Poverty-adjusted index of sustainable economic welfare (PA_ISEW): un'applicazione regionale

GDP is often incorrectly used as an indicator of social progress or quality of life. As it is widely recognized, the concept of well-being is multi-dimensional, complex and plural, including several aspects beyond material well-being and economic activity. So, GDP needs to be both corrected as a measure of economic performance, and extended to include several other dimensions (such as environmental conditions, non-market production or social sustainability). An attempt to do so is made in this work by applying the ISEW methodology (Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare) to an Italian local authority (Regione Marche). The local level application presented contributes to the existing international literature on the Regional ISEWs, by means of an improved methodology. Specifically, an extension to account for poverty has been made (Poverty-Adjusted ISEW). Results show similar trends for GDP and Poverty-Adjusted ISEW, with lower values for the latter. The Poverty Adjustment lowers the ISEW series by nearly 10%.