Evaluation of life satisfaction in Italy
proposal of a synthetic measure based on poset theory
pp. 291-321
in: Filomena Maggino (ed), Complexity in society, Berlin, Springer, 2017Abstract
The measure of complex concepts in social science, such as life satisfaction, job quality, or deprivation is a topic still in evolution. In this context, the computation of a synthetic measure is one of the most accepted alternatives, thanks to the readability of the output, especially for inexperienced audiences. This chapter proposes a synthetic indicator of Life Satisfaction based on the Partially Ordered Sets (poset) theory, which permits to handle data measured on an ordinal or dichotomous scale. The result can be achieved without using scaling procedures for the elementary variables or other assumptions that transform qualitative variables into quantitative ones. In a recent work, Fattore (Soc Indic Res 128(2):835–858, 2015) proposed a method for the evaluation of deprived individuals, based on poset theory. The purpose of this text is the presentation of a slight modification of Fattore's proposal introduced to produce a synthetic indicator, here used for the measure of life satisfaction. Moreover, the estimation of the effect of many socio-economical variables on life satisfaction has been enhanced considering the indicator as the response variable in a quantile regression. Many explanatory variables have a different effect among the quantiles of life satisfaction. The socioeconomic variables, such as the economic change in the last year and the geographical partition, show strong effects on life satisfaction.