▪ 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.

/pdf/agricultural-sustainability-and-intensive-production-1h98l920tu.pdf

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

We use the most recent Type-Ia Supernova data in order to study the dark energy - dark matter unification approach in the context of the Generalized Chaplygin Gas (GCG) model. Rather surprisingly, we find that data allow models with $\alpha > 1$. We have studied how the GCG adjusts flat and non-flat models, and our results show that GCG is consistent with flat case upto 68% confidence level. Actually this holds even if one relaxes the flat prior assumption. We have also analysed what one should expect from a future experiment such as SNAP. We find that there is a degeneracy between the GCG model and a XCDM model with a phantom-like dark energy component.

Latest Supernova data in the framework of Generalized Chaplygin Gas model

National economic performance can reflect the health of the nation and the well-being of its citizens. National economics should encompass the economics and life and death. Mortality statistics or other health measures such as famines reduced life expectancies and higher female mortality can be used to gauge the economic health economic deprivation of a country. Analysis of mortality data can be useful in economic evaluations of social arrangements and public policy. Economic explanations of famine may be inadequately based on measures of food production and availability or income and purchasing power. A more complete understanding of famine is possible through analysis of the acquisition and distribution of food and the entitlement within different groups within society. Policy should be directed to the economic processes that affect a groups ability to procure food. The Bangladesh famine in 1974 could not have been predicted on the basis of food supply per capita because this measure was high in 1974. It was the floods and their destructive impact on rice production that left workers without the means to secure food. Panic led to hoarding which drove the prices up. US aid was delayed over political posturing. A similar example is given for the famine in Bengal in 1943 when the purchasing power of rural laborers real wages declined. The Ethiopian famine in 1973 was the result of a drought in Wollo province which did not substantially reduce national food production. Prevention of famine is possible by growing more food providing incentives to increase investment in agriculture diversification of production expansion of manufacturing investment in health care and education and increasing the purchasing power of the most famine-affected groups. Public employment programs could be directed to famine-affected groups as occurred in Maharashtra during the droughts of 1972-73. India after independence has been successful thus far in averting famine through this means. The approach relies in part on the market but also on politics. Chinas lack of political will allow their famine to continue for 3 years. Conflicts and wars affect famines. Famines can be averted only through luck in a dictatorship. A democracy more effectively guarantees attention to famine prevention. Famine reflects the failure in some economic and political structures.

The Economics of Life and Death

Identidad y violencia: La ilusión del destino

Description as Choice

In February 2008, the President of the French Republic, Nicholas Sarkozy, unsatisfied with the present state of statistical information about the economy and the society, asked, Joseph Stiglitz (President of the Commission), Amartya Sen (Advisor) and Jean Paul Fitoussi (Coordinator) to create a Commission, subsequently called "The Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress" (CMEPSP). The Commission's aim has been to identify the limits of GDP as an indicator of economic performance and social progress, including the problems with its measurement, to consider what additional information might be required for the production of more relevant indicators of social progress, to assess the feasibility of alternative measurement tools, and to discuss how to present the statistical information in an appropriate way (...).

https://hal-sciencespo.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01069384/document

Amartya Sen

Papers

Latest Supernova data in the framework of Generalized Chaplygin Gas model

The Economics of Life and Death

Identidad y violencia: La ilusión del destino

Description as Choice

The measurement of economic performance and social progress revisited: Reflections and Overview