Well-being and/or quality of life in EU countries through a multidimensional index of sustainability

Abstract

The aim of my paper is to demonstrate that Sen's theory of well-being can be applied to make the concept of sustainable human development operational through the building of a multidimensional index of sustainability which takes into account, at the same time, economic, social and environmental variables. This index may be considered an alternative to the current measures of welfare/sustainability since not only conventional measures such as GDP, but also multi-attribute indices, such as Human Development Index (HDI), Genuine Savings, Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) etc., are found to be inadequate to make the concept of sustainable development operational. Therefore, the limitations of these measures of welfare/sustainability justify the search for a new index of sustainability. This index will show, at the operational level, how Sen's theory of well-being can be useful to sustainable development. It was applied to EU countries using the standardised deviation methodology being the closest and most suitable methodology to be adopted for building multidimensional indices. The factor analysis methodology will also be used in my paper. Lastly, the comparison between Sen's trend of sustainability and GDP trend index number–which are both of them applied to Italy–will show how much the criticisms and the limitations directed towards the indicator of GDP are founded.