Impact Pathways to Address Social Well-Being and Social Justice in SLCA—Fair Wage and Level of Education

Sabrina Neugebauer, Marzia Traverso, René Scheumann, Ya-Ju Chang, Kirana Wolf and Matthias Finkbeiner
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Sabrina Neugebauer: Department of Environmental Technology, Chair of Sustainable Engineering, Technische Universität Berlin, Straße des 17. Juni 135, 10623 Berlin, Germany
Marzia Traverso: Erzgießereistr. 16, 80335 München, Germany
René Scheumann: Department of Environmental Technology, Chair of Sustainable Engineering, Technische Universität Berlin, Straße des 17. Juni 135, 10623 Berlin, Germany
Ya-Ju Chang: Department of Environmental Technology, Chair of Sustainable Engineering, Technische Universität Berlin, Straße des 17. Juni 135, 10623 Berlin, Germany
Kirana Wolf: Department of Environmental Technology, Chair of Sustainable Engineering, Technische Universität Berlin, Straße des 17. Juni 135, 10623 Berlin, Germany
Matthias Finkbeiner: Department of Environmental Technology, Chair of Sustainable Engineering, Technische Universität Berlin, Straße des 17. Juni 135, 10623 Berlin, Germany

Sustainability, 2014, vol. 6, issue 8, 1-19

Abstract: Social well-being and social justice are meant to create a positive outcome meaningful for people and societies. According to the guidelines of social life cycle assessment, especially well-being should be considered as the main area of protection to assess social impacts of products. In addition, equity and equality need to be addressed in terms of social justice to ensure a fair and ethic society. However, even if a lot of studies focused on the definition social indicators to assess resulting impacts, neither have scientific or common agreements been founded to define a valid set of indicators, nor have consistent pathways from inventory towards impact indicators been established. This work, therefore, proposes possible pathways from life cycle inventory to impact assessment of two social midpoint categories: fair wage and level of education. Respective cause-effect-chains are developed based on the environmental life cycle assessment principle. Correspondingly, social inventory indicators throughout direct impacts to midpoint and endpoint categories are defined. Three endpoint categories are included (economic welfare, damage to human health and environmental stability) to address social well-being and social justice. Qualitative characterization factors and a scaling method are proposed to evaluate the impacts according to threshold and reference values from valuable literature.

Keywords: social life cycle assessment; social well-being; social justice; fair wage; education; impact pathway (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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