Department of Demography, University of Vienna, 1030 Vienna, Austria;
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, 2361 Laxenburg, Austria.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2021 Mar 23;118(12). doi: 10.1073/pnas.1907351118.
Sustainable development (SD) as popularized by the Brundtland Commission and politically enshrined in the Sustainable Development Goals has been the explicit focus of sustainability science. While there is broad agreement that the trend of human well-being (W) over time should serve as a sustainability criterion, the literature so far has mostly addressed this in terms of its determinants rather than focusing on W itself. There is broad agreement that an indicator for W should have multiple constituents, clearly going beyond gross domestic product. Here, we propose a tailor-made indicator to serve precisely this purpose following a set of specified desiderata, including its applicability to flexibly defined subnational populations by gender, place of residence, ethnicity, and other relevant characteristics. The indicator, years of good life (YoGL), reflects the evident fact that in order to be able to enjoy any quality of life, one has to be alive and thus is primarily based on life expectancy. However, since mere survival is not considered good enough, life years are counted conditional on meeting minimum standards in two dimensions: the objective dimension of capable longevity (consisting of being out of absolute poverty and enjoying minimal levels of physical and cognitive health) and the subjective dimension of overall life satisfaction. We illustrate the calculation of this indicator for countries and subpopulations at different stages of development and with different degrees of data availability.
可持续发展（SD）是由布伦特兰委员会推广并在可持续发展目标中得到政治认可的概念，一直是可持续科学的明确焦点。虽然人们普遍认为，随着时间的推移，人类福祉（W）的趋势应该成为可持续性的标准，但迄今为止，文献大多是从其决定因素来讨论这个问题，而不是关注 W 本身。人们普遍认为，W 的指标应该有多个组成部分，显然不仅仅是国内生产总值。在这里，我们根据一系列特定的要求，提出了一个定制的指标来满足这一目的，包括其适用于按性别、居住地、种族和其他相关特征灵活定义的次国家人口的能力。该指标，即“良好生活年数”（YoGL），反映了一个明显的事实，即为了能够享受任何生活质量，人们必须活着，因此主要基于预期寿命。然而，由于仅仅生存并不被认为是足够好的，因此只有在满足两个维度的最低标准的情况下，才会计算生命年数：客观的长寿能力维度（包括摆脱绝对贫困和享有最低水平的身体和认知健康）和主观的整体生活满意度维度。我们为处于不同发展阶段和具有不同数据可用性的国家和次国家人口计算了这一指标。
