Sustainable economic policy and well-being: The relationship between adjusted net savings and subjective well-being

Abstract

We analyse the relationship between subjective wellbeing (SWB) and the World Bank’s measure of a country’s economic sustainability, adjusted net savings (ANS). We model SWB at individual level and at aggregated group level as a function of past ANS levels, after controlling for a country’s initial levels of SWB. The empirical models utilise World Values Surveys (WVS) data for self-reported life-satisfaction (our proxy for SWB). Our results show that ANS is negatively associated with future SWB outcomes over relatively short timespans (10-15 years) but this relationship is neutralised, or even reversed, for a longer timespan (20 years). The results demonstrate an important challenge in political economy. Governments that choose to save less in the short term may be able to spend more on the well-being of the current generation (i.e. current voters) but they diminish the reserves available to improve future generations’ wellbeing. At a more technical level, our results reinforce the concept that ANS is a useful sustainability indicator for infinite (or at least very long) time horizons, but it is not a good indicator of well-being developments over short time horizons.

Sustainable Development of Tourism: Research and Policy Challenges

“…On the widely accepted "capitals approach", the condition for sustainable development is that the present generation must bequeath the next generation a stock of productive capacity supporting well-being per capita at a level at least as large as that enjoyed by the present generation [8,21,36]. The systemic resources that underpin future well-being comprise four types of capitaleconomic, human, social and natural [48,67].…”

“…Given the vagueness of the concept of "needs", a growing number of researchers now argue that the primary goal of sustainable development is to enhance human well-being, now and into the future [2,[6][7][8][9][10][11]. Well-being is now regarded as the appropriate concept to judge human progress.…”

Why tourism economists should treat resident well-being more seriously

“…A distinction between 'flow' measures of present well-being and measures of the 'stock' of capital that affect well-being, now and in the future, is crucial to sustainability measurement (Stiglitz et al, 2009). On the so-called 'capitals approach' to sustainable development, the condition for sustainable development is that the present generation must bequeath the next generation a stock of productive capacity supporting well-being per capita at a level no less than that enjoyed by the present generation (Arrow et al, 2012;Qasim, and Grimes, 2018).…”

“…Adjusting GDP involves adjusting household income, consumption and wealth, for monetised environmental and social factors. Included in this category are Gross National Happiness (Bates, 2009), the Genuine Progress Indicator (Kubiszewski, Costanza, Franco, Lawn, Talberth, Jackson and Aylmer, 2013), Adjusted Net Savings (Qasim and Grimes, 2018) and Green GDP (Hoff et al, 2021). C omplementing GDP involves supplementing GDP with additional environmental and/or social information.…”

A fenntarthatóság vagyoni szemlélete és empirikus vizsgálata

“…Batrancea és szerzőtársai (Batrancea et al, 2020) (Hartwick, 1977a;Pearce and Atkinson, 1993;Stiglitz et al, 2009), amelyek közül számos foglalkozott közvetlenül a megtakarítások kérdésével és annak mutatóival ( (Gnegne, 2009;Qasim and Grimes, 2018). A szerzők vektor autoregressziós modell vizsgálattal megerősítették az oksági összefüggést a természeti degradáció és a csökkenő gazdasági növekedés között.…”