State of Arctic Social and Economic Conditions: An Analysis of the Circumpolar Regions

Standard economic theory suggests that economic growth trickles down in society, increasing general well-being and living conditions. Amartya Sen argues that is not necessarily the case. He describes development as a process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy, and removing major sources of unfreedom such as the lack of access to health services and education, inadequate housing and economic poverty. Based on ArcticStat, it is now possible to perform simultaneous analysis of several indicators that have only been separately analyzed so far. This paper put together basic indicators measuring economic, demographic, health and education conditions for each arctic regions of the circumpolar world. Through graphic analysis, it concludes that three models best describe the development of arctic regions, the North-American, the Scandinavian and the Russian ones. However, each model shows important variations, all of them concerning regions where large cohorts of indigenous or ethnic minorities are represented. These results are explained mainly by the redistributive structure of each regional cluster, and by the status of indigenous or ethnic peoples. The method used set the table for time-series analysis, which will make it possible to shed light on the social construction process of the models; moreover it suggests a way for integrating social and environmental types of data.

Key words: human development, economic development, models, Arctic, circumpolar, regions, indigenous people, ethnic minorities, ArctiStat.