Is there a Two-Speed Europe also in the Well-Being?

Eurostat databases provide forty indicators relevant to measure the well-being in different countries. In this paper we propose to identify different levels of wellbeing in two European areas, by the analysis of a sample of Centre-North Europe (Sweden, Germany, France, Britain and the Netherlands, which are among the most advanced states), and a sample of Mediterranean countries (Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece). The goal of the research is to grasp and quantify the specificities of these countries in a phase when inequalities grow. We have represented welfare through 11 dimensions based on 77 variables and analyzed the differences in each of them between the countries in the two areas by Pena's Distance and MPI, two different methodologies – parametric and non-parametric – that allow the combination of variables in a way consistent with our objective.