▪ Abstract Well-being is a complex construct that concerns optimal experience and functioning. Current research on well-being has been derived from two general perspectives: the hedonic approach, which focuses on happiness and defines well-being in terms of pleasure attainment and pain avoidance; and the eudaimonic approach, which focuses on meaning and self-realization and defines well-being in terms of the degree to which a person is fully functioning. These two views have given rise to different research foci and a body of knowledge that is in some areas divergent and in others complementary. New methodological developments concerning multilevel modeling and construct comparisons are also allowing researchers to formulate new questions for the field. This review considers research from both perspectives concerning the nature of well-being, its antecedents, and its stability across time and culture.

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On Happiness and Human Potentials: A Review of Research on Hedonic and Eudaimonic Well-Being

https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(08)61690-6.pdf

Closing the gap in a generation: health equity through action on the social determinants of health

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.2307%2F3343168.pdf

Development as Freedom

A doubling in global food demand projected for the next 50 years poses huge challenges for the sustainability both of food production and of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and the services they provide to society. Agriculturalists are the principal managers of global useable lands and will shape, perhaps irreversibly, the surface of the Earth in the coming decades. New incentives and policies for ensuring the sustainability of agriculture and ecosystem services will be crucial if we are to meet the demands of improving yields without compromising environmental integrity or public health.

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Agricultural sustainability and intensive production practices

We review in detail a number of approaches that have been adopted to try and explain the remarkable observation of our accelerating universe. In particular we discuss the arguments for and recent progress made towards understanding the nature of dark energy. We review the observational evidence for the current accelerated expansion of the universe and present a number of dark energy models in addition to the conventional cosmological constant, paying particular attention to scalar field models such as quintessence, K-essence, tachyon, phantom and dilatonic models. The importance of cosmological scaling solutions is emphasized when studying the dynamical system of scalar fields including coupled dark energy. We study the evolution of cosmological perturbations allowing us to confront them with the observation of the Cosmic Microwave Background and Large Scale Structure and demonstrate how it is possible in principle to reconstruct the equation of state of dark energy by also using Supernovae Ia observational data. We also discuss in detail the nature of tracking solutions in cosmology, particle physics and braneworld models of dark energy, the nature of possible future singularities, the effect of higher order curvature terms to avoid a Big Rip singularity, and approaches to modifying gravity which leads to a late-time accelerated expansion without recourse to a new form of dark energy.

Dynamics of dark energy

An attempt is made to identify the developing countries that have performed better than others in terms of the indicators of the so called "quality of life" relating this progress to the nature of these economies and to the public policies followed in these countries. A table presents data on life expectation at birth and adult literacy rates for 100 countries that had a gross national product per head of less than $3000 in 1977. The data have some comparability and it is reasonable to use them for a rough international comparison of performance. 38 countries have shown distinction in 1 or both of the fields. There are 10 communist countries in the total list of 100 and 9 of them show some distinction. 8 of the 9 do this despite not having literacy figures reported. The entry is longevity which is arguably a more basic indicator of success than poverty. Many of the communist countries are wealthier than the mean or median developing country. Although the indices are relative ones the richer countries have typically done better on the whole. The longevity performance of the communist countries is typically superior. This applies to the poorer group also. Some of the high growth early capitalist countries also have very good performance in terms of the chosen indicators (e.g. Taiwan South Korea Hong Kong and Singapore). Taiwan and Hong Kong have the best overall performance record in terms of the 2 criteria for those 61 countries for which both sets of data are available. The countries that appear to have done relatively worse in terms of the indicators are those in the "middle" i.e. neither communist nor successfully capitalist. There are some exceptions. Tanzania appears to have been relatively successful in terms of the removal of illiteracy and Sri Lanka has been successful in raising life expectancy. In examining the excellent performance of the Republic of Korea and Taiwan the lesson to be learned from their experience is the great importance of employment expansion in poverty removal. The experiences of Sri Lanka and Tanzania are recounted to illustrate the positive role of state action. Like Sri Lankas program of social welfare Tanzanias literacy program shows how much can be achieved by a determined effort sensibly directed toward specific goals. Poverty removal and related features including longevity enhancement is ultimately dependent on a wide distribution of effective entitlements. This for any given level of per capita income--would tend to be reflected in the low level of inequality in the distribution of income.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1468-0084.1981.mp43004001.x

Public action and the quality of life in developing countries

in terms of utility-based Pareto optimality), rather than by accomplishments in promoting individual freedom. It is natural to suspect that there must be some links between welfareachievements and freedom-achievements (and also between failures in the respective areas), but we have to examine and scrutinize those links. We need to explore different aspects of individual freedom and their links, if any, with the nature of competitive market equilibria. The paper distinguishes between different aspects of freedom, involving in particular (i) substantive opportunities, and (ii) process considerations, such as decisional autonomy and immunity from encroachments. The competitive market mechanism is examined in the context of each of these considerations. In some respects the freedom-based approaches are more ancient than that of 'economic efficiency' (defined as efficiency in the space of utilities), but it is the latter that has by now become the standard procedure in economic theory for assessing what the market does or does not accomplish. This shift in

Markets and freedoms: achievements and limitations of the market mechanism in promoting individual freedoms

The idea of ‘sustainability’ received serious attention in the so-called Brundtland Commission Report that has many attractive features. In particular, it highlighted the importance of intergenerational justice while maintaining a concern for the poor of each generation and shifted the focus away from resources to human beings. I argue that this way of understanding sustainability, while a great improvement, is still incomplete. There are important grounds for favouring a freedom-oriented view, focusing on crucial freedoms that people have reason to value. Human freedoms include the fulfilment of needs, but also the liberty to define and pursue our own goals, objectives and commitments, no matter how they link with our own particular needs. Human beings are reflective creatures and are able to reason about and decide what they would like to happen, rather than being compellingly led by their own needs—biological or social. A fuller concept of sustainability has to aim at sustaining human freedoms, rather ...

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The Ends and Means of Sustainability

Quasi-transitivity, Rational Choice and Collective Decisions

The use of the term “targeting” in eradicating poverty is based on an analogy–a target is something fired at. It is not altogether clear whether it is an appropriate analogy. The problem is not so much that the word “target” has combative association. This it does of course have, and the relationship it implies certainly seems more adversarial than supportive. But it is possible to change the association of ideas, and in fact, to some extent, the usage has already shifted in a permissive direction. The more serious problem lies elsewhere–in the fact that the analogy of a target does not at all suggest that the recipient is an active person, functioning on her own, acting and doing things. The image is one of a passive receiver rather than of an active agent. To see the objects of targeting as patients rather than as agents can undermine the exercise of poverty removal in many different ways. The people affected by such policies can be very active agents indeed, rather than languid recipients waiting for their handouts. Not to focus on the fact that they think, choose, act, and respond is to miss something terribly crucial to the entire exercise. This is not just a terminological problem. The approach of what is called targeting often has this substantive feature of taking a passive view of the beneficiaries, and this can be a major source of allocational distortion. There is something to be gained from taking, instead, a more activity-centered view of poverty removal. Let us begin with the central case–the core argument–in favor of targeting. The theoretical point in favor of targeting in antipoverty policy is clear enough: the more accurate a subsidy in fact is in reaching the poor, the less the wastage, and the less it costs to achieve the desired objective. It is a matter of cost-effectiveness in securing a particular benefit. Or, to see it another way, it is one of maximizing the poverty-

/pdf/the-political-economy-of-targeting-31ts4siudg.pdf

Amartya Sen

Papers

Public action and the quality of life in developing countries

Markets and freedoms: achievements and limitations of the market mechanism in promoting individual freedoms

The Ends and Means of Sustainability

Quasi-transitivity, Rational Choice and Collective Decisions

The Political Economy of Targeting