Social Sustainability, Poverty, and Income : An Empirical Exploration

Social sustainability is often poorly understood and vaguely defined, despite growing appreciation of its relevance as a concept. This paper advances the empirical understanding of social sustainability by constructing a global database of 71 indic...

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Main Authors: Cuesta, Jose, Madrigal, Lucia, Pecorari, Natalia
Format: Working Paper
Language:English
Published: World Bank, Washington, DC 2022
Subjects:
Online Access:http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099915206132218553/IDU05fa103b00466704a130bfec06158420e23ee
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/37543
id okr-10986-37543
recordtype oai_dc
spelling okr-10986-375432022-06-15T05:10:46Z Social Sustainability, Poverty, and Income : An Empirical Exploration Cuesta, Jose Madrigal, Lucia Pecorari, Natalia SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY GLOBAL DATABASE SOCIAL INCLUSION RESILIENCE SOCIAL COHESION PROCESS LEGITIMACY SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY INDICTORS SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY MEASUREMENT EMPIRICS SOCIAL ANALYSIS SOCIAL POLICY DATA INEQUALITY Social sustainability is often poorly understood and vaguely defined, despite growing appreciation of its relevance as a concept. This paper advances the empirical understanding of social sustainability by constructing a global database of 71 indicators across 193 countries and 37 territories between 2016 and 2020. The indicators are flexibly clustered around four dimensions—social inclusion, resilience, social cohesion, and process legitimacy—for which measurement indices are constructed. A simple empirical analysis using the database confirms that social sustainability is positively and strongly associated with per capita income, negatively and strongly associated with poverty, and negatively but weakly associated with income inequality. Much remains to be analyzed to understand the interactions between dimensions, but the results underscore that social sustainability matters not only in itself, but also to reduce poverty. Furthermore, extending access to markets, basic public services, and social assistance needs to be complemented with strengthening process legitimacy and social cohesion if inequality is to be reduced. 2022-06-14T19:24:27Z 2022-06-14T19:24:27Z 2022-06 Working Paper http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099915206132218553/IDU05fa103b00466704a130bfec06158420e23ee http://hdl.handle.net/10986/37543 English Policy Research Working Papers;10085 CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo World Bank World Bank, Washington, DC Policy Research Working Paper Publications & Research
repository_type Digital Repository
institution_category Foreign Institution
institution Digital Repositories
building World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection World Bank
language English
topic SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY GLOBAL DATABASE
SOCIAL INCLUSION
RESILIENCE
SOCIAL COHESION
PROCESS LEGITIMACY
SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY INDICTORS
SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY MEASUREMENT
EMPIRICS
SOCIAL ANALYSIS
SOCIAL POLICY DATA
INEQUALITY
spellingShingle SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY GLOBAL DATABASE
SOCIAL INCLUSION
RESILIENCE
SOCIAL COHESION
PROCESS LEGITIMACY
SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY INDICTORS
SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY MEASUREMENT
EMPIRICS
SOCIAL ANALYSIS
SOCIAL POLICY DATA
INEQUALITY
Cuesta, Jose
Madrigal, Lucia
Pecorari, Natalia
Social Sustainability, Poverty, and Income : An Empirical Exploration
relation Policy Research Working Papers;10085
description Social sustainability is often poorly understood and vaguely defined, despite growing appreciation of its relevance as a concept. This paper advances the empirical understanding of social sustainability by constructing a global database of 71 indicators across 193 countries and 37 territories between 2016 and 2020. The indicators are flexibly clustered around four dimensions—social inclusion, resilience, social cohesion, and process legitimacy—for which measurement indices are constructed. A simple empirical analysis using the database confirms that social sustainability is positively and strongly associated with per capita income, negatively and strongly associated with poverty, and negatively but weakly associated with income inequality. Much remains to be analyzed to understand the interactions between dimensions, but the results underscore that social sustainability matters not only in itself, but also to reduce poverty. Furthermore, extending access to markets, basic public services, and social assistance needs to be complemented with strengthening process legitimacy and social cohesion if inequality is to be reduced.
format Working Paper
author Cuesta, Jose
Madrigal, Lucia
Pecorari, Natalia
author_facet Cuesta, Jose
Madrigal, Lucia
Pecorari, Natalia
author_sort Cuesta, Jose
title Social Sustainability, Poverty, and Income : An Empirical Exploration
title_short Social Sustainability, Poverty, and Income : An Empirical Exploration
title_full Social Sustainability, Poverty, and Income : An Empirical Exploration
title_fullStr Social Sustainability, Poverty, and Income : An Empirical Exploration
title_full_unstemmed Social Sustainability, Poverty, and Income : An Empirical Exploration
title_sort social sustainability, poverty, and income : an empirical exploration
publisher World Bank, Washington, DC
publishDate 2022
url http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099915206132218553/IDU05fa103b00466704a130bfec06158420e23ee
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/37543
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