Multidimensional Well-Being, Deprivation and Inequality Conceptual Issues and Measurement

This volume explores several aspects of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum’s framework for thinking about individual well-being. Called the functioning and capability approach (FCA), this framework radically departs from the conventional approach to the concept of individual well-being in welfare economics insofar as it identifies an individual’s well-being as the value attached to the individual’s achievements along certain dimensions of life and her freedom to choose a vector of such achievements rather than as the individual’s happiness or desire fulfillment. 

The volume consists of two main parts. Part I outlines and studies the basic conceptual and analytical framework and its major features in detail. Part II of the book is devoted to application of the analytical structure of the FCA to practical problems of measuring well-being, deprivation, and inequality in a society. The book concludes with a discussion of the main conclusions of earlier chapters and the role of social scientists and philosophers in the FCA. This volume will be of interest to students, researchers, and practitioners studying multidimensional well-being, deprivation and inequality.

Introduction.- Part 1 The basic analytical framework.- Conceptions of individual well being.- Valuation of functioning bundles and interpersonal comparisons of well being.- Freedom and individual well being.- Freedom A re examination of the concept.- Part 2 Some applications.- Measurement of individual and social well being.- Measurement of deprivation.- The column first approach to the measurement of social well being and deprivation.- Well being inequality.- Concluding remarks.

Prasanta K. Pattanaik is Emeritus Professor at the University of California, Riverside (US). He did his Ph.D. (1968) at the Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi (India). He has done research on the theory of social choice and welfare economics, decision theory, trade theory, and the measurement of living standards and deprivation. Pattanaik’s publications include papers in various professional journals, three books, and several co-edited volumes. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and was President of the Society for Social Choice and Welfare (2006-2007). He is a series editor of the Springer series Studies in Choice and Welfare.

Yongsheng Xu is Professor of Economics at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University (US). Xu received his PhD in economics at Tulane University (US). Xu’s research and teaching interests include microeconomic theory, particularly individual and collective choice theory, welfare economics, and information and organization. His current work focuses on the measurement of well-being and deprivation, dynamic choice and the performance of the market system. He has published numerous articles in such journals as Economic Theory, Economica, Economics and Philosophy, Games and Economic Behavior, International Tax and Public Finance, Journal of Economic Inequality, Journal of Economic Literature, Journal of Economic Theory, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Oxford Economic Paper, PLOS ONE, Review of Income and Wealth, Theory and Decision, and Social Choice and Welfare.