Human well-being: concepts and conceptualizations

Arbeitspapier

Economic measures of income have ignored large areas of human well-being and are poor measures of well-being in the areas to which they attend. Despite increased recognition of those distortions, ‘GNP per capita continues to be regarded as the quintessential indicator of a country’s living standard’ (Partha Dasgupta). Well-being seems to have intuitive plausibility as a concept, but in practice we encounter a bewilderingly diverse family of concepts and approaches, partly reflecting different contexts, purposes, and foci of attention. Is there a unifying framework that yet respects the complexity and diversity of well-being? This paper presents an imperfect comparative and integrative framework that builds on the contributions by Sen and others. We move toward the framework gradually, since well-being concepts are in fact complex entitities which reflect pictures of personhood and of science. Insight grows through surveying a wide range of relevant experience and views, before risking blinkering one’s vision in a framework. The paper then uses the framework to examine conceptualizations of human well-being, by Dasgupta, Sen, Nussbaum, Doyal and Gough, and Alkire.

Angaben zum Objekt

• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN: 9291906085

Verweise und Beziehungen

• Erschienen in: Series: WIDER Discussion Paper ; No. 2004/06

Klassifikation und Themen

• Klassifikation: Wirtschaft ; Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement ; General Welfare; Well-Being ; Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
• Thema: well-being ; welfare ; happiness ; objective ; subjective ; measurement ; Einkommensverteilung ; Lebensqualität

Beteiligte, Orts- und Zeitangaben

• Ereignis: Geistige Schöpfung
• (wer): Gasper, Des
• Ereignis: Veröffentlichung
• (wer): The United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER)
• (wo): Helsinki
• (wann): 2004

Weitere Informationen

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/52803
• Letzte Aktualisierung: 20.09.2024, 08:22 MESZ