Revisiting sustainable development: a time-series, cross-national study of the nexus between human well-being and environmental impact

Abstract Though economic growth is persistently associated with increased environmental impacts cross-nationally, sustainable development has continued as a policy objective embraced by many governments to further efforts to “green” economic growth through a focus on “human development.” A key metric of sustainable development is the Human Development Index (HDI), which combines measurements of education, income, and life expectancy. In this paper, we examine the relationship between countries’ human well-being (operationalized as HDI) and environmental impact (ecological footprint [EF] and CO 2 emissions per capita) from 1990 to 2018, using a fixed-effects panel regression model with robust standard errors and data from the United Nations, the Global Footprint Network, and the World Bank. We analyze the individual and combined effects of HDI dimensions of education, health, and income on environmental outcomes, with the goal of better understanding how the different dimensions of “human development” interact with each other. We find increases in human capital, as measured by education and health, lessen the impact of economic development, measured by GNI per capita, on environmental outcomes. Furthermore, we find mixed evidence around the relationship between non-economic dimensions of human development (i.e. education and health) and environmental impact, where we find some evidence that as GNI per capita increases, the effect of life expectancy on EF increases. We argue the sole use of HDI in policymaking obfuscates how its constituent parts interact to produce environmental change. We suggest moving beyond overreliance on the HDI in assessments of sustainable development, both in empirical work and in policymaking.