An Alternative Approach to Measuring the Well-Being of the Russian Population, or Why GDP is not Suitable for this

Abstract

The subject of the study is the state of welfare of the Russian population in the conditions of interaction between nature and society. The purpose of the work is to estimate the size of Russia’s true savings through one of the alternative GDP instruments in the form of the size of true savings, which amounted to 18.5% of the gross national income of the Russian Federation for the period 2000–2018. A significant discrepancy between the author’s estimates of true savings obtained and the estimates of the World Bank performed annually for a number of countries, including Russia, has been revealed, and possible causes of inconsistencies have been identified. It was found that in the period under study, the level of true savings in Russia remained positive, which indicates that the economic (optimal) limit of growth has not yet been reached and the current economic development of Russia meets the requirements of resistance to climatic influences, and the level of well-being of the country’s population as a whole is acceptable. At the same time, the heterogeneity of true savings in the context of territories deserves attention, since the resource-surplus regions of Russia are leaders in traditional economic indicators, but outsiders in indicators of sustainable development and the true well-being of the population. Conclusions are drawn that the World Bank’s methodology for assessing the damage caused by humanity to the natural environment does not ensure the correctness of cross-country comparisons in the main directions of economic development, and also blocks the possibility of scaling estimates to other levels of management.