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Multiple organizations and institutions have been resorting to indicators on diverse aspects of culture (e.g., creativity, social cohesion, cultural vitality, economic participation), according to their particular purposes and views of what is to be measured. This paper presents results from a research report of a qualitative study that analyzed 35 papers on cultural indicators found via Internet, based on four categories: purpose, assumptions about culture, concept of culture they sustain, and dimensions of indicators considered. Results show that even when the importance of culture is widely recognized in the papers, most of them propose indicators without having solid theoretical foundations, and with an emphasis on the relation between culture and economy. Also, most of the documents do not have a definition of culture or present an instrumental conceptualization of it, where culture is valued not as an end in itself but as a resource than can serve to development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a methodological framework to better incorporate non-labour income into existing top adjusted indicators of economic inequality. Surveys are known to miss the rich, receiving disproportionate amounts of capital income. There has been a surge in top harmonisation methodologies, which complement survey-based estimates of inequality with information from the rich reported in tax administrative sources. These harmonisation methods are found to have a significant upward effect on inequality indicators. This analysis uses the Family Resources Survey (household survey) and the Survey of Personal Incomes (tax data) to explore the extent to which existing UK harmonisation methodology corrects for capital income. First, this analysis finds that the FRS has experienced a significant decline in capital income measurement over the past 20 years (1997–2016), taking reported levels of capital income in the SPI as benchmark. Second, the top harmonisation methodology is found to only partially correct for this decline. Third, in response, the paper proposes a multi-step capital income correction to allocate the remaining capital income missing from top adjusted inequality indicators. The adjustment accounts for both under-coverage and under-estimation error of capital income across the income distribution. Poor measurement of capital incomes in household surveys has long been acknowledged but attempts to correct for this have remained few. This paper highlights the need for decomposable top adjusted indicators of inequality to give a better picture of the role of capital incomes in driving inequality. Surveys are traditionally used to produce inequality indicators used by governments, statistical offices and policy makers. The policy implication is that income missing from indicators structurally falls out of inequality debates, which has arguably been the case for capital incomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have long had difficulties when dealing with cross-time and cross-boundary issues in the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) and Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI). This case study for Belgium is the very first that tackles these complexities by calculating two ISEW-variants with distinct time and boundary perspectives that are based on Fisherian or Hicksian income. Experiential welfare looks at what is currently experienced within domestic borders, whereas the benefits and costs of present activities also include the welfare impacts shifted in time and space. The former construct only registers present ecological costs within borders and does not include capital changes, while the latter includes capital changes and ecological cost-shifting. As we find substantial ecological cost-shifting, we suggest to move forward with the latter concept. Next, the paper introduces a number of advances to the ISEW-methodology. These include the introduction of a sufficiency threshold for consumption expenditures when accounting for the diminishing marginal utility of income, the adoption of a consumption footprint view for the emissions embodied in trade with an additional focus on the climate impacts of aviation and shipping and the inclusion of the shadow economy. Finally, we propose to look beyond the aggregate ISEW and adopt a disaggregated approach to evaluate economic performance in detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we construct an illustrative multidimensional poverty index for China and compare it with income poverty using the panel data from multiple waves of the China Health and Nutrition Survey. We use first order stochastic dominance method and regression analysis to test the stability of multidimensional poverty measures and probe the often-observed mis-match between multidimensional measures and income measures. We find as expected that China's multidimensional poverty is significantly higher in rural areas and in the less developed western provinces. But relative to the income poverty, the multidimensional poverty is less volatile. Also, the ranking of provinces by income and multidimensional poverty varies. The multidimensional poverty measures are somewhat sensitive to the large change of weight, but if we control the indicators' weight, then the multidimensional poverty measures are stable to a change of indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globally, financial well-being has received considerable attention from researchers and policymakers as an indicator of financial health in the aftermath of financial shocks. Additionally, financial inclusion has been a priority for developing countries in their efforts towards poverty alleviation and bringing vulnerable populations into the mainstream financial system. Moreover, the shift in digital technologies and financial services has overcome access and usage barriers through the acquisition of digital financial literacy. This paper develops novel multidimensional indices and investigates the relationship between financial well-being, financial inclusion, and digital financial literacy. The study utilizes data from InterMedia's Financial Inclusion Insight (FII) 2016 Survey conducted in India. The results indicate that both financial inclusion and digital financial literacy have a significant positive impact on financial well-being. However, considering the potential endogeneity bias, instrumental variable 2SLS regression reveals that financial inclusion plays the most crucial role in defining financial well-being. Our findings help policymakers recognize the importance of demand-side financial inclusion and digital financial literacy in promoting financial well-being, which may be achieved through robust financial and digital literacy programs. Additionally, the study contributes to the financial well-being literature by incorporating essential attributes of financial inclusion and digital financial literacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a strategy to measure economic insecurity in countries in the Global South. It builds a 'Multidimensional Economic Insecurity Index' (MEII) that combines four indicators of economic vulnerability that cause stress and anxiety: unexpected economic shocks, unprotected employment or non-workers in the household, over-indebtedness and asset poverty. The index offers a measure that directly relates economic uncertainty to stress and anxiety due to the lack of protection and buffers to face an unexpected economic shock. The MEII is applied to Chile using Survey of Household Finances (SHF) cross-sectional data (2007, 2011, 2014 and 2017). The results show that (i) about half of the Chilean households experienced, on average, two or more economic vulnerabilities during the last decade with an intensity of 2.3 vulnerabilities, and (ii) economic insecurity affects households on the entire income distribution, even in the highest income deciles groups. By identifying the groups of households most affected by economic insecurity and its trend in recent years, applying the MEII in countries such as Chile provides relevant information to monitor, evaluate and improve social safety nets besides labour market regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women’s empowerment is an intrinsic human rights goal that has implications for the health and well-being of women and their children. Poor measurement hampers current research efforts, and improving empowerment measurement is a frequently identified research priority. However, a discussion of specific steps researchers can take to improve upon common measurement practices is lacking. The purpose of this paper is to provide quantitative researchers recommendations to measure women’s empowerment in a theory-based, precise, and comprehensive way. This paper reviewed key theoretical concepts of women’s empowerment and critically reviewed common measurement approaches. Three broad recommendations for measuring empowerment emerged from this critical review, and specific suggestions to meet these recommendations are discussed. First, researchers should draw upon theory to construct measurement models (e.g., using theory to construct dimensions of empowerment and selection of indicators). Second, researchers should use analytic methods that minimize implicit judgments and bias (e.g., not classifying women as empowered using specific criteria). Third, researchers should collect comprehensive empowerment information (e.g., supplementing quantitative measures with qualitative interviews to learn how and why changes took place). Measuring empowerment poses a number of challenges, and this review provides researchers suggestions to improve upon common measurement practices. Improved measurement will strengthen research efforts on the causes and consequences of poor empowerment, which has the potential to improve the well-being of women and their children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a response to the article entitled “Fifty years after the Social Indicators Movement: Has the promise been fulfilled?” by Ken Land and Alex Michalos (2015) which constitutes a careful review of the historical development of the Social Indicators Movement, utility of social indicators in shaping the concept of quality of life and subjective well-being, and issues deserving social indicators research in future. In this response paper, we join in the discussion by highlighting five issues—progress, paradigms, puzzles, promise, and potential research directions of social indicators research. In terms of progress, while we have accomplished many tasks proposed by Solomon et al. (The quality of life, Sage, London 1980), some of them are yet to be achieved. Regarding research paradigms surrounding social indicators, researchers have primarily used positivistic or post-positivistic orientation to conduct and interpret social indicators research, with relatively fewer studies using interpretive, constructionist or critical theory perspective. There are also several puzzles deserving consideration. These include (a) the use of “other types of evidence”, particularly qualitative data; (b) evaluation of social programs; (c) feasibility of assessing “social progress”; (d) choice of social indicators; (e) interpretation of findings; (f) methodological debates; and (g) explanations for social change. Finally, the promise of social indicators research to promote quality of life and potential future research directions of social indicators research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyse dynamically the three indicators of poverty and social exclusion covered by the EU2020 poverty target, while focusing on state dependence and feedback effects. We are interested in learning the extent to which the fact of being at risk of poverty, severe material deprivation or low work intensity in a given year is related to having the same status one year on, and whether being at risk in one domain in one year is a predictor of being at risk in one of the other domains in subsequent years. Our results are based on data from the EU-SILC for eight countries and indicate that the three social indicators of the EU2020 strategy capture different aspects of economic hardship in the majority of European countries analysed. We show that the three phenomena are affected by a considerable degree of genuine state dependence, but there is weak evidence for one-year lagged feedback effects-apart from in Hungary and Poland, where feedback loops between the three segments are to be found. Mostly, interrelationships occur at the same point in time via current effects, initial conditions and correlated unobserved heterogeneity. In terms of policy implications, our results suggest that the three phenomena should be addressed by different interventions while it is expected that spill-over effects across time will be marginal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tests the relationship between financial development, quality of institutions and poverty. To this end, we reviewed the literature and selected indicators of poverty, financial development and quality of institutions. Empirically, we used the three-stage least squares method to examine a sample of 132 countries observed over the 1980-2014 period. First, we proved that financial development does not improve the situation of the poor, while the effect of institution quality on poverty and financial development depends on the choice of indicators. Our robustness analysis pointed to the sensitivity of our results to the different financial development, quality of institutions and poverty indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this work is to use multiple Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)/Benefit of the Doubt (BoD) approaches for the readjustment and exploitation of the Human Development Index (HDI). The HDI is the leading indicator for the vision of "development as freedom"; it is a Composite Index, wherein three dimensions (income, health, and education), represented by four indicators, are aggregated. The DEA-BoD approaches used in this work were: the traditional BoD; the Multiplicative BoD; the Slacks Based Measure (SBM) BoD; the Range Adjusted Model (RAM) BoD; weight restrictions; common weights; and tiebreaker methods. These approaches were applied to raw and normalized HDI data from 2018, to generate 40 different rankings for 189 countries. The resulting indexes were analyzed and compared using Social Network Analysis (SNA) and information derived from DEA itself (slacks, relative contributions, targets, relative targets and benchmarks). This paper presents useful DEA derived indexes that could be replicated in other contexts. In addition, it contributes by presenting a clearer picture of the differences between BoD models and offering a new way to appreciate the world's human development panorama. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether two popular poverty indicators, namely income poverty and material deprivation, reach similar conclusions about the poverty reduction effects of income transfers. Such evaluations generally use income poverty. It is well-known, however, that poverty indicators regularly disagree about a person's poverty status. What is less known is whether such disagreement also confounds estimates of a program's poverty reduction effects. This paper compares the targeting performance of social assistance, housing and family transfers in countries with different welfare states namely Germany, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom. It finds that a transfer's targeting performance does not differ much when defining the transfer's target group either as the poorest income quintile or the poorest material deprivation quintile. Yet, when combining the information from both indicators, transfers appear much more effective in reaching those groups that both poverty indicators identify as part of the target group. Transfers also appear much more efficient in excluding non-target populations. For the groups on which the poverty indicators disagree, more analysis is needed. Triangulation between poverty indicators thus improves the validity of program evaluations as it enables a better separation between (potential) poverty measurement issues and the measurement of a program's (potential) effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There have been attempts to develop and employ tools for measuring development that shifted away from economic growth. In Thailand, a number of alternative indicators to measure the progress of development were created and employed. However, the indicators and measurements of development continued to be challenging, partly because of the dynamic changes of socio-economics, and partly due to the inconsistency between aggregated and local, or individual units of measurement. This paper aims to study meanings and develop wellbeing indicators of a community in the Northeast of Thailand. The data was derived from qualitative research conducted during 2013-2014. Focus group discussions with thirty-five formal and informal community leaders were used, and in-depth interviews were applied to collect data from thirty key informants. The results showed that the indicators of community wellbeing are classified into four groups, namely objective community wellbeing, community trust, community security, and community strength. The objective community wellbeing indicators were consistent with those that are used to guide policy and practice in Thailand. However, based on the local meaning of community wellbeing, new dimensions of indicators were found and proposed. This study recommended that these indicators should be developed further, to be employed as a tool to monitor progress, especially by local government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After nearly 20 years without any significant changes, the indicators of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) have undergone a major overhaul in the current 2014-2020 programming period. This paper reviews the characteristics of the ERDF indicator system evolution and contextualises the changes. Based on applying a logic model and practical examples, we argue that in spite of the good justification for changes, the new ERDF intervention logic and indicator system did not solve some of the well-known problems and brought new challenges for the ERDF-supported programmes. The main challenges that still remain to be solved are: differing indicator concepts between the European Union funds; inconsistency of the common output indicators; difficulties in establishing a programme’s contribution to results; persistent problems in determining the target values for results; and broad result indicators with indirect link to interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past decades, new indicators have been developed to provide alternatives to gross domestic product (GDP) at the macro level and to financial indicators at the business level (businesses' social and environmental indicators). However, these new indicators are poorly articulated between the business and the macro level. This paper aims to discuss the different possibilities of articulation that exist and outline a framework for a better micro–macro articulation. Firstly, we draw from the example of GDP and traditional business indicators by analysing the way they are articulated. Secondly, we review how sets of alternative indicators aim to articulate the macro and micro level by analysing indicators constructed around gross national happiness (GNH) and sustainable development goals (SDGs). This research shows that two specific types of articulation exist between indicators at different levels, one referred to as the 'accounting' type and the other called the 'conceptual' type. Their strengths and limits will be discussed, as well as how they can be combined. Finally, recommendations will be provided on how to best articulate beyond GDP and business level indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conventional equation of economic well-being with the gross domestic product (GDP) has dominated policy thinking for at least 50 years. However, a variety of authors have pointed to the social and environmental costs of economic development and called for more comprehensive and more representative measures of progress to be developed. Therefore, a variety of 'adjusted' indicators have been developed. The robustness and reliability of these indicators is still a contentious issue. But these attempts raise important questions about sustainable development and pose an important challenge to conventional thinking about the relationship between economic progress, well-being and sustainability. The Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) is one of the indicators of measuring sustainable development. Apply it to Liaoning Province, this paper evaluates Liaoning's GPI from 1978 to 2011. GPI, Per Capita GPI and GDP of Liaoning are compared with each other. It is concluded that GDP and Per Capita GDP of Liaoning grow much faster than GPI and Per Capita GPI. Grouped all components of GPI into three categories (economy, environment and Social), it shows that social and environmental development lags behind economic growth in Liaoning. This paper is till now a unique application of GPI indicator in Liaoning and China's provincial level and also contribution to the continuing development of the methods and results for the Index of Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI). Policy implications are given finally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Measuring well-being and living conditions at local level is essential for policy makers who wish to study inequalities and formulate targeted and effective economic and social intervention policies. In Italy, the available official statistics in this field are usually provided at regional level and several studies have been carried out in order to obtain the estimates of those measures at disaggregated level, which is done in order to obtain estimations at provincial level. However, due the heterogeneity of these phenomena within each province, it is important to possess data at micro-territorial level, that is at the municipality level, in order to study and monitor territorial development and inequalities in depth.This paper proposes an estimation of household consumption expenditure, one of the most important indicator of the economic material well-being of an area, for the 7893 Italian municipalities.To this end, the cokriging spatial interpolation technique was employed in order to explore its potentialities. This method is normally used in natural sciences to predict variables of interest at micro territorial level, using available sample data or population aggregates, analysing their spatial dependence and introducing information on auxiliary correlated variables available at micro level. In this study, the available information on household consumption expenditure at provincial level was combined with the data on taxable income at municipality level as auxiliary variable.The evaluation of model performance enabled us to confirm the validity of this approach to obtain a more detailed picture of the local systems for which intervention policies are important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are countries at a low level of socio-economic development catching up with developed countries over time or rather falling further behind? Existing work on the subject is not conclusive, partially due to methodological differences. The aim of the paper is to carry out a broader analysis with longer time series and a more diverse set of indicators. The study divides countries of the world into 21 developed "benchmark" countries and 156 developing countries. The distance between the benchmark and developing countries is measured using the "time lags" method, applied here to nine indicators covering topics such as the economy, health, education and the environment. The study further utilizes a probabilistic approach to extrapolate missing historical data for developing countries, so that the analysis can cover a full century starting in 1920 and ending with short-term projections to year 2020. The study finds that a majority of developing countries, and the population-weighted developing world as a whole, has reduced its lag in most indicators between 1920 and 2020. Progress was unevenly distributed, with East Asian and European countries converging the most with the benchmark, while most African countries have diverged along with some American ones. Catch-up in education attainment and life expectancy has been more successful than in infant survival rate, GDP per capita or technology adoption. The findings are put in context of United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals, showing how the time lag method could improve setting targets for some of the goals. Further, time lags are used to analyze the current demographic, economic and political situation of developing countries, identifying opportunities and risks for future catch-up with developed countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper attempts to detect trends of convergence in terms of governance among the EU member-states. This is an issue that has not hitherto been examined. The empirical analysis provided utilizes the worldwide governance indicators, employs the methodological approach of convergence clubs and covers the period 1996-2012. Findings reported herein point to clear trends of convergence. With the notable exceptions of some lead countries, the vast majority of EU member-states tend to form one convergence club in each of the six governance indicators considered. Yet, there are still appreciable differences. By and large, the northern and the western EU member-states exhibit significantly larger values compared to the southern and the eastern ones. This means that despite the convergence trends detected, notable divisions among the EU member-states still remain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 microdata collected by national surveys and harmonised by the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS). The LIS database incorporates a wide variety of personal harmonised variables, which allow us to made cross-country comparisons for developing countries. More specifically, we analyse six countries: Brazil, Egypt, Guatemala, India, Peru and South Africa and the periods of time covered vary from 2004 to 2014. In order to analyse the impact of inequality of opportunity we compute relative indicators by comparing IOp with economic inequality for each country analysed. Moreover, to check the robustness of our results we include two sensitivity analyses: first, we test the significance of overtime changes using inferential procedures and second, we assess if different economic indicators lead to different conclusions both in the evolution of IOp and overall inequality and in the relative weights of the circumstances that conform IOp. More specifically, regarding the first aim we focus on the disposable equivalised income to measure IOp and Income Inequality and we test if overtime changes are statistically significant using bootstrapping procedures. With regard to the second objective, to test the robustness of the results we compute IOp and Inequality for four different economic aggregates: Personal Income, Labour Personal Income, Consumption and Monetary Consumption. The empirical results of these analyses lead to two interesting conclusions: most of the overtime changes are found to be statistically significant and the use of a specific economic indicator is not as important as it at first seems, leading in most cases to the same conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quality of life must be measured within a multidimensional framework preferably inclusive of objective and subjective indicators that add to the information gathered through economic or monetary-only indices. This paper reports on the first application of the fuzzy set approach to quality of life measurement. The application uses the 2012 data for Macedonia collected by Eurofound during the third wave of the European Quality of Life Survey. The fuzzy approach, developed in the early 1990s, proves to be highly consistent and efficient in this empirical application when compared to distribution analyses. In addition, it is also statistically robust. Both the theoretical background and the application of the approach are described. The fuzzy set provides relevant added value for both data analysts and data users as it presents results easily and concisely, facilitates comparison and cross-reference between dimensions, and allows for the consolidation of monetary and non-monetary aspects of life quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we construct a Nepal specific multidimensional poverty index using the Nepal Longitudinal Sample Survey (NLSS) for the period 1995-2010. The indicators for Nepal Multidimensional Poverty Index (NMP) have been chosen using the goals set by the Government of Nepal and the perceptions of adequacy as reported by households. In doing so this study combines multidimensional and subjective methods of measuring wellbeing. The subjective data is used to guide the choice of dimensions for the multidimensional analysis. Our findings show that Nepal has had a dramatic fall in multidimensional poverty along with the observed fall in consumption poverty in this period. Comparing the extent to which consumption poverty accurately identifies the multidimensionally poor, we find the error has reduced over time but remains large in proportion to the poverty rate implying the need for a multidimensional measure. For the different ethnic groups and regions the patterns of reduction in poverty are not homogenous and are different from those of consumption poverty with the NMP outperforming the consumption poverty in tracking targeted policy actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regional competitiveness is a concept whose definition and applicability is highly debated among scholars. Nevertheless, over recent years it has become widespread among policy makers and practitioners, especially in the European Union. In line with this diffusion a number of alternative composite indicators of regional competitiveness have been released. Instead of building a composite index, this paper carries out empirical analyses whose aim is to analyze the European NUTS2 regions' performance for those indicators that, according to the literature, contribute to the definition of competitiveness. Results highlight the existence of a competitiveness divide between Northern European countries, which report better performances for most of the competitiveness indicators, and Southern/Eastern ones. The group of more competitive regions expands over time by including regions from Centre European countries while within peripheral regions a stable gap between regions where metropolitan areas are located and the others exists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, though the need for new indicators of progress is broadly recognized, no consensus has arisen on a successor to gross domestic product (GDP). Various quantification options are debated. While some intend to improve current indicators by completing or adjusting them to new constraints, others think that new indicators of progress are liable, if well-designed, to catalyse a transition toward a new societal model, less reliant on growth. Up to now, the normative stakes related to quantification options, though crucial for 'what we measure affects what we do', are scattered among the debates and do not appear clearly to actors. Our paper aims therefore to offer a systematic understanding of the normative impacts of generic quantification choices. To that end, we analyse the index of economic well-being (IEWB). For each dimension of this composite indicator, the analysis-which aims to be easily transposed to other indicators-sheds light on the variety of normative implications resulting from its conceptual and methodological apparatus. This concomitantly leads us to question in depth the relevance of some theoretical hypotheses underlying the IEWB to coherently account for economic, social and ecological issues. The paper's conclusion suggests that alternative conceptual frameworks, such as ecological economics and the capability approach, are liable to carry more coherent indicators of progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Providing a reliable indicator of the progress of the European countries towards the achievement of the Europe 2020 objectives is crucial for policy makers. Recently, a composite index was suggested for this task. In this paper, we propose a decomposition of this composite index by distinguishing between three different components: country-, group-, and objective-specific indexes. The decomposition, while simple and consistent with previous works, allows us to better quantify, measure, and monitor the progress of the European countries towards the achievement of the Europe 2020 objectives. Our findings suggest that significant efforts are still required to reach the Europe 2020 objectives. The decomposition highlights important patterns for the three levels for each country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construction of subjective indicators for measuring phenomena expressed in an ordinal scale is a central issue in social sciences, particularly in sociology and psychology. In this paper, we propose the use of a subjective indicator by groups of units (for example, by geographical area) based on the ‘distance’ between the empirical cumulative distribution and a hypothetical cumulative distribution of reference. This approach allows to avoid the awkward question of the ‘quantification’ of an ordinal variable, i.e., the conversion of an ordinal variable into an interval variable. As an example of application, we consider life satisfaction data coming from the annual multipurpose survey on “Aspects of Daily Life”, carried out by the Italian National Institute of Statistics, and we present a comparison with some classical methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally, the role of tourism has been recognized as an instrument of endogenous development and, therefore, so has its potential to generate wealth and employment, provided the right circumstances are in place. One of the essential circumstances is governance, that is, coordination, collaboration and/or cooperation between the different players involved in the tourism development process, in a way that ensures the multiplier effect of tourism on the local economy. One of the great challenges facing policymakers and destination managers is the measurement of the progress achieved in tourism destinations in the field of governance and the adoption of the measures required to encourage the implementation of good governance in those destinations. This paper presents a system of indicators which can be adapted to the characteristics of any tourism destination and which allows the implementation of governance to be measured. This system has been generated from a questionnaire given to a group of governance experts and its application will be very useful in order to improve the management of tourism destinations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we analyse the relation between different economic inequality indicators and social cohesion. Previous research usually narrows down economic inequality to income inequality, or distinguishes several types of economic inequality. Little attention has until now been given to how different aspects of economic inequality might be related to each other and can have an effect on social cohesion. This article analyses several indicators of economic inequality and makes a distinction between indicators measuring income inequality, poverty, economic strain and unequal distributions of wealth. Arguing that these indicators represent different aspects of inequality, we hypothesise that they cannot be reduced to one latent concept of inequality and have specific relations with social cohesion. In order to test this hypothesis, we conducted an exploratory factor analysis. This resulted in two different factors: one associated with economic hardship, and one associated with imbalances in market outcomes. This would imply that inequality indicators can be classified into two underlying concepts. Secondly, we related the factor scores of the two latent concepts to the social cohesion indicators via regression analyses. This paper focuses on European countries and uses pooled data from the European Social Survey (period 2006–2012), in combination with macro-level data drawn from the OECD, Eurostat and the World Bank. The results demonstrate that the strength of the link between inequality and citizens’ attitudes depends on the type of inequality indicator we analyse: only the factor economic deprivation can be significantly linked to social cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Standard indicators of wellbeing such as the QALY for health and GDP per capita for economic development have been increasingly regarded as being too narrow in focus. There is a need to develop multidimensional measures of wellbeing that encompass the full range of factors that make life worth living. This study is part of a project that aims at developing a multidimensional index based on Sen's capability framework to assess women's wellbeing in rural Malawi: the Women's Capabilities Index. The project identifies a set of capabilities relevant to the context; proposes a methodology to measure robustly these capabilities; aggregates the capabilities into a single metric (index); and validates and tests the index. This paper focuses on the weighting and aggregation of the index. Four weighting methods of aggregation are chosen: two normative approaches; a data-driven approach; and a hybrid method. The different methods have implications on the results which are critically assessed and compared. This study contributes to the literature on the implications of adopting different methods for setting the weights in composite measures of wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the spatio-temporal structure of quality of life in Andalusia, Spain, and examines how it has changed from 2007 to 2011. To this end, we study quality of life at the local level using municipal data, develop a composite index of quality of life inspired by the capabilities approach and recent trends in well-being, and apply a space-time approach using spatial econometric techniques. Demographic indicators, income, high-speed networks, education and health have the greatest influence in determining quality of life in Andalusia. From 2007 to 2011, the overall quality of life in Andalusia worsened as a consequence of the crisis, but territorial disparities decreased. The quality of life in a municipality does not change randomly, but is determined by the municipality's quality of life in the previous period and changes in the quality of life in neighbouring municipalities in both the same time period and in the past. Public policies should therefore take into account that both history and space matter in terms of quality of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper designs a multidimensional index of well-being for 20 Italian regions, based on a set of 41 indicators organized in an original hierarchical structure, a decision-tree whose four main pillars are Economy, Society, Environment and Health. Our novel approach combines the objective dimension of the evaluation (a comprehensive set of statistical indicators) within a flexible non-additive aggregation model (the Choquet integral) characterized with the preferences of informed Italian stakeholders. Adopting the Choquet integral allows us to overcome the well-known limitations embedded in the linear models, by assigning a weight (capacity) to any coalitions of dimensions, and by allowing a different degree of substitutability within each decision node in the tree. The weights and the parameters for the aggregation are elicited through a computer-based nominal group technique, a method which reduces the occurrences of drastically dissenting valuations and the potential expert-selection bias. Our results show that experts' perception of synergies and redundancies is quite heterogeneous between levels and nodes in the tree. Moreover, well-being measures are much influenced by the degree of substitutability embedded in the experts' preferences. Overall, the Italian picture looks more heterogeneous when analysed through the Choquet integral, with respect to a linear model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we propose a data-driven approach for the construction of survey-based indicators using large data sets. We make use of agents' expectations about a wide range of economic variables contained in the World Economic Survey, which is a tendency survey conducted by the Ifo Institute for Economic Research. By means of genetic programming we estimate a symbolic regression that links survey-based expectations to a quantitative variable used as a yardstick, deriving mathematical functional forms that approximate the target variable. We use the evolution of GDP as a target. This set of empirically-generated indicators of economic growth, are used as building blocks to construct an economic indicator. We compare the proposed indicator to the Economic Climate Index, and we evaluate its predictive performance to track the evolution of the GDP in ten European economies. We find that in most countries the proposed indicator outperforms forecasts generated by a benchmark model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the question of whether the value priorities of older and younger adults differ, and if so, whether the pattern of differences is similar in countries with different experience of economic, political and social change. The data from the 2008 wave from ESS about responses to a 21-item version of the Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ, Schwartz 2003) were used to compare value priorities in younger (under 30 years) and older adults from five East-Central European countries-Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Russia-and two relatively stable Nordic welfare states-Finland and Sweden. The study found a clear general trend for younger adults toward Openness to Change and Self-Enhancement on the two value dimensions. Age group differences were more pronounced in East-Central countries, and on Conservation-Openness to Change dimension. Younger people from different countries had more similar values than older adults in regard to the importance placed on Openness to Change. The discussion focused on possible reasons of the findings such as the different effect of societal change on value priorities of people from different age groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests a new and comprehensive approach to the assessment of the material well-being at the individual level by constructing a multidimensional index. Using this approach, material well-being is understood as a generic notion that covers a number of different domains, whereas the concept of domain is used to distinguish between different aspects of people's resources, including income security, basic needs, durables, housing and subjective material well-being. Each dimension is measured independently, using the best indicators available, to generate a score or domain index for each aspect of material well-being. The procedure of re-weighting the indicators within the separate domains enables us to account for the disparity in resources and consumer preferences across different population subgroups. The final domain scores, combined with explicit weighting, are then used to generate a summary material well-being index. The domain indices and the summary material well-being index are validated by exploring their relationships to key socio-economic attributes, which were previously shown to be strongly associated with individual material well-being. The results showed that the summary indices of material well-being are characterized by greater differentiation in relation to such measures, as occupational class and judgments of satisfaction with one's life. This allows us to conclude that our summary indices capture the latent concept of material well-being better than any of our domain indices used separately. Although the index is constructed using the Russian Gender and Generation Survey data for 2007, the methodological approach that we applied can be easily replicated in other surveys which contain information on several aspects of material well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes a look at the countries of the world and their rankings in terms of material wealth. Using the attributes and variables featured in the development of these countries and synthetic indexes, it analyzes the relationship between wealth levels and estimates of social development. First we use the indicators estimated by UNDP. Using UNDP methodology and multivariate statistical methods such as factor analysis, we then turn to complementary estimators. Our results not only allow us to identify which countries are better (or worse) at turning economic growth into social development but they also contribute to detecting the dimensions of development behind position changes across various rankings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies the 'time lag' method to a set of social and economic indicators, examining the development of Central and Eastern Europe since the first world war. Originally used to assess technology diffusion, this method allows comparison of levels of development between states and through a long period of time. It presents how many years have elapsed between achieving a certain level of development between countries. The results show that the countries of Central and Eastern Europe have only narrowly converged with a set of 23 highly-developed 'benchmark' states. Development in monetary terms (gross domestic product per capita) is the indicator where this region lags most. Employment structure, life expectancy or infant mortality show much smaller lags. Communist states were closest to the West in the 1960s-early 1970s and struggled thereafter. They are still mostly lagging more today than at their peak before transformation despite the progress achieved in absolute terms after the fall of centrally-planned economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are few attempts to benchmark job quality in a multi-dimensional perspective across Europe. Against this background, we have created a synthetic job quality index (JQI) for the EU27 countries in an attempt to shed light on the question of how European countries compare with each other and how they are developing over time in terms of job quality. Taking account of the multi-faceted nature of job quality, the JQI is compiled on the basis of six sub-indices which cover the most important dimensions of job quality as identified in the literature. The paper addresses the methods used to construct the JQI and make it comparable over time. It presents the results for 2010 and briefly addresses changes over time to illustrate the potential and limits of a multidimensional European JQI. It also considers alternative specifications for various sub-indices and tests for the impact of changes in the indicators used on the outcomes. Overall, the findings appear to confirm the feasibility and desirability of attempting to assess job quality by means of a composite index that can be periodically updated. The key strength of this approach is the possibility to monitor and benchmark EU countries' overall job quality performances and the outcomes in six sub-dimensions of job quality and compare them with each other, across gender and over time. At the same time, the limitations of such a composite index need to be borne in mind. The most important challenges are the availability (over time), timeliness and periodicity, comparability and disaggregation of data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Housing costs form a substantial share of aggregate demand in the UK. This study examines the distribution of total expenditure-to-income by homeownership status at the end of the recent recession in 2010. Multivariate quantile regressions uncover four important points. First, owner-occupiers in England have considerably higher mean spending ratios than their peers in other parts of the UK; an indication of their wealthier status. Second, the average spending ratio for residential-occupiers in all UK regions, with the exception of Northern Ireland, is significantly higher than the mean ratio for tenants in both private and public properties. In this last region, the spending rate for private tenants is more prominent. Third, the disparity in the expenditure ratio between owner-occupiers and tenants is significantly more pronounced in England. Fourth, renters in public housing in Scotland and Wales have much higher spending ratios than their counterparts in private properties, reflecting a greater overall social security provided by the devolved government there. Policy implications allied with heterogeneity in the consumption effect of housing wealth across the different homeownership cohorts is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the community indicator system used in Victoria, Australia, in which benefits associated with Community Indicators Victoria (CIV), factors driving the widespread use of community indicator systems over traditional economic measurement tools, and good practices on the three key stages of developing the CIV. Also mentioned is the concept behind community indicator systems.

The major social and human problem today is the extreme number of refugees, e.g., politically determined, from various conflicts zone around the world. The European Union currently discusses the possible distribution and relocation of these refugees among the member states. The European Commission suggested keys to the distribution based on aggregated indicators, which for obvious reasons has its pitfalls. Here distribution keys based on a partial ordering approach is discussed. The choice of indicators apparently is crucial due to the relative importance of the single indicators. Two approaches are applied to derive distribution keys, both taking the onset in the average ordering of the 28 EU countries. In the first simple approach, independently of the choice of indicators among the here applied, five countries, i.e., Denmark, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden and The United Kingdom consequently are found among the Top-10 countries that should receive the major parts of refugees. In a second approach, applying a normalization based on population size the bigger countries with fairly solid economies are suggested to receive the majority of accepted refugees. The eventual choice of indicators as well as the normalization process is a political discussion and is not part of the present study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study attempts to borrow the accepted justification of current extant economic, social and human development indicators to give a positive support for the importance of leisure sport activities diversity (LSD). Four common indicators for economic, social and human development are used: gross domestic product per capita, happiness, human development index, and freedom. LSD is defined as the sport resources diversity referring to the provision and accessibility of various sport types in a society for enhancement of life satisfaction. Data for LSD were extracted from the international social survey programme. LSD was measured by a range of sports frequently participated in terms of one person mentioned index, five person mentioned index, 0.1%-index and Cov- (coefficient of variation) index. Spearman correlation analyses between economic, social and human development indicators and indexes of LSD showed that at least one or all indexes of LSD were highly correlated with economic, social and human development indicators, indicating that LSD may engage more sport participation and improve life quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Volunteer tourism is a rapidly growing form of alternative travel and one of its central pillars consists of generating beneficial impacts in host destinations. However, few mechanisms have been proposed or developed to understand, identify or assess the impacts of volunteer tourism in host communities. One strategy to assess these impacts is by developing sociocultural, economic and environmental indicators. Literature on international development, social indicators and volunteer tourism suggests that indicator development should engage both host communities and volunteer tourism organizations (VTOs). This article presents an approach to accomplish this often difficult task. An online questionnaire solicited data from VTOs regarding indicators that they believe are most useful to understand the community impacts of their programs. Exploratory workshops in five host communities of volunteer tourism in Ecuador and Costa Rica generated additional indicators that are locally-relevant and appropriate. Data from these distinct approaches to indicator development are compared and contrasted to understand how they can be used to reflect the interests of both stakeholder groups. The compass of sustainability was used as a framework to guide indicator development for both the survey and the workshops and its potential to guide future initiatives is discussed. This research revealed the need to promote collaboration among VTOs and host communities to jointly develop indicators to ensure that volunteer tourism can address their mutual goals and needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A negative effect of unemployment on subjective well-being has been demonstrated in many studies casting substantial doubt about assumptions of decisions of individuals to choose unemployment voluntarily as the utility-maximising option. These studies have been extended to take into account national-level context factors which have been shown to moderate the relationship between unemployment and life-satisfaction. So far most studies focussed mainly on economic indicators, although demographic and cultural differences between countries also affect how unemployment is perceived. An important variable that is not included in the majority of proper multilevel studies is the extent of unemployment benefits. Traditional micro-economic approaches argue that more extensive provisions should reduce the cost of unemployment and therefore reduce the motivation to regain employment-reflected in a reduction of the negative impact of unemployment. This study investigates this claim by using European Values Study data from all European Union countries and Norway as well as harmonised macroeconomic statistics from Eurostat. It finds that the effect of unemployment on life-satisfaction is indeed moderated by economic and demographic national-level factors, but not by unemployment benefits. To what extent unemployment reduces life-satisfaction varies greatly between countries, but appears to not be influenced by the extent of state unemployment provisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The territorial approach of rural development requires taking into account economic, social and environmental features. Therefore, among the goals of the rural development policy the well-being of the target population cannot be disregarded. However, well-being is a multidimensional phenomenon and its measure could be complicated since many indicators (with different scale, units of measure, burden, trends) have to be estimated and analyzed. With a composite indicator which summarizes a bulk of information this concern can be overcome. A multicriteria approach of aggregation is proposed because cardinal aggregation involving in undesirable compensatory property. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With data from the Italian Survey of Household Income and Wealth, we present an Index of Household Financial Condition and quantify with it the position of households between 2004 and 2010. The Index of Household Financial Condition is composed of subjective and objective indicators, which enable to capture differently the existing uncertainty concerning the future development of a household's financial situation. We show with a measurement model based on multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA) that the proposed Index is two-dimensional and comprises financial position and financial prudence. Through application of the MGCFA, we show that the interrelations between the indicators had not changed at four measurement occasions (2004-2010), and thus the proposed set comprises a coherent and time-invariant framework for measuring two dimensions of the latent concept: financial condition. Established measurement invariance in the MGCFA framework allows an assessment of trend in financial position and financial prudence of Italian households. We show that the financial position of Italian households improved in the period 2004-2006 and later declined. Improvement of the financial prudence was observed, however, till 2008. Finally, we incorporate a set of socioeconomic features of Italian households into a structural equation model. With the provided set of indicators, we find positive relation between age and both financial position and prudence, but also we show the positive impact of white-collar jobs on scores in each of the dimensions of the financial condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last recession in Europe has shown us that econometric models that factor in the qualitative perceptions and expectations of businesses and consumers—along with commonly used quantitative macroeconomic variables—can produce better results in explaining and forecasting economic activity. The European Commission's Business and Consumer Surveys (BCS) conducted by the European Commission (EC) are high-quality source for this kind of "soft" variables. One of the composite indicators based on BCS is the economic sentiment indicator (ESI), which is the main leading indicator for overall economic activity. We propose two new models for constructing the ESI. The first model is based on minimizing the sum of absolute values of estimation errors. The second model is based on maximizing the number of correctly predicted directions of change for GDP growth rates. Rather than using the EC's official standardization procedure for data, our models use "raw" data, thus simplifying the process of preparing the data. The models were tested for various prognostic horizons (up to four quarters in advance), using aggregated quarterly data for the European Union from 1996Q4 to 2019Q2. The results show that our new models significantly improve the ESI's predictive power, especially in predicting the direction of change of GDP growth rates, which is the main purpose of the BCS indicators. The best results are obtained for predictions made up to one quarter in advance, for which the second model correctly predicts the direction of change of GDP growth rates in 78.89% of cases versus the official ESI's 65.56%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable ecotourism development (SED) in areas with a low potential for development through other sectors, can be a sustainable income-generating activity for locals and a place for tourists to spend their free time. In this regard, planners and policymakers must focus on SED in areas with a meanwhile, if we want to develop ecotourism, we need to evaluate the existing ecotourism areas in each region. Indeed, a study is required that can follow this goal using sustainability indicators. This study was conducted to develop a model to recognize the indicators of evaluating the Ecotourism Sustainability (EES) and to fill the gap of research for SED in the west of Iran. Accordingly, we identified 30 indicators in three dimensions (economic, social, and environmental) of sustainability for EES in six eco-touristic areas in the west of Iran. The best area (Gahar Lake) was selected using the Composite Index (CI). Then, we formulated and ranked the strategies in the SWOT-AHP-TOWS analysis. The results of the CI section showed that the weight of economic indicators in EES was greater than that of other dimensions. AHP analysis revealed that the most important criteria for the SED in Gahar Lake were the opportunities in this area. Also, according to the ranking of strategies extracted in the matrix of TOWS, the most important strategy was "Advertising and introducing the beautiful nature of the lake nationally and internationally". Our main suggestion is for Iran's Tourism Organization to pursue more serious negotiations with international organizations for the global registration of the lake as an ecotourism zone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]