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3 - Well-Being Measurement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2022

By
Matthew D. Adler  and
Koen Decancq
Edited by
Matthew D. Adler  and
Ole F. Norheim
Matthew D. Adler
Affiliation:
Duke University, North Carolina
Ole F. Norheim
Affiliation:
Universitetet i Bergen, Norway
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Summary

The social welfare function (SWF) framework includes a well-being measure w(∙), for converting outcomes into vectors (lists) of well-being numbers.These well-being numbers are interpersonally comparable.This chapter discusses the construction of the well-being measure.It supposes that w(∙) operates on individual “histories,” a history being a combination of an attribute bundle a and a preference R.That is w(∙) = w(a, R).This setup is quite general.It encompasses preference-based well-being measures (namely those that assign well-being numbers to histories containing different bundles but the same preference in deference to that preference), as well as non-preference based measures.The chapter covers both, although mainly focusing on the former.Here, two approaches are discussed: the “equivalence approach,” whereby an individual’s well-being hinges on her attributes and her ordinal preference; and the “vNM approach,” which uses lottery preferences rather than ordinal preferences.

Keywords

well-being measurementpreferenceinterpersonal comparisonsprioritarianismequivalence approachequivalent incomemoney-metric well-beingvon Neumann-Morgenstern (vNM) utilitycapabilitiessubjective well-being (SWB)
Type
Chapter
Information
Prioritarianism in Practice , pp. 128 - 171
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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