Inequality in multidimensional well-being in the United States

In this paper we provide a framework to measure an individual's multidimensional well-being and discuss two approaches to measuring inequality in multidimensional well-being. The framework is used to study inequality in multidimensional well-being in the United States in the last decade. Using data from the Current Population Survey on three well-being indicators, namely, income, health, and education, we first compute a multidimensional well-being index for every individual in the sample and then study inequality of well-being thus obtained. We find that inequality in well-being increased between 2010 and 2014 and decreased between 2014 and 2019. We test the sensitivity of our results by using alternative measures of inequality and attaching alternative weights to well-being indicators.