How Achieving the Millennium Development Goals Increases Subjective Well-Being in Developing Nations

Shizuki Fukuda, Michio Murakami, Keigo Noda and Taikan Oki
Additional contact information
Shizuki Fukuda: Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan
Michio Murakami: Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo, 4-6-1 Komaba, Meguro, Tokyo 153-8505, Japan
Keigo Noda: Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo, 4-6-1 Komaba, Meguro, Tokyo 153-8505, Japan
Taikan Oki: Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo, 4-6-1 Komaba, Meguro, Tokyo 153-8505, Japan

Sustainability, 2016, vol. 8, issue 2, 1-19

Abstract: The target date in 2015 for the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) was reached, and a new period of global goals for the post-2015 is dawning. To assess whether and how regional progress towards achieving the MDGs has contributed to better quality of life in developing nations, we formulated a correlation between various aspects of human development, indicated by MDG indicators, and subjective well-being (SWB), a response to the question of how much people feel happy or satisfied. We demonstrated that national levels of SWB can be explained by the degree of development; poverty reduction is the strongest determinant, and achieving the MDGs is associated with higher SWB levels. Scenario assessment of SWB allowed which domain of development should be improved preferentially in each region to be determined, hence the SWB approach is expected to offer an innovative proxy of human development for the assessment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Keywords: Millennium Development Goals (MDGs); life satisfaction; subjective well-being; human development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/8/2/189/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/8/2/189/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:8:y:2016:i:2:p:189-:d:64225

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().