The social dimension of sustainable development

Abstract

The chapter describes the main challenges for the social dimension of sustainable development, such as inequality, labour conditions and wages, meeting basic needs: food, housing, water, energy, education and health and power relations: political voice and peace and justice. Referring to Doughnut economics an additional difficulty is meeting the above-mentioned challenges without exceeding the ecological ceilings. The chapter in particular discusses issues related to the measurement of the social foundations of sustainable development. The study reviews the basic non-aggregated indicators describing the social dimension. These indicators are components for highly aggregated measures that take into account the social perspective, such as Happy Planet Index (HPI), Sustainable Development Index (SDI), Sustainable Society Index (SSI) or Better Life Index (BLI). The chapter presents both the methodological aspects of measurement and the current data for selected measures of social well-being.