Estimating an Ethical Index of Human Wellbeing

A theory of strongly endogenous interactive relationship in participatory development is expounded through the use of a class of models of complementarities between selected variables representing their underlying agencies. Such a model is referred to as circular causation approach and resembles the social causation theory propounded by Gunnar Myrdal. The paper sets up the theoretical groundwork of circular causation in the context of development sustainability by virtue of estimating and simulating quantitative policy-theoretic approach that is applied to the exemplary problem of population and economic growth contra the neoclassical stand on their marginal substitution in population versus growth paradigm. Thus out of studying the theoretical and quantitative policy-theoretic perspective of the learning type endogenous model of development participation between variables and their agencies the ethical index is established. The participatory process of inter-variable complementarities between the selected variables conveys the substantive idea of development sustainability. The resulting functional objective criterion then represents the human wellbeing index. Several of the neoclassical theories as of the immserization theory of economic growth principally are critically examined.