CORRELATION OF OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE TERRITORIAL DEVELOPMENT INDICES IN THE WORLD
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| Title | CORRELATION OF OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE TERRITORIAL DEVELOPMENT INDICES IN THE WORLD |
| Authors | |
| Abstract | A variety of measurement tools is used to evaluate the territorial development in the world, for instance, indicators, indices, etc. These measurement tools are applied measuring certain regions of a country and assessing the development of a country as well as comparing countries with each other or in relation to the previous years. In Latvia, certain methodology for calculating the level of territorial development has existed for about 15 years. Parallel to the official methodology, scientists and researchers of Latvia offer to use alternative methodology and indices for measuring territorial development. Having analysed various theoretical approaches to a relatively new direction of the economic science within the framework of Economics of Development, the authors offer their own perception of the conceptual nature of the territorial development that could be used as a methodological basis for measuring territorial development level: the main indicator of any territorial development is related to People, their material well-being, and health, level of education, spirituality, and overall satisfaction with life. In other words, a developed territory is the one, where the number of people increased, and these people are wealthy, healthy, educated, spiritually developed, and satisfied with their lives, but a relatively more developed territory is the one, where these indicators are higher. In recent years, researches in the field of territorial development resumed the idea that money as well as economic growth is insufficient to evaluate the development, particularly in developing countries: the world’s nations became increasingly wealthy; therefore, prosperity is not a pure index to evaluate country’s development. As a result, various indices and indicators, focused directly on the determination of subjective well-being level of society and people, are emerging. Therefore, many countries worldwide conclude that there is a need for assessing subjective well-being at a national level that, in its turn, could serve as a goal for reviewing the national public policy. In order to understand the interaction between territorial development indices, the authors of this article on the basis of the newly-created methodological model for measuring territorial development, analyse their correlation, considering world’s countries as an object and basing on the available official statistical information and qualitative research data. The objective of the research is to empirically analyse the way objective and subjective territorial development indices are interconnected as well as to determine whether people’s satisfaction with life and spirituality depend on people’s material welfare. The analysis led to the conclusion that people’s satisfaction with life correlates with GDP per capita in the country, although people’s spirituality (in this research - happiness) can poorly correlate with material welfare of society.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.eis.0.6.1468 |
| Publisher | Kaunas University of Technology |
| Date | 2012-07-26 |
| Source | European Integration Studies No 6 (2012) |
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