Klaipėdos universitetas

The article discusses economic growth influence to sustainable development. According to the collected theoretical material, it analyzes the impact of economic growth to social and environmental dimensions of sustainability. The analysis of statistical data using integrated index of sustainable development allowed evaluating the impact of economic growth to sustainable development in in Lithuania on 2000−2011. Studies carried out in foreign universities confirmed a hypothesis that further extensive studies are necessary in order to understand the essence and evaluation of the concept of sustainable development. The basic idea behind the scientific problem studied in the paper can be described as the following: what are the regularities of the concept of sustainable development and its evaluation, that allow assess the economic growth influence to dimensions of sustainability and to sustainable development of the country. The main problem of the paper is stated as follows: how to achieve economic growth considering economic, environmental and social dimensions of sustainable development? Research object – the impact of economic growth to dimensions of sustainable development. Research aim is to analyze and assess dynamics of sustainable development dimensions in Lithuania. Research tasks: theoretically to analyze the influence of economic growth to social and environmental dimensions; after methodological calculations of indicators of sustainable development in Lithuania, to evaluate the tendencies of changes of sustainable development dimensions and to forecast perpectives. Research methods contributing to this paper are: systematic scientific literature analysis, statistical data and comparative analysis, regression analysis, use of SPSS 17 (Statistical Package for Social Science) and Package Microsoft Excel. Theoretical analysis done in the paper quit well show, that systems of assessment of influence of economic growth to sustainable development must take in account three closely related dimensions: economic, social and environmental. Integrated sustainable development index and trend were used and evaluated that the biggest increasing of index was noticed by given stable inflation rate. Analysis done in the paper quit well show, that for problems solving can be used fiscal instrument – taxes.