Abstract:

The benchmarks set by the Strategy Europe 2020 imply that national economies have to simultaneously pursue multiple goals. The European welfare state economic model covers many aspects of social life whose various facets have been listed in Stiglitz Report,  along with the recommendation to have these included as part of the augmented indicator of economic performance beyond GDP. In this paper, we first decouple economic growth from the ecological and social development, while assessing individual performance of each dimension by means of data envelopment analysis. We use selected indicators of social welfare from Eurostat database in SBM oriented models to capture all sources of input use inefficiency in the area of our interest,  with a view of subsequently putting those together and arriving thus at a composite indicator of social welfare. The overall scores of 28 European countries, along with detailed computational results of technical, environmental, and social submodels, demonstrate  the high performance levels of advanced  European countries. Equally, however, the figures testify to the lagging behind of the new Member states, above all, as regards their social dimension. The findings achieved may serve as a theoretical springboard and foundation for decision-making processes.