Analysis of the OECD countries' better living index with the entropy based GRA and WASPAS methods

Abstract

Increasing interest in welfare assessment in recent years has enabled the use of a wide variety of statistical and decision-making techniques to measure well being at regional and national levels. One of the most important studies conducted to determine the welfare level of countries is the Better Life Index, which was created by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). OECD collects data from countries and compiles the Better Life Index, which gives more details about people's daily life. With this contribution, people can compare countries' living standards under different indicators. In this study, better life evaluation is made by using the multi-criteria decision making methods, Gray Relational Analysis (GRA) and the Weighted Aggregates Sum Product Assessment (WASPAS). Criterion weights in the study were determined by the entropy method. The methods were applied to 15 alternative countries and 24 indicators in the OECD Better Life Index data. Looking at the results of the analysis, United Kingdom ranked first and Latvia ranked last, according to the GRA method. According to the WASPAS method, United States ranked first, while Latvia ranked last. According to the findings, it was seen that the ranking results were close to each other. In the analysis, the biggest order difference was realized for Spain, United States and Austria.