scholarly journals Towards a Comprehensive Framework of the Relationships between Resource Footprints, Quality of Life, and Economic Development

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 4734 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Cibulka ◽  
Stefan Giljum

The relationship between economic affluence, quality of life, and environmental implications of production and consumption activities is a recurring issue in sustainability discussions. A number of studies examined selected relationships, but the general implications for future development options to achieve environmentally and socially sustainable development of countries at different levels of per capita resource footprints, quality of life, and income have not yet been investigated in detail. In this study, we use a global dataset with 173 countries to assess the overall relationship between resource footprints, quality of life, and economic development over the period of 1990–2015. We select the material footprint and carbon footprint and contrast them with the Human Development Index, the Happiness Index, and GDP per capita. Regression analyses show that the relationship between various resource footprints and quality of life generally follows a logarithmic path of development, while resource footprints and GDP per capita are linearly connected. From the empirical results, we derive a generalized path of development and cluster countries along this path. Within this comprehensive framework, we discuss options to change the path to respect planetary and social boundaries through a combination of resource efficiency increases, substitution of industries and sufficiency of consumption. We conclude that decoupling and green growth will not realize sustainable development if planetary boundaries have already been transgressed.

Ekonomika ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 87 ◽  
pp. 141-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vidmantas Jankauskas ◽  
Janina Šeputienė

Economic literature recognizes three “deep determinants” of economic development: institutions, geography and openness to trade. Discussion in the literature focuses on what part of the income per capita variation can be explained by institutions, geography and openness to trade. The empirical results can’t offer a clear answer, but there is a broader agreement in the literature that institutions play a more important role than geography and openness to trade. What is unclear whether the institutions also can explain variation in per capita income across countries, in which institutional environment is to some degree similar..This article aims to explore and quantify the relationship of the income level with institutional environment, geography and openness to trade across countries, grouped according their institutional environment quality.The results reveal that extent to which the variation in GDP per capita can be associated with the quality of institutional environment differs a lot between good and bad institutional environment samples. The results in good institutional environment sample come in line with series of studies in which the strong and positive link between various measures of institutions and economic development was established and support primacy of institutions over openness to trade and geography. I In bad institutional environment sample, on the contrary,no evidence was found that institutions mean a lot in respect of differences in GDP per capita. These results should not be interpreted so as to mean that institutional environment is not important, rather the degree of “badness” makes no difference.


2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (5) ◽  
pp. 63-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iwona Laskowska ◽  
Barbara Dańska-Borsiak

The EU designs its cohesion policy with the primary purpose of reducing disparities in regional development. The success of the policy is largely determined by the identification of factors that contribute to such disparities. One of the key determinants of economic success is human capital. This article examines the relationship between the quality of human capital and economic development of EU’s regions. Using spatial analysis methods, the spatial dependencies between the growth of human capital and GDP per capita are investigated. According to the research results, the highest levels of human capital are typical of the most affluent regions in Western Europe, while its lowest levels are found in the poorest countries that became EU members only recently and in countries in southern Europe, including Greece. The spatial correlation measures confirm that spatial relationships have effect on the regional resources of human capital, showing that regions rich in human capital border on regions that are similar to them in that respect. The results of the spatial growth regression indicate that the amount of human capital in the region has a significant and positive effect on its GDP per capita.


1970 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-59
Author(s):  
Ralph K. Davidson

Today, the need for economic development is self-evident to the millions of people in Asia, Africa and Latin America who suffer from malnutrition, are ill-housed, poorly educated, and either unemployed or grossly underemployed. The ultimate objective of economic development is to raise the standard of life – the quality of life - for the mass of the people, to widen their area of choice, to open up new opportunities for human well-being. The less developed countries have two-thirds of the 3.5 billion people but receive only 12.5 percent of the world's gross national product. Life appears to be an economic treadmill with the future blighted by an excessive rate of population growth for millions of people. India provides a good illustration of the problem. With an estimated population of 525 million at mid-1968, India had 15 percent of the world's population, 2.4 percent of the world's land area, hardly 2 percent of the world's income, and an annual per capita income level of around $75.


2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (7) ◽  
pp. 1689-1710
Author(s):  
Eric Akobeng

PurposeThis paper examines the relationship between foreign aid, institutional democracy and poverty. The paper explores the direct effect of foreign aid on poverty and quantifies the facilitating role of democracy in harnessing foreign aid for poverty reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).Design/methodology/approachThe paper attempts to address the endogenous relationship between foreign aid and poverty by employing the two-stage least squares instrumental variable (2SLS-IV) estimator by using GDP per capita of the top five Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries sending foreign aid to SSA countries scaled by the inverse of the land area of the SSA countries to stimulate an exogenous variation in foreign aid and its components. The initial level of democracy is interacted with the senders’ GDP per capita to also instrument for the interaction terms of democracy, foreign aid and its components.FindingsThe results suggest that foreign aid reduces poverty and different components of foreign aid have different effects on poverty. In particular, multilateral source and grant type seem to be more significant in reducing poverty than bilateral source and loan type. The study further reveals that democratic attributes of free expression, institutional constraints on the executive, guarantee of civil liberties to citizens and political participation reinforce the poverty-reducing effects of aggregate foreign aid and its components after controlling for mean household income, GDP per capita and inequality.Research limitations/implicationsThe methodological concern related to modeling the effects of foreign aid on poverty is endogeneity bias. To estimate the relationship between foreign aid, democracy and poverty in SSA, this paper relies on a 2SLS-IV estimator with GDP per capita of the top five aid-sending OECD countries scaled by the inverse of land area of the SSA countries as an external instrument for foreign aid. The use of the five top OECD's Development Assistance Committee (OECD-DAC) countries is due to the availability of foreign aid data for these countries. However, non-OECD-DAC countries such as China and South Africa may be important source of foreign aid to some SSA countries.Practical implicationsThe findings further suggest that the marginal effect of foreign aid in reducing poverty is increasing with the level of institutional democracy. In other words, foreign aid contributes more to poverty reduction in countries with democratic dispensation. This investigation has vital implications for future foreign aid policy, because it alerts policymakers that the effectiveness of foreign aid can be strengthened by considering the type and source of aid. Foreign aid and quality political institution may serve as an important mix toward the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 and the Africa Union Agenda 2063.Social implicationsAs the global economy faces economic and social challenges, SSA may not be able to depend heavily on foreign partners to finance the region's budget. There is the need for African governments to also come out with innovative ways to mobilize own resources to develop and confront some of the economic challenges to achieve the required reduction in poverty. This is a vision that every country in Africa must work toward. Africa must think of new ways of generating wealth internally for development so as to complement foreign aid flows and also build strong foundation for welfare improvement, self-reliance and sustainable development.Originality/valueThis existing literature does not consider how democracy enhances the foreign aid and poverty relationship. The existing literature does not explore how democracy enhances grants, loans, multilateral and bilateral aid effectiveness in reducing poverty. This paper provides the first-hand evidence of how institutional democracy enhances the poverty-reducing effects of foreign aid and its components. The paper uses exogenous variation in foreign aid to quantify the direct effect of foreign aid and its components on poverty.


2013 ◽  
Vol 295-298 ◽  
pp. 2211-2214
Author(s):  
Jin An

Environmental pollution and ecological degradation in China have continued to be serious problems and have inflicted great damage on the economy and quality of life. As the largest developing country, China’s fiscal and taxation policies on environmental protection and sustainable development will be of primary importance not only for China, but also the world. By taking a critical look at the development of Chinese environmental fiscal and taxation policy, we try to determine how best to coordinate the relationship between the environment and the economy in order to improve quality of life and the sustainability of China’s resources and environment.


2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (6) ◽  
pp. 55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Halimahton Borhan ◽  
Elsadig Musa Ahmed ◽  
Mizan Hitam

The purpose of the study is to examine the relationship between CO2 on quality of life and on economic growth in ASEAN 8. Pollution may directly decrease output and quality of life by decreasing productivity of man-made capital and labor. The income levels per capita gross domestic product per capita were measured from the year 1965 to 2010. This study formulates a three equation simultaneous model for empirical research. For panel data, the Hausman specification test is the classical test of whether the fixed or random effects model should be used. In the pollution indicator emissions CO2 in ASEAN 8, the Environmental Kuznets Curve relationship is found.   Keywords: Economic Growth; Environmental Kuznets Curve; Hausman Test; Simultaneity, Endogeneity eISSN 2514-7528 © 2018. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open-access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia.


2020 ◽  
Vol 174 ◽  
pp. 04052
Author(s):  
Irina Roshсhina ◽  
Evgeniya Nekhoda ◽  
Galina Kalyanova

This article describes the study of existence of the relationship between individual factors of sustainable development from a qualitative point of view. It is revealed that new essential characteristics of the “middle class”, connected with sustainable development, are being formed. This makes it necessary to display them by introducing a new concept of “creative middle class”. The purpose of this study is to identify the relationship between improving the environment, the quality of life of the population, the processes of formation of a creative middle class and the results of socio-economic policies to ensure sustainable development of the territory. This study was conducted on the basis of a semi-formalized mass interview. Sustainability is considered for two regions of Siberia (Kemerovo and Tomsk regions), which differ in the specialization of economies: the mining region and the innovation region. In the RIA rating of the Russian regions on the quality of life, these regions, despite the different specialization of economies, occupy fairly close positions, being in the middle of the rating table. The hypothesis regarding the role of the creative middle class as the main subject and the main driver of socio- economic transformations for ensuring the sustainable development of the region in the long term and improving the quality of life of the population has been partially confirmed. This can be explained by the fact that the process of forming a creative middle class is at the initial stage. Manifestations of innovative features in the economic and social activity of the subjective middle class in the Tomsk region were not identified.


2003 ◽  
Vol 47 (6) ◽  
pp. 1-4 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Falkenmark

Water as an engine for development. Water is the key to socio-economic development and quality of life, and therefore an essential factor to be properly linked to other development factors. Water was also one of the five priority issues at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. Reaching the Millennium Declaration's ambitions to halve, by 2015, the number of people suffering from poverty, hunger and ill-health cannot be accomplished unless water and sanitation services are organized in a manner that effectively improves livelihood security, including food security.


2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 114-122
Author(s):  
I. Zinovieva ◽  
◽  
N. Azarova ◽  
A. Nebesnaya ◽  
◽  
...  

Ecological and economic indicators are a kind of indicator of the economic state of the regions, the ongoing processes, trends in the regional economy, the quality of life of population and characterize the sustainable development of the regions. These indicators should take into account the regional power structures that make management decisions for regional development. Often, these indicators are formed in isolation from each other, and the analysis of statistical reports does not allow the data to be formed up-to-date. The study identifies the reasons associated with the problems of sustainable development of the region’s economy, and notes the connection of these problems with the quality of life of the population. It is noted that ensuring a high level of economic development in the regions is often at the expense of the state and quality of the environment. It is noted that Russia is following the path of international trends in the development of the regional economy – compliance with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This is due to the support of the global strategy of economic development within the framework of the “green economy”. The article examines the components of the environmental quality indicators of the Russian regions, and also establishes a correlation between them and the criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of the work of the heads of regions and regional executive authorities, which ultimately reflects the level of development of the region as a whole. In the work, using the National Environmental Rating for 2020 of the subjects of the Russian Federation, leaders and outsiders among the regions of the Russian Federation are identified by the level of their environmental condition. According to the results of the ecological and economic assessment, the authors ranked the complex indicator of the state of environmental indicators in the regions, which include a list of six indicators: the level of emissions of harmful substances, the discharge of polluted wastewater, production and consumption waste, water consumption, energy consumption, and environmental protection costs. The researchers analyzed the positions of the Voronezh Region in terms of the quality of life in the region and finding a position in the environmental rating of the subjects of the Russian Federation. The authors propose a grouping of regions by the value of a complex indicator, study the indicators of the ecological state of the regions, and correlate between sustainable development and the quality of life of the population of the regions


Author(s):  
Vladimir Tikhii ◽  
Olga Koreva

The current socio-economic situation in rural areas is characterized by a number of problems that hinder sustainable development. The low quality of life, the existing level and quality of life in the village, the lack of social infrastructure, the environmental situation, limited opportunities for work in the village, low incomes of the population compared to the city had a significant impact on the process of migration and deterioration of the quality of the labor force, depopulation of the rural population. In this context, the solution to the problem of rural settlement development is very relevant. The regional leadership chooses the direction of rural development without taking into account the current socio-economic situation at the municipal level and the peculiarities of rural settlement development, which reduces the effectiveness of territorial administration. The level of rural development was assessed on the example of the Orel region. The current socio-economic situation in rural areas is characterized by many problems that hinder its transition to sustainable development. The problem of depopulation of the population in rural areas is revealed. At the same time, the destruction of social and engineering infrastructure is observed, the area of cultivated land is reduced, and differences in the level of socio-economic development of the periphery, semi-periphery and suburban areas are increasing. The analysis of the differences in the socio-economic development of the municipalities of the Orel region indicates an increase in intraregional differentiation during the period under review and the absence of an effective intraregional policy aimed at reducing the existing socio-economic asymmetry within the subject of the Federation. Proposals for its solution have been developed, which should be implemented in the context of continuous monitoring of the state and development.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document