An Invistigation of the Moral Aspect as a Well-Being Indicator of Russian Regions

Abstract

This study is devoted to the construction of a synthetic indicator of well-being taking into account the moral aspect. The moral aspect is interpreted in the context of the ethics of vices, as a cultural phenom­enon, based on the system of seven deadly sins. Since the vices distort preferences, changing the system of moral coordinates, so the ethics of vices is a relevant concept for a deeper understanding of human motivations. The proposed methodology allows us to consider deadly sins not only as individual deviation from the vector of religious and moral cultural identity, reworked in the form of non-cooperative social behavior, which has economic consequences measured by the level of well-being. The well-being indi­cator is built in accordance with modern methodological trends in calculating composite indices, based on the characteristics available for observation integrated into a single summary indicator, relevant to the specifics of the seven deadly sins. It allows us to obtain total spatial patterns of moral-based cultural identity, as well as partial indicators structured by individual conceptual dimensions to identify the contri­bution of each vice in order to describe the territorial subjects of the Russian Federation well-being. It was The ranking of regions is based on the level of well-being, reflecting the moral aspect of Russian society. Cartograms illustrating the differentiation of regions by moral characteristics and problem areas requiring targeted socio-economic policy measures have been constructed.