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Innovative development and quality of life interaction
Quality of life is a key attribute of a country. Estimating the social impact of economic development we face a problem of measuring. Because of the leading role of technologies and innovations in economic progress of modern society it is reasonable to use a corresponding global index as a measure of technological development of the country or region. Quality of life is a many-sided concept and needs particular approach for its definition in the context of the research. Two main approaches are considered. The former focuses on the population well-being and provides the objective measures of life quality; the latter is concentrated on self-assessment by the people of their quality of life. Both are significant and their using makes the analysis more comprehensive. As an indicator of innovative and technological development the Global Innovative Index (GII) can be used. There are many kinds of indicators of well-being such as Index of Economic Well-Being [Osberg, Sharp, 1998], Index of Social Progress [Estes R.J., 1998], and others. One of the most widely used indicators is the Human Development Index (HDI). A lot of interesting indicators are proposed, but many of them are focused on the particular aspect such as Health-Related Quality of Life [Andersen, 1999], Social Weather Station [Manghas, Guerro, 1998]. Other more universal indicators are often unavailable for most countries or regions of interest. So index based on self-assessment quality of life has been constructed as a first principal component of the partial indexes provided by Gallup. Various types of linear and non-linear regression models for describing the social impact of the innovative development are considered. Additional information sources have been used for explaining of the particular aspects of the problem, and the auxiliary models have been created and analyzed. As a model of the Global Innovative Index influence of the Human Development Index the logistic curve has been proposed. The explanatory power of this model is not the only reason for such a choice. The model may be considered as relevant because of the nature of the well-being indicator used. For self-assessment based quality of life index we can find another situation. Some countries with relatively high HDI show low value of the self-assessment index. It is related with the dynamic of innovative development which has an influence on the social environment of the society. In turn the social environment has a great influence on innovative and technological development of the country. Created models allow estimating social impact of innovative development indexes. The dual role of the social climate may be discussed in the context of the research. From one hand the social climate of the society is formed under influence of the technological environment. From the other hand the latter may be considered as a factor of progress in technology and innovations. Further research may be concentrated on the more comprehensive model of such interaction which evidently will be more complicated one