Inequalities in Life Expectancy and the Global Welfare Convergence

Hippolyte d'Albis (1, 2) , Florian Bonnet (2, 3)

1 PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques
2 PSE - Paris School of Economics
3 UP1 UFR02 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - École d'économie de la Sorbonne

Becker, Philipson and Soares (2005) maintain that including life expectancy gains in a welfare indicator result in a reduction of inequality between 1960 and 2000 twice as great as when measured by per capita income. We discuss their methodology and show it determines the convergence result. We use an alternative methodology, based on Fleurbaey and Gaulier (2009), which monetizes differences in life expectancy between countries at each date rather than life expectancy gains. We show that including life expectancy has no effect on the evolution of world inequality.

Mots clés: World inequality; Well-being indicators; Life expectancy

Domaines: Economies et finances

Hippolyte d'Albis, Florian Bonnet. Inequalities in Life Expectancy and the Global Welfare Convergence. 2018. ⟨halshs-01707748⟩