A multiattribute measure of human development

A measure of human development, which is not affected by some relevant drawbacks of the commonly utilized measures, is constructed. It is a function of several attributes associated with various factors — economic, social, environmental — and also includes non-homogeneous attributes. It is non-linear in its variables, so that it includes possible interactions among the attributes. Furthermore, it takes into account public opinion about human development through a well-defined procedure of assessment elicitation. The formulation of the human development function constituting the measure is described when considering just one attribute and then several attributes, and the difference between independence and dependence in assessment is shown. Such a procedure is applied to the measurement of human development in 9 countries of the EU, by using thirteen attributes related to the economic, social and environmental fields as well as to the quality of life.     

A System of Sustainability Indicators for the Province of Thai Binh,Vietnam

Sustainable Development is a broad and universal concept. Indicators are a basis to measure sustainability and to direct policies that aim to achieve a better quality of life. Thai Binh, a coastal province in North Vietnam is strongly concerned about strategic sustainability development. To select a system of sustainability indicators, the Delphi method was applied in 2012. A two-round questionnaire was organized to use with 32 experts, who acted as participants. 69 indicators were selected from 98 listed indicators: 15 related to economic development, 5 to the sea and coastal zone, 1 to the global economic partnership, 4 to consumption and production patterns, 7 to poverty, 3 to governance, 9 to health, 4 to education, 3 to demographics, 2 to natural hazards, 5 to atmosphere, 7 to land, and 3 to freshwater. Conversely, 29 other indicators were rejected. The Delphi method allows indicator selection for identification of the process of sustainability. The system of indicators, as the first important step of the sustainable development process, provides useful information for decision makers and planners as well sustainability strategy. It is planned that the indicators selected should be applied in the province.     

Well‐Being,Front and Center: A Note on the Sarkozy Report

The Sarkozy Report is a study commissioned by the French President on better ways to measure the level and progress of societal well‐being than conventional economic indicators such as GDP. Despite being prepared by prominent economists—the commission was led by Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen, and Jean‐Paul Fitoussi—the Report rejects reliance on “production‐oriented” measures of progress in favor of a broader array of quality‐of‐life indicators, some of them subjective, and measures of the sustainability of well‐being into the future. These multiple dimensions of well‐being, it argues, should be used in policy decisions and welfare evaluations. The views expressed in the Report may portend a sea‐change in the way economists think about the benefits of economic growth.     

Assessing Urban Public Safety via Indicator-Based Evaluating Method: A Systemic View of Shanghai

The explosive development of urban Shanghai after China’s economic reform in 1978 has attracted wide attention. There are a plethora of studies attempting to capture the fast dynamics in this global city. Looking into the urban dynamics from a public safety perspective, however, eludes the current literature. Urban public safety has become a primary concern of urban sustainability in recent years due to escalated potential loss if urban public safety is severely breached. This is even more so for megacities like Shanghai. Assessing the current status of urban public safety hence becomes an imperative task for urban sustainability. This research initiates a detailed assessment effort through building a relatively comprehensive set of public safety indicators. Four general aspects of Shanghai’s urban public safety are identified, i.e., urban development, urban crime and instability, urban housing and livability, and urban disasters. From officially published data, field survey and interviews, 34 individual indicators are chosen. Principal component analyses are conducted for each of the four aspects, and a synthetic urban public safety index is derived. The analysis suggests that urban Shanghai’s public safety is gradually increasing due primarily to continuous economic success and increased investment in public safety preparation, education, and prevention. The assessment index is also shown to be able to capture major events affecting Shanghai’s public safety.     

基于主成分分析的新疆兵团人口可持续发展研究

区域人口的可持续发展是区域社会经济发展的根本保证,人口的规模、素质和结构都直接关系着社会的存在和发展。文章选取兵团人口规模、职业构成、素质以及生活条件等指标构建了兵团人口的可持续发展指标体系,运用主成分分析法对兵团人口的发展现状及可持续性进行了分析,分析结果是兵团人口的综合发展指数呈下降趋势,发展具有不可持续性。对如何提高兵团人口发展的可持续性提出了具体的建议。     

Application of the Rural Development Index to Analysis of Rural Regions in Poland and Slovakia

The main purpose of this research was to construct a multi-dimensional (composite) index measuring the overall level of rural development and quality of life in individual rural regions of a given EU country. In the Rural Development Index (RDI) the rural development domains are represented by hundreds of partial socio-economic, environmental, infrastructural and administrative indicators/variables at NUTS-4 level (e.g. 991 variables/indicators describing various aspects of rural development in Poland; 340 variables/indicators in Slovakia). The weights of economic, social and environmental domains entering the RDI index are derived empirically from the econometrically estimated intra- and inter-regional migration function after selecting the “best” model from various alternative model specifications (e.g. panel estimate logistic regression nested error structure model, spatial effect models, etc.). The RDI is empirically applied to analysis of the main determinants of rural/regional development in individual rural areas in years 2002–2005 in Poland and Slovakia at NUTS-4 level. Due to its comprehensiveness the RDI Index is suitable both to analysis of the overall level of development of rural areas and to an evaluation of the impacts (impact indicator) of RD and structural programmes at regional levels (NUTS 2–5).     

Calculating a GPI for Liaoning Province of China

The conventional equation of economic well-being with the gross domestic product (GDP) has dominated policy thinking for at least 50 years. However, a variety of authors have pointed to the social and environmental costs of economic development and called for more comprehensive and more representative measures of progress to be developed. Therefore, a variety of ‘adjusted’ indicators have been developed. The robustness and reliability of these indicators is still a contentious issue. But these attempts raise important questions about sustainable development and pose an important challenge to conventional thinking about the relationship between economic progress, well-being and sustainability. The Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) is one of the indicators of measuring sustainable development. Apply it to Liaoning Province, this paper evaluates Liaoning’s GPI from 1978 to 2011. GPI, Per Capita GPI and GDP of Liaoning are compared with each other. It is concluded that GDP and Per Capita GDP of Liaoning grow much faster than GPI and Per Capita GPI. Grouped all components of GPI into three categories (economy, environment and Social), it shows that social and environmental development lags behind economic growth in Liaoning. This paper is till now a unique application of GPI indicator in Liaoning and China’s provincial level and also contribution to the continuing development of the methods and results for the Index of Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI). Policy implications are given finally.     

Internal consistency of demographic assumptions in the shared socioeconomic pathways

A new set of alternative socioeconomic scenarios for climate change researches—the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs)—includes for the first time a more comprehensive set of demographic conditions on population, urbanization, and education as the central scenario elements, along with other aspects of society, in order to facilitate better analyses of challenges to climate change mitigation and adaptation. However, it also raises a new question about the internal consistency of assumptions on different demographic and economic trends under each SSP. This paper examines whether the interactions between the demographic and economic factors implied by the assumptions in the SSP projections are consistent with the research literature, and whether they are consistently represented in the projection results. Our analysis shows that the interactions implied by the demographic assumptions in the SSPs are generally consistent with findings from the literature, and the majority of the assumed relationships are also evident in the projected trends. It also reveals some inconsistency issues, resulting mainly from the use of inconsistent definitions of regions and limitations in our understanding of future changes in the patterns of interactions at different stages of socioeconomic development. Finally, we offer recommendations on how to improve demographic assumptions in the extended SSPs, and how to use the projections of SSP central elements in climate change research.     

Establishing Disaster Resilience Indicators for Tan-sui River Basin in Taiwan

A major trend in disaster management is to build resilience for sustainable development. Resilience is defined as the ability which may be learned from previous disaster experiences to make the system more stable than before through absorbing and adapting the changes caused by the disaster. In this paper, enhancing disaster resilience in a river basin is studied and regarded as an important operation process to achieve sustainability of urban area. The measurement of disaster resilience can be used as a potential environmental disaster diagnosis of previous urban planning policy strategies, and is a required foundation for drafting future spatial and urban planning policies. This paper proposes an application that combines fuzzy Delphi and analytic network process techniques in order to establish a set of disaster resilience indicators for a re-developed urban area in Tan-sui River Basin (Taiwan). By incorporating expert opinion, a priority index is calculated for each studied disaster resilience indicator. And, an enhanced resilience indicator evaluation methodology, which reflects interdependencies among evaluation dimensions using an integrated approach, is suggested in this paper. The results show that the main influences on satisfaction are: (1) factors of the management institute of basin, (2) financial capability, (3) conservation of water resource, (4) environmentally sensitive area, and (5) conservation of slope area. Overall, these main influences (five resilience indicators) show future directions for sustainable development in Tan-sui River Basin.     

Development of Indicators for Family Well-Being in Malaysia

This study was carried out to develop a set of indicators for measuring and reporting the state of family well-being in Malaysia, and subsequently, to produce an Index of Family Well-Being. To build the set of indicators, domains of family well-being and relevant indicators were identified from past studies. Focus group discussions with families, professional groups and NGOs helped to refine the indicators prior to the main study. Using a stratified random sampling design, 2,808 households were identified (a parent and a child aged at least 13 years), making a total sample of 5,616 respondents. Results indicated ten key indicators that can predict family well-being—resiliency, safety, savings, healthy lifestyle, time with family, work-family balance, importance of religion, number of bedrooms at home, debt and child care—supporting the notion of family well-being being multi-dimensional and interconnected. On the basis of the results, a model of family well-being was hypothesized. This model was used to guide the development of the Index of Family Well-being. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was carried out to determine the fit of the model to data. Five domains of family well-being were identified—family relationships, economic situation, health and safety, community relationship and religion/spirituality. The Index of Family Well-Being was calculated using the equal weighting strategy to each of these five domains. This index showed that the current family well-being of Malaysians is relatively high at 7.95 (SD = 1.38) on a 0–10 Likert response format. The findings suggest that family well-being is multifaceted, made up not only of the immediate family relationships and health and safety of its members, but include having adequate income to meet the demands of a minimum standard of living. Currently, the Index that is developed is only in the form of a numerical value reflecting the state of family well-being, but in future, it can be used to track changes in the family from time to time.     

A Stock-Take of Green National Accounting Initiatives

Green national accounting has existed in a variety of forms for just over thirty years. Having essentially begun as environmental cost adjustments to Gross Domestic Product, green national accounting now includes such indicators as the Genuine Progress Indicator, Genuine Savings, and the Ecological Footprint. This paper serves as an overview or stock-take of green national accounting initiatives and as a means of assessing the major developments since the early 1970s. It is concluded that a suite of indicators is required to convey a complete picture of a nation’s sustainable development performance. In addition, economic indicators need to be supplemented by biophysical indicators, although the latter should never be incorporated directly into national income accounts since they serve as indicators of ecological sustainability, not of economic performance. Finally, the fact that a number of recently established indicators are still in the embryonic stage of development means that considerable refinement is necessary before they are likely to be broadly accepted by the policy-making community.     

The Europe 2020 Index

This paper presents a new index to quantify, measure and monitor the progress towards the objectives of the Europe 2020 strategy. This index is based on a set of relevant, accepted, credible, easy to monitor and robust indicators presented by the European Commission at the time the strategy was launched. The internal analysis of the index shows that the Smart and the Inclusive growth dimensions of the strategy are strictly correlated and that the trade-offs between each of these two dimensions and the Sustainable one exist but are decreasing, suggesting that a change towards more sustainable models of development is occurring in Europe. The external analysis of the index shows that it can be a valid measure to assess the overall competitiveness of countries and that the most critical factors for this strategy to be successful are good governance and social capital.     

Rethinking the Foundations of Sustainability Measurement: The Limitations of the Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI)

The objective of sustainability measurement is to move environmental decision making toward more rigorous, quantitative and empirical foundations. One of the most comprehensive attempts to lay out the foundations for sustainability measurement has been offered by the Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI). This paper aims to advance the science of sustainability measurement by assessing the validity and reliability of this composite index in order to provide new insights for future indicator development. The architecture of the ESI is validated against the Pressure-State-Response (PSR) model, after which an exploratory factor analysis is conducted to reveal the latent structure of the index. Further, the performance of the ESI is tested in cross-national regression models. The results indicate a lack of consistency with the well established PSR model and a potential bias towards economically developed countries grounded in the architecture and weighting mechanism of the index. A re-weighted index (Equivalised ESI) is constructed, resulting in a new ranking of countries’ sustainability. The Equivalised ESI improves the measurement qualities of the index, and in so doing actually reinforces the rich-country bias of the ESI. Put differently, the Equivalised ESI brings the deficiencies of the original ESI to the fore. This paper illustrates that there are serious conceptual problems and validity concerns with defining the ESI as a sustainability measure. Taken together, the findings reinforce the need to reconsider future foundations of sustainability measurement in order to ensure that it is clear both what is being measured and how well.     

Conditions for Maintaining the Sustainable Development Level of EU Member States

For years we have been observing the exponential trend of the economic growth, energy consumption, mineral resources use and greenhouse gas emissions. The human population is exerting an increasing pressure on the environment, which in the highly industrialised regions has lost its natural ability for bio-capacity. The measurement of the member states’ progress in achieving the sustainable development is an integral part of the European Union strategy. The article deals with methods of measuring the level of sustainable development and presents diversification of the EU member states according to the synthetic indicators, such as: domestic material consumption, import dependency, risky external energy supply, diversity index, ecological footprint and total carbon intensity. These determinants affecting potential of the EU states to maintain the achieved level of development in future.     

Immigration, integration and fiscal sustainability

Economic theory points out that immigration of even low-skilled immigrants may improve public finances in Western welfare states, and it is sometimes suggested that fiscal sustainability problems in Western countries caused by ageing populations could be solved by increasing immigration. We examine consequences of various immigration scenarios using the large-scale computable general equilibrium model Danish rational economic agents model describing the Danish economy. It turns out that increased immigration will generally worsen the Danish fiscal sustainability problem. Improved economic integration of immigrants and their descendants, however, may alleviate the problems of the public sector considerably. Responsible editor: Klaus F. Zimmermann     

Sustainable Development and Capabilities for the Polar Region

The paper develops a sustainable development framework for individual and collective capabilities in mixed subsistence and wage-based economies. We apply this framework to such regions of the Arctic and evaluate interactions and conflicts between two sectors of the mixed economy and between current and future generations of Arctic inhabitants. A recent Arctic Social Indicators Report published by the Arctic Human Development Report (AHDR) Task Force recognizes the importance of the mixed economy in the Arctic and aims to integrate collective assets, as well as individual assets in order to understand the human development in the Arctic. Yet due to its concerns of comparability of social development and data availability across the whole Arctic region (of which some parts do not have the similar population structure), its proposed indicators are not capable of covering the social development of predominantly indigenous regions of the North. We emphasize the importance of tracking collective capabilities, as well as individual capabilities to sustain community development. In addition we suggest that environmental sustainability, which is ignored by the AHDR Task Force, has to be integrated with social development as environmental deterioration significantly influences the social well-being and cultural stability of traditional inhabitants of the Arctic. We critically review the proposed indicators of the AHDR Task Force and make supplementary and alternative suggestions.     

Prediction of Human Development from Environmental Indicators

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) list the objectives and targets that should be addressed to solve the global issues regarding sustainable development. They encompass the social, economic and environmental dimensions and search for solutions that are able not only to monitor but also to control the operational indicators attributed to each objective. It is expected that many of these indicators are associated to each other and the accurate understanding of these correlations allows to build predictive statistical models that can improve the monitoring and controlling of variables. It would increase the rate of success in achieving the SDG. This study tested a linear multivariate model able to predict the human development index based on environmental variables which are related to SDG 3 (health), 4 (education), 8 (sustainable economic growth and decent work) and 15 (protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems). We fitted the models using the Linear Discriminant Analysis and Best Subset Selection applied to a Linear Multivariate Regression. The model predictive ability was assessed by R² and cross-validation (CV). The results showed that exposure to unsafe sanitation, access to drinking water, tree cover loss, unsafe water quality, wastewater treatment level, and household air pollution are excellent predictors of human development index of a population, with R² = 0.94 and 10-fold CV Mean Squared Error equal to 0.0014. This tool can help stakeholders to monitor and control indicators attributed to good health and well-being, quality education, clean water and sanitation, decent work and economic growth, sustainable cities and communities and life on land sustainable development goals.     

Measuring Human Recognition for Women in Malawi using the Alkire Foster Method of Multidimensional Poverty Counting

Social Indicators Research - Policy indicators rarely account for the contribution of societal inter- and intra-personal interactions to economic development. We propose an index of...     

Policy Preceding Possibility? Examining Headline Composite Sustainability Indicators in the United Kingdom

Environmental equality, social justice and well-being are national headline indicators for the United Kingdom (UK), and community vibrancy is a rural headline indicator. All four of these indicators were designated as headline indicators prior to any robust definition or methodology for their measurement was articulated. Prior to the establishment of social justice and environmental equality as headline indicators, research commissioned by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs indicated that, at least in the foreseeable future, it would not be possible to operationalise these concepts as indicators of sustainable development. Research into well-being and community vibrancy also illustrated significant problems with their measurement, but in terms of these two indicators that research was carried out after their establishment as headline indicators. These findings illustrate problems with dialogue between the government and relevant experts: difficult to measure concepts have been erroneously designated as headline indicators for the UK.     

Whatever Happened to Social Indicators in Africa? Whatever Happened Indeed! A Developing World Perspective on the Kenneth C. Land and Alex C. Michalos Report on ‘Fifty Years After the Social Indicators Movement’

Africa is a latecomer to the Social Indicators Movement. The first social indicators for Third World countries were developed by outsiders and covered almost exclusively topics related to basic needs and development. In response to Kenneth Land’s and Alex Michalos’ historical assessment and their agenda for future ‘social indicators/quality of life/well-being’ research, the commentary traces how South Africa and sub-Saharan countries—with a little help from many friends who are pioneers in the movement—have succeeded in developing their own home-grown social indicators movement. Addressing some of the themes outlined in the agenda that Land and Michalos set for future research, the commentary discusses the importance of monitoring social change occurring in African society in a ‘post-industrialized and much more globalized, and digitized-computerized-roboticized’ era: How will new values and norms impact on the quality of life of future generations of African people?