The Limits of Well-being Measurement at Sub-regional Level

Abstract

Well-being measurement has been an intensively discussed topic in recent economic literature. It has become clear that the informational base of the System of National Accounts (SNA) is far too narrow to include many aspects of well-being. Many economists emphasise that new economic measures which are more sensitive to the social and environmental aspects of decision-making are needed (van den Bergh 2007, Stiglitz et al. 2009) in order to make social decision-making itself sensitive to such aspects. It is small wonder that we encounter a great many sustainability and well-being indicators in economic literature (Bohringer-Jochem 2007). In our paper, we establish a model for the well-being measurement of sub-regions based on contemporary welfare economics. Based on our model we operationalise and measure well-being at a sub-regional level within Hungary using statistical data. Our research shows that (1) well-being measurement at a sub-regional level reveals tendencies which are masked by traditional economic and competitiveness analysis and (2) well- being measurement has serious limitations, i.e. there is a significant measurement gap between the theoretical models of well-being and their operationalisation based on statistical data sets. 58 JUDIT GEBERT – GYORGY MALOVICS – ZSUZSA FASKERTI