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This paper provides a new picture of how countries have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by examining the effects of the pandemic in terms of normative foundations for societal wellbeing. Social prosperity depends primarily on the functioning of four domains: the economy, the state, civil society and the environment. We use the Recoupling Dashboard—composed of four main indexes: Solidarity (S), Agency (A), GDP (material Gain, G) and Environmental sustainability (E) —to uncover the divergent experiences of countries in 2020. This paper focuses on the G7 countries—Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States—as the first step towards a wider appraisal. In all countries under review we see a sharp drop in GDP due to the pandemic and a corresponding drop in CO2 emissions. The uniformity of response in the economic and environmental domains stands in sharp contrast to the diversity of social responses to the challenge of cooperation that the coronavirus posed. The only clear pattern that emerges from cross-country comparisons is that Inward Solidarity, important for social cohesion in close social networks, and Outward Solidarity, important for the will to cooperate with other nations and cultures, have drifted apart in all G7 countries except Japan. Otherwise the movements in solidarity are highly idiosyncratic. In addition, the responses of Agency to the pandemic are diverse and are not noticeably correlated with the changes in Solidarity. The discrepancies in the social responses to the pandemic may be expected to have potentially important implications for how these countries fare during the pandemic and how well they come out of this crisis.
This paper explores a new theoretical and empirical approach to the assessment of human well-being, relevant to current challenges of social fragmentation in the presence of globalization and technological advance. We present two indexes of well-being — solidarity (S) and agency (A) — to be considered alongside the standard indexes of material gain (G) and environmental sustainability (E). The four indexes —SAGE— form a balanced dashboard for evaluating well-being. The solidarity index covers the needs of humans as social creatures, living in societies that generate a sense of social belonging. The agency index involves people’s need to influence their fate through their own efforts. While “economic prosperity” (material gain) is conventionally measured through GDP per capita, “social prosperity” can be measured through our solidarity and agency indexes, alongside environmental sustainability that is measured through the Environmental Performance Index. The SAGE dashboard is meant to provide a “sage” approach to assessing well-being, since it aims to denote sagacity in the pursuit and satisfaction of fundamental human needs and purposes. Many of the prominent challenges of the 21st century, including the dissatisfaction of population groups who feel left behind by globalization and technological advance, may be viewed in terms of a “decoupling” of economic prosperity from social prosperity.We present a theoretical model that provides a new perspective on the welfare effects of globalization and automation. The dashboard is meant to provide an empirical basis for mobilizing action in government, business, and civil society to promote a recoupling of economic and social prosperity.