Measuring Inequalities in Well-Being: A Three-Way Approach with Applications to Italy and the European Union.

This chapter discusses two applications of the three-way multidimen-sional inequality Gini Index to measure territorial disparities in well-being across regions, accounting for multiple dimensions and temporal dynamics. The inequality index integrates information on social, cultural, digital, economic, and demographic indicators. The empirical analysis illustrates the methodology through two com-plementary applications. First, disparities in cultural participation and digitalisation across Italian regions from 2011 to 2022 are examined, highlighting the evolution of social sustainability at the national level. Second, EU NUTS2 regions for the period 2013–2019 are analysed, capturing broader structural inequalities in socio-economic and demographic outcomes across European countries. Results show persistent spatial inequalities, withnotable—thoughconsistent—variationdependingonthedimensionsconsidered.TheItaliancasehighlightstheNorth–Southdivideandtheimpactofregion-specificevents,whiletheEUanalysisrevealsacentre-peripherypatterndrivenbysocialanddemographicfactorsbeyondincomedisparities.Overall,thethree-waymultidimensionalinequalityGiniindexprovidesaflexibleandpolicy-relevantframeworkforunderstandingandmonitoringmultidimensionalregionalinequalitiesovertime.