An index of sustainable economic welfare for Romania

Abstract

This paper has the objective to develop an Index of Sustainable Welfare for Romania from 1990 to 2017, in order to more clearly establish the status of the Romanian economy in terms of economic welfare. The results show that whilst gross domestic product (GDP) per capita increased significantly, the ISEW per capita grew at a much slower pace. The value of household labour contributes strongly to the growth of welfare, but income distribution, costs of climate change, cost of road accidents and cost of air pollution limit an improvement of population economic well-being. Our new valuation approach confirms the general conclusion of most authors on economic development that, during last decades, welfare has shown little improvement in spite of a growing GDP. Our conclusion is that the ISEW provides a useful alternative to indicators such as GDP despite subjected to its limitations and criticism. Keywords: Economic welfare, GDP, ISEW.