摘要：This paper makes two principal contributions: first, we propose a method for representing well-being aggregates and estimating population subgroup decompositions when data is available on population distributions across subgroups; second, we analyze the Quality of Life (QOL) of 'poor' and 'non-poor' population segments of 86 countries for the years 1980s and 1990s. The three major findings of this paper are as follows: First, nearly every well-being indicator declines as poor's population share increases; second, evidence of a significant difference in the QOL-poor's population share relationship between Asian and nonAsian countries is present for only few QOL indicators. In other words, the tendency for QOL to decline with increasing poor's population share is common to the Asian and nonAsian countries; third, women suffer a double QOL disadvantage in areas of health and education as the poor's share of population increases. This is due to the existence of relatively wider gender gaps in the well-being indicators among poor populations in Asia and elsewhere.
