Comparing weighting systems in the measurement of subjective well-being

Abstract

There is a growing literature on the assessment of quality of life (QOL) and subjective well-being (SWB) through composite indicators (CI), obtained by aggregating subjective measures of people well-being. Besides the measurement of elementary indicators, the principal challenges in constructing SWB indicator are the aggregation and weighting system. To this respect, literature hasn’t actually reached a unique consensus. The paper investigates the effects that different weighting systems (equally, factorial and DEA weights) have on the rankings and score distributions of the SWB indicators. Data are provide by a sample survey on the quality of life conducted on the residents in the Romagna area during 2010. Results evidence that diverse weighting techniques produce different SWB score distributions while, to a some extent, rankings are maintained.

Keywords

• Community SWB
• Bottom-up spillover theory
• weighting system
• ranking
• Romagna area