Human Well-Being and the Natural Environment

Abstract

This book explores ways to measure the quality of life, a problem pervading a number of academic disciplines, but not confined to the academic realm. Indices of human well‐being in current use are insensitive to human dependence on the natural environment, both at a moment in time and across generations. Moreover, international discussions on economic development in poor regions frequently ignore the natural resource base. In developing quality‐of‐life measures, the author pays particular attention to the natural environment, illustrating how it can be incorporated, more generally, into economic reasoning.