in 139 countries over the period 1995–2017 following the framework proposed by the Social Progress Imperative; a notable contribution is a composite index allowing for comparisons across countries and over time. The index considers 45 raw indicators covering three fundamental pillars of social progress: basic human needs, foundations of well-being, and opportunities. The results point to a marked improvement in social progress all over the world from the mid-1990s, although they also depict a highly polarized world. Cross-country convergence patterns are also investigated, revealing a reduction in the differences in social progress, largely driven by the narrowing of the gap in basic human needs. Conversely, sizeable cross-country disparities remain in foundations of well-being and opportunities

Measuring well-being in Colombian departments. The role of geography and demography

This paper provides a composite indicator of well-being for the 33 Colombian departments in the year 2016. The indicator is built by adapting the well-known OECD Better Life Index to the regional level, and includes the dimensions of income, health, education, safety, housing, environment, labour market, and civic engagement and governance. As to the methodology, Data Envelopment Analysis and Multi-Criteria Decision-Making techniques are employed, an approach which enables a comparison of well-being across departments and the construction of rankings. The results yield several take-away messages. First, there are substantial disparities in well-being across Colombian departments. Second, despite the fact that average well-being in Colombia is relatively low, the population is concentrated in the departments with the highest well-being levels. Third, geography matters, as neighbouring departments have similar well-being levels, giving rise to a core-periphery duality. Fourth, well-being generally improves and disparities decline when purely economic dimensions (income and labour market) are excluded from the composite indicator.We thank the participants at the XLV International Conference on Regional Science (2019) for helpful comments and suggestions—particularly those by Vicente Royuela—which contributed to an overall improvement of the paper. The comments from two referees have also contributed to a much improved research. We also acknowledge the financial support of the European Regional Development Fund and the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (ECO2016-75237-R and ECO2017-85746-P), Generalitat Valenciana (PROMETEO/2018/102) and Universitat Jaume I (UJI-B2017-33)