Quality of Life Assessment: Environmental Aspects

Abstract

This article deals with the search for indicators that reflect the environmental conditions of life, environmental behavior of people and may be used in the economic analysis. This environmental and economic problem has not yet been solved. The indicators used in many economic papers to measure the emissions and discharges of harmful substances into the atmosphere and water bodies describe the impact on the environment, which will manifest itself in the future periods and cannot adequately reflect its condition. The monitoring of environment by environmental experts provides, in particular, the percentage indicators of air and water samples that exceed MPC (maximum permissible concentration) in the total number of samples. They are already included in a number of statistical compilations. The article describes their practicality and benefits for making the concise records of the state of environment in the economic research. The author has studied the regional values of selected indicators and analyzed various hypotheses of their strong differentiation. Today, it is particularly urgent to include the environmental component in the indicators describing the quality of life, including the human development index. The author proposes to use the percentage of negative water and air samples as an additional, fourth component of the human development index. The article presents the results of calculating the environmentally adjusted human development index for all entities of the Russian Federation, which in a number of regions significantly differs from traditionally used value.