Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2021 Mar 23;118(12):e1907351118.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1907351118.

Years of good life is a well-being indicator designed to serve research on sustainability

Wolfgang Lutz  1   2   3   4 , Erich Striessnig  1   4 , Anna Dimitrova  2   4   5 , Simone Ghislandi  2   4   6 , Anastasia Lijadi  2   4 , Claudia Reiter  7   2   4 , Sonja Spitzer  7   4 , Dilek Yildiz  2   3   4
Affiliations
Review

Years of good life is a well-being indicator designed to serve research on sustainability

Wolfgang Lutz et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

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.

Keywords: basic needs; good life; human well-being indicator; survival; sustainability science.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Dimensions of years of good life, a human well-being indicator.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
YoGL and life expectancy at age 50 for 14 European countries, 2013.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.
YoGL and its individual dimensions for 38 countries at age 20, males, 2010 to 2015.
Fig. 4.
Fig. 4.
Trends in female YoGL at age 20, India, Mexico, and South Africa.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Irwin E. G., Gopalakrishnan S., Randall A., Welfare, wealth, and sustainability. Annu. Rev. Resour. Econ. 8, 77–98 (2016).
    1. Managi S., Kumar P., Inclusive Wealth Report 2018 (Taylor & Francis, 2018).
    1. Polasky S., et al., Inclusive wealth as a metric of sustainable development. Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour. 40, 445–466 (2015).
    1. Ostrom E., Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Cambridge University Press, 1990).
    1. Stern N. H., The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review (Cambridge University Press, 2007).

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources