title: The big challenges in modeling human and environmental well-being.
abstract: This article is a selective review of quantitative research, historical and prospective, that is needed to inform sustainable development policy. I start with a simple framework to highlight how demography and productivity shape human well-being. I use that to discuss three sets of issues and corresponding challenges to modeling: first, population prehistory and early human development and their implications for the future; second, the multiple distinct dimensions of human and environmental well-being and the meaning of sustainability; and, third, inequality as a phenomenon triggered by development and models to examine changing inequality and its consequences. I conclude with a few words about other important factors: political, institutional, and cultural.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.
authors.forename: Shripad
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Tuljapurkar
keywords: human and environmental well-being; inequality; modeling; population; sustainable development