Well-being measurement with non-classical goods

Abstract

As in Fleurbaey and Maniquet (Math Soc Sci 90:119–126, 2017, Int J Econ Theory 14(1):35–50, 2018), we construct individual well-being measures that respect individual preferences and depend on the bundles of goods consumed by the individual. We show that the results obtained under the assumption that all available goods are desirable (more is preferred) and cardinal (convex combination of bundles are meaningful) do not generalize to the case in which goods are ordinal or not always desirable. We justify new measures. We conclude by showing that in a general case with goods of all natures, putting all results together allows us to define a short list of families of well-being measures.