Abstract
Standard indicators of wellbeing such as the QALY for health and GDP per capita for economic development have been increasingly regarded as being too narrow in focus. There is a need to develop multidimensional measures of wellbeing that encompass the full range of factors that make life worth living. This study is part of a project that aims at developing a multidimensional index based on Sen’s capability framework to assess women’s wellbeing in rural Malawi: the Women's Capabilities Index. The project identifies a set of capabilities relevant to the context; proposes a methodology to measure robustly these capabilities; aggregates the capabilities into a single metric (index); and validates and tests the index. This paper focuses on the weighting and aggregation of the index. Four weighting methods of aggregation are chosen: two normative approaches; a data-driven approach; and a hybrid method. The different methods have implications on the results which are critically assessed and compared. This study contributes to the literature on the implications of adopting different methods for setting the weights in composite measures of wellbeing.
Highlights
There is an established consensus rooted in Rawls’ and Sen’s theories that wellbeing is intrinsically multidimensional (Rawls 1971; Sen and Nussbaum 1993; Anand and Sen 1997; McGillivray 2012)
This paper aims to contribute to the literature on the implications of adopting different methods for setting the weights in composite measures of wellbeing
More than 65% of families had 3 or more members below the age of 15, and only 13% had 1 or 2 members above the age of 50
Summary
There is an established consensus rooted in Rawls’ and Sen’s theories that wellbeing is intrinsically multidimensional (Rawls 1971; Sen and Nussbaum 1993; Anand and Sen 1997; McGillivray 2012). Standard indicators of wellbeing such as the QALY for health and GDP per capita for economic development have been increasingly regarded by academics and policy makers as being too narrow in focus. They fail to address the complexity of human nature, social progress, and issues of equity (Coast 2004; Anand and Dolan 2005; Greco et al 2016; Alkire and Santos 2013). In order to better assess and monitor progress in society, there is a need to develop multidimensional measures of wellbeing that encompass the full range of factors that make life worth living (Stiglitz et al 2009). Some of the ongoing work on the development of multidimensional wellbeing indicators is inspired by the capabilities approach developed by Amartya Sen (1982, 1985, 1993)
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