Inclusive absolute well-being changes: An application with multidimensional cross-country analysis

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The world has continued to witness prosperity in terms of poverty reduction and well-being improvement, but one cannot overstate the importance of examining whether the improvement is evenly shared or is being inclusive to all. In this paper, we propose a general quantile-based approach based on absolute changes that allow assessing and robustly examining inclusiveness of well-being for non-monetary indicators that are bounded in nature and can have both attainment and shortfall representations. Our empirical analysis of inclusiveness uses a multidimensional measure of well-being that is closely linked to the flagship global multidimensional poverty index and examine inclusiveness of well-being changes for 80 developing countries covering six different geographic regions. We observe robust improvements in well-being for most countries in our study, but only around three-fifth of all countries show robust inclusiveness. Further geographical analyses show that the same figure is less than one-third for the sub-Saharan African region. Our proposed framework could play an important role in jointly meeting the SDG targets of reducing inequality within countries and reducing poverty in multiple dimensions.

The Institute for International Economic Policy (IIEP) at George Washington University and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), with the support of the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Report office (UNDP HDRO), are pleased to host a special seminar series on the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (global MPI). Goal 1 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is to end poverty in all its forms and dimensions. The global MPI offers a tool to make progress towards this goal.

Bringing together the academic and policy spheres, this series of seminars will highlight topics such as race, ethnicity, gender, and caste, the statistical capacity of nations, social protection, the use of geospatial mapping in tracking poverty, poverty and refugees, and evaluating whether we're on track to meet UN SDG Goal #1. The sessions will also include work that applies the global MPI methodology, the Alkire Foster method, to innovative measures.

Speakers and Presenters

Dr Suman Seth (University of Leeds)

Organizer

Oxford Department of International Development