▪ 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

Food and freedom

Is Inequality Bad For Our Health

Economics and the Family

The article discusses two main approaches to explaining violence in contemporary global society. Theories based on the culture of societies, among which the theory of the clash of civilizations is the most influential, attempt to explain violence by referring to antagonisms between collective identities. Theories of the political economy of power and inequality seek the sole cause of violence in economic factors. While each approach has some plausibility, both are inadequate on their own. When applied as sufficient explanations, they may distort our understanding in a way that undermines the possibility for both alleviating poverty and reducing conflict. The causal mechanisms are more complex than economic reductionism is capable of accounting for. Poverty and inequality are importantly linked to violence, but must be seen together with divisions between factors such as nationality, culture and religion. In turn, these factors must not be based on a false image of solitary identities and unavoidable antag...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/27640620.pdf

Violence, Identity and Poverty

This background note prepared for the 1995 version of the UN Development Programs "Human Development Report" 1) explores and makes specific recommendations about a methodology for developing a framework for "gender-equity-sensitive indicators" of achievements and freedoms; 2) considers the formulation and utilization of measures of gender equality and inequality; and 3) looks at the identification of efforts and contributions made by women that have gone unrecognized in standard national income and employment statistics. After an introductory section the paper develops equations that focus on gender differentials in achievement in areas such as literacy where the "potentials" of men and women do not differ. The next section considers equations that integrate a differential scaling into the general evaluative scheme of gender-equity-sensitive indexes to take into account cases where the "potentials" do differ such as mortality rates and life expectancy. Section 4 presents the case for differentiating the earnings of women and men and the next section offers a "corrected" version of the Human Development Index that considers the extent of social preference for equality and results in a "gender-related development index." After applying a more intense look to the type of information offered through use of the gender-equity-sensitive indicators and pointing out that this proposed methodology does not depend upon use of the classic human development indicators three appendices offer a more general discussion and proofs of the major results.

/pdf/gender-inequality-in-human-development-theories-and-4fjv1ztsu5.pdf

Amartya Sen

Papers

Food and freedom

Is Inequality Bad For Our Health

Economics and the Family

Violence, Identity and Poverty

Gender Inequality in Human Development: Theories and Measurement.