On an analysis on some indicators of Well-Being in Italy

Abstract

The starting point of this paper has been the consideration that the use of GDP as an indicator of the well-being nowadays is not sufficient to describe the economic situation of a country in terms of sustainable well-being in Italian Benessere Equo Sostenibile (BES). The Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) consider a multidimensional approach to measure equitable and sustainable well-being. Following this approach we have chosen a certain number of indicators, on the basis of their features, i.e. Health, Education, Work and life balance, Economic well-being, Social relationships, Politics and institutions, Security, Landscape and cultural heritage, Environment. These indicators can help in describing the territories in particular in our case the provinces (NUTS3). To have a description of some aspects of the economic situation multivariate analysis have been applied. The new idea regards the application of decision trees. We consider both classification and regression trees; two different variables have been choosen. As regards classification trees the dependent variable is Macroregion while for regression trees dependent variable is Life Expectancy at Birth.