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Multidimensional indices are becoming increasingly important instruments to assess the wellbeing of societies. They move beyond the focus on a single indicator and yet they are easy to present and communicate. A crucial step in the construction of a multidimensional index of wellbeing is the selection of the relative weights for the different dimensions. The aim of this article is to study the role of these weights and to critically survey eight different approaches to set them. We categorize the approaches in three classes: data-driven, normative, and hybrid weighting, and compare their respective advantages and drawbacks.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank Sabina Alkire, Tony Atkinson, Laurens Cherchye, Lucio Esposito, Francisco Ferreira, Alessio Fusco, Marc Fleurbaey, James E. Foster, Ori Heffetz, Nicky Rogge, Luc Van Ootegem, Elsy Verhofstadt as well as participants at the OPHI workshop on Weighting Dimensions (2008). We are especially grateful to Sabina Alkire for encouraging us to write this article. We also received valuable comments and remarks on this or a previous version of the article at the AEA (2009) conference in San Francisco and the HDR 2010 consultation in Rabat. We are very grateful for the helpful comments we received from two anonymous referees and the guest editor of this issue. Finally, María Ana Lugo thanks the UK Economic and Social Research Council for financial support. The usual disclaimer applies.