Arbeitspapier
Better Off? Distributional Comparisons for Ordinal Data about Personal Well-Being
How to undertake distributional comparisons when personal well-being is measured using income is well-established. But what if personal well-being is measured using subjective well-being indicators such as life satisfaction or self-assessed health status? Has average well-being increased or well-being inequality decreased? How does the distribution of well-being in New Zealand compare with that in Australia, or between young and old people in New Zealand? This paper addresses questions such as these, stimulated by the increasing weight put on subjective well-being measures by international agencies such as the OECD and national governments including New Zealand's. The paper reviews the methods appropriate for distributional comparisons in the ordinal data context, comparing them with those routinely used for comparisons of income distributions. The methods are illustrated using data from the World Values Survey.
- Language
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Englisch
- Bibliographic citation
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Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 12810
Personal Income, Wealth, and Their Distributions
Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
General Welfare; Well-Being
ordinal data
subjective well-being
life satisfaction
World Values Survey
- Handle
- Last update
-
20.09.2024, 8:22 AM CEST
Object type
- Arbeitspapier
Associated
- Jenkins, Stephen P.
- Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
Time of origin
- 2019
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