GDP and Beyond : An Implementation of Welfare Considerations to the Distribution of Earnings in Italy

The aim of this paper is to implement distributional considerations in comparing the economic well-being of individuals over time and living in different regions in Italy. In this sense, the purpose is to implement the recommendations of the Stiglitz's (2009) report concerning augmenting national accounts by distributional considerations in an easy to implement environment. In order to explore this topic we have made recourse to multiple tools. In the first part of the paper we have looked for second-degree necessary and sufficient conditions for welfare dominance using Absolute Lorenz Curves (ALC) from both a national and regional perspective. In the second part of the paper, we have made recourse to a standard Lorenz Curve (LC) analysis to neutralize differences in average incomes. The third part of the paper introduces the analysis of Gini (ANOGI). We found that differences among subpopulation distributions accentuates over time and that when South and Islands are used as a reference group, North-West and North-East form two relatively more distinct groups