Well-Being Indicators and Convergence Across Italian Regions

This article studies convergence across Italian regions by means of two composite indicators of socio-economic progress reflecting
the multidimensional nature of human well-being. The first composite indicator includes, other than household disposable income
in Italy, two sub-indicators regarding health and education; the second composite indicator considers, in addition to those
considered by the former, three further sub-indicators relating to the quality of the socio-institutional context, age and
gender disparities in the labor market and regional competitiveness. The data base of the 17 variables or indexes used to
construct the six abovementioned sub-indicators cover the period from 1998 to 2008. We assess the existence of both σ and γ- convergence; the latter computed by means of Kendall′s index. Consistent with the findings in other European countries that
also use composite economic and quality of life indicators we find evidence of regional σ-convergence in well-being, but do not observe significant processes of intra-distributional mobility. In other words, while
dispersion across Italian regions in terms of well-being levels declined in the period, the regional ranking remained substantially
unchanged.