Event:Call for Papers - Measuring Socio-Economic Well-Being

From Wikiprogress.org

The scholarship of sustainability, like sustainable development, is concerned with sustaining human well-being and quality of life, and as such, there is a growing interest in indicators of sustainability that incorporate measures of socio-economic welfare. Despite the fact that measures of economic production and national income such as gross domestic product (GDP) poorly depict socioeconomic well-being, they are still the most frequently tracked and commonly used indicators of welfare at nearly all spatial scales. GDP is a nearly universal indicator of socioeconomic wellbeing, despite its inclusion of welfare-reducing activities as positive and its failures to account for welfare-enhancing economic benefits of ecosystem services. It is essentially a gross measure of national income and spending—a tally of goods and services produced, regardless of their effect on well-being—and as such, it has been broadly criticized as a measure of welfare. Numerous quality of life indices and alternative economic indicators have been developed that consider the values of social capital, natural capital, and the distribution of income. A burgeoning literature on subjective well-being and happiness has emerged to broaden the discourse on measurement. In addition, adaptive learning and participatory processes have been used to develop sustainability indicators with local communities. This special issue will focus on the measurement of social and economic welfare at regional, national, and local scales, including reviews, theoretical frameworks, and empirical research.

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• Call for Papers - Measuring Socio-Economic Well-Being