Equity and sustainable development

Sustainable development indicator (SDI) frameworks typically adopt a broad understanding of well-being, but an issue has been raised whether they should attempt to consider equity. It is generally accepted that SDI frameworks need to take into account inter-generational equity, but there is no similar consensus about intra-generational equity. This paper explores how intra-generational equity might be related to sustainable development. It takes the core elements of New Zealand's social security – employment, income, housing, health and education – and defines standards for what would be meant by equity for each element. It then proposes a statistical series for measuring departures from each standard and combines these statistics into a proposed equity index. The index is illustrated using New Zealand data in 1996, 2001 and 2006. Data for 2006 record almost no disparity between the male and female populations, but a substantial difference between the European/Pakeha and Maori populations.

[1]  E. Jaynes.  Information Theory and Statistical Mechanics , 1957 .

[2]  J. B. Condliffe.  The Welfare State in New Zealand. , 1975 .

[3]  L. Boltzmann.  The Second Law of Thermodynamics , 1974 .

[4]  H. Varian.  Equity, Envy and Efficiency , 1974 .

[5]  R. Nozick.  Anarchy, State, and Utopia , 1975, Princeton Readings in Political Thought.

[6]  E. Shils.  The Constitution Of Society , 1982 .

[7]  P. Chapman,et al.  Metal Resources and Energy , 1983 .

[8]  Tapan Mitra,et al.  Intergenerational Equity and Efficient Allocation of Exhaustible Resources , 1983 .

[9]  A. Giddens.  The Constitution of Society , 1985 .

[10]  T. Brooking,et al.  From the cradle to the grave: A biography of Michael Joseph Savage , 1986 .

[11]  Daniel T. Spreng,et al.  Net Energy Analysis and the Energy Requirements of Energy Systems , 1988 .

[12]  S. Middleton.  Equity, Equality, and Biculturalism in the Restructuring of New Zealand Schools: A Life-History Approach , 1992 .

[13]  P. Hyman.  Women and Economics: A New Zealand Feminist Perspective , 1996 .

[14]  J. Clapp,et al.  Development as freedom , 1999 .

[15]  S. Dixon.  Pay Inequality between Men and Women in New Zealand , 2000 .

[16]  S. Dixon.  Work experience and the gender earnings gap , 2001 .

[17]  P. Dalziel,et al.  The New Zealand Macroeconomy: Striving for Sustainable Growth with Equity , 2004 .

[18]  J. Coutts.  Will pay equity close the 'pay gap' between men and women? , 2004 .

[19]  J. Rawls,et al.  A Theory of Justice , 1971, Princeton Readings in Political Thought.

[20]  Rhema Vaithianathan,et al.  Inequality and health: Is housing crowding the link? , 2006 .

[21]  H. Sinn,et al.  Redesigning the Welfare State , 2006 .

[22]  G. Aitken,et al.  The New Zealand curriculum: for English-medium teaching and learning in years 1-13 , 2007 .

[23]  Bryan Perry,et al.  Household incomes in New Zealand: trends in indicators of inequality and hardship 1982 to 2004 , 2016 .

[24]  T. Blakely,et al.  Effect of insulating existing houses on health inequality: cluster randomised study in the community , 2007, BMJ : British Medical Journal.

[25]  Peter H. Starke.  Radical Welfare State Retrenchment: A Comparative Analysis , 2008 .

[26]  S. Svallfors.  Radical Welfare State Retrenchment: A Comparative Analysis , 2008 .

[27]  C. Saunders,et al.  Sustainable development and equity , 2009 .