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What If We Voted on the Weights of a Multidimensional Well‐Being Index? An Illustration with Flemish Data *
Author(s) -
Decancq Koen,
Van Ootegem Luc,
Verhofstadt Elsy
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
fiscal studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.63
H-Index - 40
eISSN - 1475-5890
pISSN - 0143-5671
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-5890.2013.12008.x
Subject(s) - weighting , flemish , scheme (mathematics) , set (abstract data type) , voting , paternalism , order (exchange) , index (typography) , computer science , econometrics , mathematical economics , operations research , mathematical optimization , mathematics , economics , law , political science , medicine , politics , mathematical analysis , radiology , world wide web , market economy , programming language , history , archaeology , finance
There is a widespread consensus that well‐being is a multidimensional notion. To quantify multidimensional well‐being, information on the relative weights of the different dimensions is essential. There is, however, considerable disagreement in the literature on the most appropriate weighting scheme to use. Making use of a recent data set for Flanders, we calculate and compare various common weighting schemes, which are uniformly applied to all individuals. We find that a policymaker would identify different groups of individuals as being worst off depending on the scheme that is chosen. In order to compare and evaluate the weighting schemes, we simulate the support each scheme would get in a voting procedure. Weighting schemes that obtain higher support reflect better the priorities of the respondents and suffer less from the problem of paternalism that is inherent to any common weighting scheme.