Assessment of GDP and living standards of countries in the focus of interdisciplinary study

For more than a hundred years, science has been applying physical laws to analyze social and economic systems. However, it must be admitted that in the management of social and economic systems there are no systemic connections with natural, economic and social phenomena, expressed in a consistently measurable form, which leads to incorrect estimates and gives rise to crises. The current complex crisis situation in the world poses the task of the scientific community to develop theoretical and methodological provisions based on measured values or a meter that would be initially adequate for describing natural systems, and at the same time would be sufficiently applicable to assess socio-economic phenomena. For such assessments, it is necessary to rely on the law of nature and use the corresponding meter. Such a measure is proposed in the works of the International Scientific School of Sustainable Development named after P. G. Kuznetsova. The socio-economic system, including the economy of the country and the world, can be represented as a generalized machine of a certain capacity. In this machine, useful energy is embodied, directly or indirectly, in all manufactured goods and services. Accordingly, some traditional macroeconomic indicators can be expressed in energy units. The article is devoted to the application of energy theory of cost to estimate Gross Domestic Product and living standards of the countries of the world in energy units, the results of calculations for the period 1992–2019 are given.