Assessment of the Well-Being of the Russian Population

Abstract

Following the paradigm of maximizing economic growth as measured by the GDP does not always provide an increase in wealth when considering the environmental and social consequences of economic development. Over the past decades, there has been some experience in developing alternative approaches to assessing the well-being of the population based on the concept of sustainable development. The present paper proposes to develop a methodology for practical assessment of one of the relatively new indicators of socioecological and economic well-being of the Russian population—the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI). It is assumed that the development of the methodology for calculating this indicator and the introduction of the practice of statistical accounting will significantly expand the opportunities for analysis of the dynamics of socio-ecological and economic well-being of the population of Russia. The applied importance of the results of such work is emphasized by the possibility of introduction of the GPI in the system of national statistics and the prospect of its use as one of the target indicators for the policy-making.