Design and Estimation of Composite Index of the Iranian Social Justice

Any planning for the establishment of social justice requires monitoring the status quo as well as presenting an evaluative image of the current situation. One of the common tools in this area is to design “composite indicators”. After 2008 financial crisis, distributive dimension in social justice due to the injustice dissatisfaction has been more addressed. Concerning social justice, extensive efforts have been made in Iran and the world (in particular, in the Europe) to design a composite index of social justice in order to estimate the status of social justice in EU member states. According to the Islamic theoretical foundations of social justice, serious efforts have been made to design an appropriate composite index for the Islamic Republic of Iran. Accordingly, the areas, sections and measures related to each section were identified based on the deductive-inductive research approach by group of experts. Finally, the estimation as well as measurement of the Iranian justice status from 2006 to 2016 have been conducted. According to the results, compromise index of social justice has not been desirable (the total score out of 10 points has been always approximately or below 5), in three economic, social and governance (ESG) criteria (including 134 measurements in 17 sectors). Also, this indicator has been on a slight downward trend. Social justice indicator was the most undesirable sub-indicator among two other fields (economic and governance indicators) over the past decade.