Copula-based measurement of dependence between dimensions of well-being

Most multidimensional measures of social welfare first aggregate the outcomes across the individuals dimension by dimension and then in the second step, aggregate the resulting summary statistics across the dimensions. This approach is blind to the dependence between dimensions of well-being, that is, the extent to which the positions of the individuals in the different dimensions of well-being are aligned. To quantify what lies behind this blind spot, this article introduces a copula-based incomplete ordering of dependence and two classes of consistent dependence measures. The importance of allowing for dependence in rankings of social welfare is illustrated with a Russian data set between 1995 and 2005.