2009 - Oltre il PIL: nuove misure dello sviluppo

La ricerca presenta una variante regionale, relativa alla Lombardia, dell’indice di benessere economico (iewb) elaborato dal Centre for the Study of Living Standards  (Osberg and Sharpe, 2002, 2005). L’indice considera cinque dimensioni del benessere: consumi, distribuzione del reddito e povertà, stock di capitale, salute e sicurezza economica. Le dimensioni del benessere vengono prima ricondotte ad un numero indice e poi sommate con opportuni parametri   Il periodo di riferimento considerato nell’analisi va dal 1995 al 2005. Rispetto alla versione originale, l’indice presentato nella ricerca sconta una serie di limitazioni imputabili alla difficoltà di reperire dati attendibili in serie storica a livello regionale. L’andamento dell’indicatore di benessere così ottenuto non si discosta di molto da quello del pil pro-capite.

The measurement of social progress is receiving growing attention, both in academic research and policy agenda, as a key issue to assess the effectiveness of democracy, to make governments more responsible and to develop the participation of citizens (OECD, 2007). There is general agreement among economists and policy-makers about the necessity to go beyond GDP and to find new measures that capture various aspects of progress, like sustainability, equality, personal satisfaction, etc. In particular the capability approach, developed in Sen (1985, 1992), is receiving growing interest, because it allows to take into account different relevant dimensions of life (Fleurbaey, 2008). In this sense we can consider the concept of progress more akin to the one of well-being (see for instance the interventions at the workshop on “Measuring Well-Being and Societal Progress”, held in Milan in June 2006). The former is more on the societal side, the second is more related to individual aspects.

The paper attempts to measure multidimensional well-being of an Italian region, Lombardy. We develop an extended version of the Index of Economic Well Being (IEWB), proposed by the Centre for the Study of Living Standards (Osberg, 1985; Osberg and Sharpe, 2002, 2005). We seek to incorporate multiple dimensions of well-being measuring progress not only in terms of “command over goods and services”, as defined by Osberg and Sharpe, but trying to capture, in line with the capability approach, also “command over agency freedoms”. In order to do this, we add other dimensions related to health, security of life and social capital.