Search

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]

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]

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]

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]