CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2013
| Author | Peterson, Lauri |
|---|---|
| Title | Measuring the Inequality of Well-being: The Myth of 'Going beyond GDP' |
| Summary | The last decades have seen a surge in the development of indices that aim to measure human well-being. Well-being indices (such as the Human Development Index, the Genuine Progress Indicator and the Happy Planet Index) aspire to go beyond the standard growth-based economic definitions of human development (“go beyond GDP”), however, this thesis demonstrates that this is not always the case. The thesis looks at the methods of measuring the distributional aspects of human well-being. Based on the literature five clusters of inequality are developed: economic inequality, educational inequality, health inequality, gender inequality and subjective inequality. These types of distribution have been recognized to receive the most attention in the scholarship of (in)equality measurement. The thesis has discovered that a large number of well-being indices are not distribution-sensitive (do not account for inequality) and indices which are distribution-sensitive primarily account for economic inequality. Only a few indices, such as the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index, the Gender Inequality Index, the Global Gender Gap and the Legatum Prosperity Index are sensitive to non-economic inequality. The most comprehensive among the distribution-sensitive well-being indices that go beyond GDP is the Inequality Adjusted Human Development Index which accounts for the inequality of educational and health outcomes. A proposal for future well-being indices is proposed in the thesis. A common understanding is important for operational reasons because both national governments and international organizations are seeking comprehensive indices of human well-being that would be comparable across regions on a global scale. |
| Supervisor | Fetzer, Thomas |
| Department | International Relations MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2013/peterson_lauri.pdf |
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