INPROFORUM 2017

Sustainable development (SD) and achieving SD goals has gained great importance worldwide. The European Union (EU) and additional five developed countries were assessed according to their Sustainable Society Index (SSI) and its three wellbeing dimensions, including its adjusted version named Sustainable Development Index (SDI), together with the crucial decoupling index – Resource Productivity (RP). Two main approaches to measure sustainability are deployed in this way, i.e. measurement of wellbeing in three SD pillars together with measurement of decoupling aspects. The Hierarchical Cluster Analysis (HCA) was applied to classify the countries into three groups according to the similarities in their Human, Environmental and Economic Wellbeing together with their RP levels in 2016. Cluster 1 that showed highest mean and median of human and economic wellbeing also showed the lowest levels for environmental wellbeing. On the other hand, Cluster 3 achieved the highest levels in environmental wellbeing but the lowest levels in the remaining wellbeing indicators. Cluster 2 has the highest mean and median of the RP indicator and medium-sized levels were achieved for three wellbeing indicators. No Cluster can be regarded as the most sustainable one, but Switzerland included in Cluster 2 is considered to be the most sustainable economy. Canada and the USA are the least sustainable economies according to the SSI and SDI.

Cluster Analysis; European Union (EU); Sustainable Development (SD); Resource Productivity (RP)