Abstract
Here, the various ways that the wellbeing of a collection of individuals has been construed is outlined and briefly discussed. Some have doubted that it can be measured at all; others have put forth the sorts of assumptions that are necessary in order for it to be measured. Refinements, particular aspects influencing aggregate wellbeing such as the extent of inequality, the degree of polarization and the notion of equality of opportunity are introduced, essentially providing a background for later chapters.
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Notes
- 1.
Simple examples are averages, medians, coefficients of variation, Gini coefficients; somewhat more sophisticated measures would be inequality compensated average income levels or risk adjusted average returns.
- 2.
Some variation in wellbeing functions across individuals i can be achieved by assuming U() varies by type of individual and including individual characteristics in the vector y.
- 3.
In essence, to get V() the values of the elements of yi in the U() function are replaced by the corresponding combination of prices p and aggregate consumption level ci that determine them.
- 4.
Born to a wealthy family Bentham was a child prodigy; he studied Latin at the age of 3, attended Westminster School and, at age 12, attended Queens College Oxford, where he completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees and trained as a lawyer. He was associated with University College London and the foundation of London University, his belief in the universal, low cost availability of education inspiring the founders of London University. Bentham was interested in prison reform and designed many prisons throughout the British Empire, indeed one of his designs can be seen in the early British Colonial Settlement of Fremantle Australia! If you visit London and go to the University College quadrangle, as you enter the gate in the far right hand corner you can meet him—his preserved body is in a glass case.
- 5.
Yet another thing the Scots can be blamed for beyond Whisky, Golf and Haggis!
- 6.
Arthur Pigou came to economics through the study of philosophy and ethics under the Moral Science Tripos at Cambridge. He studied economics under Alfred Marshall, whom he later succeeded as Professor of Political Economy. Hugh Dalton, the son of a Church of England clergyman who ultimately became chaplain to Queen Victoria, studied and lectured at the London School of Economics and served in the Royal Artillery in the First World War. He served as Chancellor of the Exchequer during the Second World War.
- 7.
The terminology is thought to have been first introduced in the French Parliament in the 1970s (Lenoir 1974), Lenoir, then Secretary of State in the Chirac government, referred to the excluded as consisting not only of the poor but of a wide variety of people, including social misfits. Social exclusion is of increasing interest because it has gained a primary role in official documents and in the political debate in Europe. In the Treaty of Amsterdam, signed in 1997, the European Union included the reduction of social exclusion among its objectives. The design of policies aimed at combating social exclusion is at the heart of the “Lisbon strategy” agreed upon during the European Council of March 2000 (Deroose et al. 2008).
- 8.
- 9.
Liberals claim that societies are characterized by “high and rising rates of social mobility and equality of opportunity as procedures of selection become more rational” whereas the Marxists would claim that they are not, essentially because “societies are characterized by class reproduction”.
- 10.
“Extreme” expressions of the desire to break “bad connects” have not been confined to Marxian regimes. The eugenics movement of the twentieth century may be seen as an attempt at breaking such connections, and eugenic sterilizations continued to be carried out in the United States, Scandinavia, Switzerland and Canada (Alberta) up to 1970s and China’s Law on Maternal and Infant Health Care was enacted in 1995 (Mao 1997).
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Anderson, G. (2019). Measuring the Wellbeing of Groups. In: Multilateral Wellbeing Comparison in a Many Dimensioned World. Global Perspectives on Wealth and Distribution. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21130-1_1
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