The assessment of welfare: approaches and indicators

There have been developed several fundamentally different theoretical approaches to investigating the population welfare in the scientific literature up to date. However, the empirical studies on welfare are often conducted in isolation from progress in economics. The paper systemizes the main theoretical approaches to studying the population welfare. The research highlights the key indicators for the empirical assessment of welfare within all approaches. The comparison of countries’ rankings by welfare indicators is provided, and the Russian status in world rankings is assessed. The critical analysis of theoretical approaches to welfare measurement demonstrates their advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, it is efficient to use indicators representing different approaches to provide a full review of the population welfare.