Sustainable economic development: The relation between economic growth and quality of life in V4 and Austria

Abstract

The future belongs to sustainability. It is becoming more important to achieve sustainable economic development. Therefore, in addition to the countries´ economic performance, the continuous improvement of the quality of life should also be essential. The set topic is crucial, even necessary to achieve the ambitious goals of today's society in terms of sustainable economic development. The need for solution highlights the possible changes in the social aspect of economic development. Following this challenge, the objective of the paper is to evaluate the development of 26 quality of life indicators from selected 6 categories in the V4 countries and Austria as a research benchmark country between 2010-2019 and to identify the impact of the level of GDP on these indicators. The descriptive statistics and linear regression analysis are used. Most life quality indicators reveal that the level of the V4 countries is better than the EU 27 average or the same. In conclusion, 61.5% of variables in all countries related to research hypothesis was confirmed, which means that the GDP growth had a positive effect on the improvement of the quality of life within these variables. However, comparing to Austria as a highly developed country, a significant sustainable development gap can be still observed in V4. © 2021, Centre of Sociological Research. All rights reserved.