World Variation in Human Welfare: A New Index of Development Status

Abstract

We construct a new measure of the worldwide variation in human welfare as defined by life-sustenance, esteem, and freedom. A nation's physical, economic, social, and political systems should provide resources, institutions, and cultural environments that foster human welfare. The new Index of Development Status i s an improvement on previous indices because it is built on concepts of human welfare and produces a robust, versatile measure that provides multidimensional insights about world variations.In constructing the new Index, we selected the following variables of systems outputs: physical-total value of primary industry output per capita, persons per square kilometer of arable land; economic-CNPIcapita, and manufacturing value-added per capita; social-infant deaths per 1000 live births, percentage of age group in higher education, and percentage of rural population; politicalgovernment expenditures per capita, political rights index, and number of radios per 1000 population. Factor analysis with varimax rotation yielded four principal factors that correspond conceptually with the physical, economic, social, and political systems. Based on factor scores, we arrayed 160 countries according to the sum of the quintile ranks of their four systems, from most developed to least developed. Various combinations of quintile scores permit us to rank and map countries for overall human welfare, socioeconomic human welfare, sociopolitical human welfare, and politico-economic human welfare. The scale of analysis can be varied to sub-national regions, variables can be added t o each macrosystem to extend the concepts

The spatial distribution of development in Europe and its underlying sustainability correlations

“…The eleven Gallup World Poll (GWP, 2006) measurements used in this research were: community attachment index (CAI), community basics index (CBI), civic engagement index (CEI), corruption index (CI), experiential wellbeing index (EXWI), law and order index (LOI), national institutions index (NII), optimism index (OI), positive experience index (PEI), social wellbeing index (SWI), and thriving index (TI). The 19 nonGallup World Poll measurements used in this research were: ecological footprint (EF) (Wackernagel & Rees, 1996;GFN, 2006), educational index (EI), environmental performance index (EPI) (Esty et al 2008;YCELP, 2012), environmental sustainability index (ESI) (YCELP, 2005), environmental vulnerability index (EVI) (SOPAC 2004), ecosystem wellbeing index (EWI) (Prescott-Allen, 2001), gross domestic product (GDP), global information networking institute coefficient (GINI) (Gini, 1912), global peace index (GPI) (IEP 2008), human development index (HDI) (Tata & Schultz, 1988;UNPD, 2006), happy planet index (HPI) (Marks, Abdallah, Simms, & Thompson, 2006), human wellbeing index (HWI) (Prescott-Allen, 2001), life expectancy index (LEI), natural resource protection indicator (NRPI) (CIESIN, 2006), poverty gap index (PGI), quality of life index (QLI) (EIU, 2005), social capital subindex (SCSI) (Legatum, 2012), sustainably society index (SSI) (SSF, 2008), and world giving index (WGI) (CAF, 2010). Effort was taken to assemble a dataset for a comparable time period circa 2006, but the aforementioned was constrained to include published metrics ranging from 2001 to 2012.…”

Examining patterns of sustainability across Europe: a multivariate and spatial assessment of 25 composite indices

“…The indices can be broadly grouped into two categories: non-Gallup World Poll and Gallup World Poll (www.gallup.com) associated measurements. The non-Gallup World Poll measurements included in this study were ecological footprint (EF) (Wackernagel & Rees 1996;GFN 2006), educational index (EI) (UNESCO 2006), environmental performance index (EPI) (Esty et al 2008;Yale 2012), ecosystem wellbeing index (EWI) (Prescott-Allen 2001), gross domestic product (GDP), global information networking institute (GINI) coefficient (Gini 1912), human development index (HDI) (Tata & Schultz 1988;UNPD 2006), happy planet index (HPI) (Marks et al 2006;NEF 2007), human wellbeing index (HWI) (Prescott-Allen 2001), life expectancy index (LEI), poverty gap index (PGI) (WB 2007), quality of life index (QLI) (EIU 2005), social capital sub-index (SCSI) (Legatum 2012), and sustainable society index (SSI) (SSF 2008). The Gallup World Poll (GWP 2006) measurements included in this study were community attachment index (CAI), community basics index (CBI), civic engagement index (CEI), corruption index (CI), experiential wellbeing index (EXWI), law and order index (LOI), national institutions index (NII), optimism index (OI), positive experience index (PEI), social wellbeing index (SWI), and thriving index (TI).…”

Composite Index of Local Government Employees Satisfaction

“…Job security x 12 Desire to share information helpful in handling customer cases x 13 Efficient circulation of information among employees x 14 Adapting working hours to the needs of customers x 15 Efficient flow of information between employees and their superiors x 16 Clear requests formulated by the superior x 17 Decor x 18 Functionality of the workplace (space, lighting, etc.) x 19 Availability of office facilities (fax, telephone, computer, copier) x 20 Financial motivation x 21 Non-financial motivation x 22 Training x 23 Opportunity of professional development Source: own study based study based on the results of the surveys.…”