Estonian Human Development Report

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5.6. Summary To briefly summarize the tendencies and conclusions described in this chapter, we can say that the phenomena related to the development of consumer and information society in Estonia have both a positive and a negative effect on Estonian residents’ quality of life, acting simultaneously as sources of opportunities and risks. Consumerist orientations tend to increase satisfaction with life and provide opportunities for the construction of identities and shaping of lifestyles. At the same time, excessive and irrational consumption and borrowing are not sustainable, causing many individuals to borrow beyond their means and become insolvent, while also increasing various environmental risks. The effect of the consumer society on children and young people is also two-sided. Most children in Estonia receive an allowance from their parents, which allows them to make independent decisions related to consumption and saving money. However, a significant level of inequality in terms of the amount of pocket money received is evident already in the case of children aged 11– 14 and there is a considerable degree of school bullying based on the clothes and appearance of schoolmates taking place in primary school. Information and communication technologies have become an integral part of the daily lives of most Estonian residents. Increasingly, new media allows people to satisfy their need for information, entertainment, and selfexpression, while also providing more and more opportunities for democratic participation. Estonia’s relatively high position in the international rankings related to the development of e-technologies does not allow us to become complacent and halt our progress, because with regard to the implementation of ICT innovations to increase actual competitiveness and democratic citizenship we are lagging behind many countries. In addition, the widespread use of the Internet by Estonian children and young people does not have an unambiguously positive effect on their quality of life, competitiveness, and development into active citizens capable of critical thought. Estonian children also lead the pan-European charts in terms of experiencing risks related to the Internet and most young people aged 15–19 use the Internet primarily for the purpose of entertainment and communication. Online content creation, a phenomenon potentially conducive to involvement and influence of consumer society on young people as well as to an indifferent attitude towards the environment. Thus, among Estonian youth satisfaction with life is somewhat higher in the case of young people who are less critical of their consumption opportunities, who take the problems of the consumer society for granted, and who attribute little importance to environmentally friendly consumption. In the case of the oldest age group, however, the subjective well-being is highest among those who are able to and want to exercise environmentally friendly consumption. In the light of the pattern of connections described above, we can interpret the relationships between the quality of life and aspects of consumer and information society from the standpoint of social adaptation which gives rise to two types of assessments. On the one hand, we see that fast adaptation to the development of information and consumer society, which includes active and versatile Internet use, consumerist orientation, being informed about events taking place in the society, has a positive effect on quality of life in terms of subjective well-being. In addition, the feeling of “not missing the boat” plays an especially important role in the satisfaction with life of middle-aged and elderly people. On the other hand, there exists the danger of successful adaptation to social changes causing a tendency to accept problematic phenomena as natural and thereby bringing about their normalization, especially in the eyes of the youngest generation. If social adaptation causes a lack of critical sense and the spread of indifference, it should be seen primarily as social accommodation which, at the level of the society, brings about a decrease in solidarity and cohesion. participation in civic society, is also dominated by activities aimed at communication and identity creation, while voicing opinions online and commenting on the opinions of others is relatively uncommon among young people. Young people themselves are relatively uncritical of several problems related to children and young people in the information and consumer society, tending to take these phenomena for granted or being unwilling or unable to provide any reflexive evaluation at all of their peers’ social practices. Estonian parents stand out in the context of average EU indicators in terms of their unfounded optimism with regard to online risks related to children. Our parents are also among the least active in Europe in terms of counselling and monitoring their children’s Internet use. Awareness of the significant aspects of consumer competence is in its early phase both in the case of older generations and young people themselves. This means that the phenomena and problems related to children and young people in the information and consumer society merit a more thorough approach and discussion, both among the general public and within the third sector. The current economic crisis is likely to have a negative effect on the development of the consumer and information society. Despite the fact that private consumption is a significant factor in economic growth, it would be immoral to call for people to engage in more consumption indiscriminately. Instead, more attention should be attracted to well-informed consumption choices that coincide with the interests of the Estonian economy, conservation of the environment, and people’s health, for example, products manufactured in Estonia, environmentally friendly products, organic foodstuffs, people’s own health, and the education of children. The main issues that should be considered during difficult times and addressed with suitable action strategies include the problem of socializing young people and training adults to be socially active, instilling in them a healthy sceptical attitude and clarity of thought, as well as the capacity to take a critical approach, if necessary. It should be our aim to educate consumers and users of the new media who are skilled in using all of the opportunities available to them while avoiding the risks involved, skilled in making competent decisions and standing courageously for their own rights and public interests. | 124
CHAPTER 6 Well-being and economic development 6.1. Introduction Since social factors are related to human development in the broadest sense, we often deal with them as separate values, independent of economic opportunities. There is nothing wrong with this approach until a question develops about the resources that are required, while the key question for the economic approach involves the calculation of budgetary restrictions. The emphasis on the assessment of the relationships between the economic and social fields has shifted due to the development of a better understanding of the reasons for growth and changes in the types of economic growth. With respect to the latter, one can differentiate growth based on industrialization, which is related, to a great extent, to “investments into iron and concrete” and service-based economic growth, which is based, to a great extent, on investments into human and social capital, and in which case, a large number of developmental factors are related to costs rather than investments from the standpoint of national statistics. Therefore, countries in the first phase of development are characterized by a high ratio of investments in GDP (often 25–30% and more); this percentage is lower, however, in countries in the second phase of development. 31 It is typical of economists to value economic growth as such. However, it should be noted immediately that in the 1960s and 1970s the emphasis on the assessment of policies supportive of economic growth shifted from an approach based on the accumulation of production factors to the valuation of human and social capital. Since the creation of human and social capital is affected by social policies, the interconnection between social and economic policies has also become more important for economists. In order to ascertain whether economic development or general social development is moving in an acceptable direction, one must inevitably measure objective levels of various aspects of well-being, or the quality of life, on the one hand, and subjective aspects of well-being, i.e. the perception of these aspects by the members of society, on the other hand. Moreover, it must be considered that objective levels of well-being result from economic development, while at the same time, the various components of the society’s well-being, such as health and education, are also inputs for economic development, i.e. they significantly affect economic development. We find very different divisions for the aspects of wellbeing, and indicators to describe them in the literature. It is generally understood that the economic wealth of a society, which is measured at the country level by created income per capita, is the basis for everything. From the standpoint of well-being, not only wealth, but also its distribution, is significant (see Chapter 1 above) – not only between individuals, but also to guarantee the achievement of various developmental objectives (physical and social security, democracy). Another objective aspect that is often considered is the health and educational level of the members of society, as well as their access to health care and educational services. In summary, this can be called the human capital aspect of well-being. The social side of well-being can also be objectively reflected through governmental organization, especially through social policy indicators, which will be discussed below. From here, we arrive at the social capital aspect of well-being. Satisfaction studies have added a subjective social dimension to the analysis of well-being (see Chapter 3 above). Since the subjectively perceived feeling of happiness is considered the most important indicator of well-being, well-being also has an emotional aspect. Exclusion that is related to poverty and long-term unemployment is frequently a reason for negative emotions about society. Therefore, the lack of exclusion could be interpreted as a connection to society that provides people with emotional support in assessing their situation. 6.2. Subjective and objective indicators of well-being In this subchapter, we will examine how the components of well-being and their perception are mutually related and also related to different parameters of economic development. Both the objective and subject variables of well-being will be examined along with the actual situation and the assessments made by people 31 In China the corresponding indicator, the exact name of which is gross fixed capital formation, has been 35 to 40% for years. In Estonia, it was 31.9% in 2007, while at the same time, the percentages in the following countries with larger service economies and growth based to a greater extent on human capital were 20.3% in Finland, 18.9% in Sweden, and 18.7% in the US (Eurostat, 2008) 125 |
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Estonian Human Development Report
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Estonian Human Development Report T
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4.2. Ethnic differentiations in sat
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Preface This year, the Estonian Hum
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CHAPTER 1 Estonian Human Developmen
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Figure 1.1.3. Life expectancy in co
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Figure 1.2.2. Life expectancy at bi
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to reality. The greatest inaccuracy
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Figure 1.2.9. Internal migration ev
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12. Marksoo, A. 1992. “Dynamics o
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Table 1.3.1. PISA 2006 study result
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Table 1.3.2. Number of students in
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1.4. The gross domestic product and
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Figure 1.4.3. Estonian GDP (right a
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1.5. Changes in the Estonian Human
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2.2. Health of Estonian residents i
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Table 2.2.4. Differences in life ex
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Figure 2.4.1. Healthy life years of
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Figure 2.4.4. Various accidents, tr
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2.5. Lifestyle and behaviour as a s
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Figure 2.5.5. Smoking in Estonia in
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Figure 2.6.1. Overview of the compo
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Table 2.6.2. Use of specialized med
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dren. The majority of services are
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Figure 2.8.2. How much a health dis
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2.10. Policy recommendations aimed
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CHAPTER 3 Quality of life and life
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Table 3.2.1. Characteristics of liv
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Table 3.2.4. An assessment of the e
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Figure 3.2.4. Difference in the job
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Table 3.2.6. Agreement with stateme
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Figure 3.3.1. Satisfaction with lif
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Figure 3.3.4. Percentage of people
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Figure 3.4.1. Types of quality of l
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Figure 3.5.1. Percentage of teenage
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Figure 3.5.4. Percentage of respond
Page 76 and 77: Arieh A., Conti C., Kutsar D., Nicg
Page 78 and 79: Figure 3.6.2. Subjective quality of
Page 80 and 81: Pieper, A. Sixsmith, Care related q
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Page 84 and 85: Figure 4.2.1. Life satisfaction by
Page 86 and 87: Table 4.2.1. Factors forming genera
Page 88 and 89: Annexes Annex 4.2.1. Socio-demograp
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Page 92 and 93: Figure 4.3.4. Attitudes of the Esto
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Page 96 and 97: Table 4.4.3. Agreement of the Russi
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Page 100 and 101: Figure 4.5.4. Certainty of Estonian
Page 102 and 103: mote equal opportunities. At the (e
Page 104 and 105: CHAPTER 5 Quality of life in a cons
Page 106 and 107: Figure 5.2.1. GDP and AIC per capit
Page 108 and 109: Figure 5.2.3. Distribution of consu
Page 110 and 111: Figure 5.2.4. Indexes of environmen
Page 112 and 113: Table 5.3.1. Comparison of countrie
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Page 120 and 121: Table 5.4.3. Young people’s asses
Page 122 and 123: Figure 5.4.6. Time spent on the con
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Page 134 and 135: Figure 6.3.1. GDP, government secto
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Page 140 and 141: References 1. Aaviksoo, A., G. Paat
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Page 150 and 151: 6.5. Cities as development engines
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Page 154 and 155: have been underfinanced or are not
Page 156 and 157: Table 7.1. Factors that favour and
Page 158 and 159: Table 7.2. Potential economic devel
Page 160 and 161: Authors Chapter 1 Ene-Margit Tiit,
Page 162 and 163: Margit Keller (PhD) is a Senior Res
Page 164 and 165: Special prizes Estonian Human Devel
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Page 172 and 173: Honorable mentions Estonian Human D
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Estonian Human Development Report A
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