Methodological Approaches to the Inclusion of Environmental Factors in Human Development Index

Abstract

Human Development Index (HDI) is a widely known and used index of living standards and quality of life that is able to compare quality of life in different countries. HDI is an integrated index and it includes three base factors of human development: a long and healthy life, education, and revenue. Nowadays the ecological situation has a more lasting influence on quality of life. On the one hand, condition of ecology is the result of human activities, but on the other hand, human within the course of time is experiencing an increasing influence, as a rule this influence is negative, due to ecological situation changing. Consequently, it makes sense to develop the methodology of ecological factor including in HDI that will improve the HDI due to reflecting the quality of life in a full picture.

In the scientific environment the attempts have already been made to introduce the ecological factor in the HDI. Various approaches for ecological factor assessment have been studied in the articles of Ch. Togtokh, K. Danielyana, and Soshnikovoi L.A. The necessity of HDI modernization is obvious, the attempts to its modernization have been made, but there is no mutual agreement upon HDI modernization.

The objective of the article is in methodology development of ecological factor including in HDI, it will reflect the influence degree of environment contamination on quality of life.

The developed methodology by the authors based on the standard HDI formulae, i.e. the calculation of index as a geometric average of health, education and revenue, including the fourth cofactor, i.e. ecological factor (ecological index). The last-mentioned factor is based on the indicators that reflect the amount of emissions in the atmosphere from stationary and mobile pollution sources, and also the value of caught and decontaminated substances that contaminate the atmosphere. The developed methodology was applied for the calculation of the updated index of human development in the Russian Federation regions, especially in those regions where the enterprises of ferrous metallurgy are located, that allowed to use the most adequate assessment of the quality of level in these regions.