▪ 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

Sir John Hicks (1904â€“89) was a leading economic theorist of the twentieth century, and along with Kenneth Arrow was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1972. His work addressed central topics in economic theory, such as value, money, capital and growth. An important unifying theme was the attention for economic rationality 'in time' and his acknowledgement that apparent rigidities and frictions might exert a positive role as a buffer against excessive fluctuations in output, prices and employment. This emphasis on the virtue of imperfection significantly distances Hicksian economics from both the Keynesian and Monetarist approaches. Containing contributions from distinguished theorists in their own right (including three Nobel Prize winners), this volume examines Hicks's intellectual heritage and discusses how his ideas suggest a distinct approach to economic theory and policy making. It will be of great interest to scholars and students of economic theory and the history of economic thought.

Markets, Money and Capital

The Pattern of British Enterprise in India 1854-1914: A Causal Analysis

Standard indicators of economic success leave out many aspects of development that are crucial to the well-being and freedom of citizens. We have to examine critically the ends as well as the means involved in development strategies. The impact of public education, health care, social security, etc. have to be seen both in terms of their direct effects on human capabilities and their indirect consequences on people's lives through raising productivity and earning powers, and through helping to reduce the burden, especially on young women, of high fertility. The two aspects have to be considered together.

What’s the Point of a Development Strategy?

I have been asked to speak on the subject of ``health in development''. I must take on the question Ð the very difficult question Ð as to how health relates to development. At one level the question admits of a simple answer: surely the enhancement of the health of the people must be accepted more or less universally to be a major objective of the process of development. But this elementary recognition does not, on its own, take us very far. We have to ask many other questions as well. How important is health among the objectives of development? Is health best promoted through the general process of economic growth which involves a rising real national income per capita, or is the advancement of health as a goal to be separated out from the process of economic growth seen on its own? Do all good things go together in the process of development, or are there choices to be made on the priorities to be chosen? How does our concern for equity reflect itself in the field of health and health care? I shall have to go into these issues also. However, to motivate what is perhaps the most basic issue, let me begin with the report of a very old conversation between a husband and a wife on the subject of earning money. It is, of course, not unusual for couples to discuss the possibility of earning more money, but a conversation on this subject from around the eighth century BC is of some special interest. As reported in the Sanskrit text Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, Maitreyee and her husband Yajnavalkya are discussing this very subject. But they proceed rapidly to a bigger issue than the ways and means of becoming more wealthy: How far would wealth go to help them get what they want? b Maitreyee wonders whether it could be the case that if ``the whole earth, full of wealth'' were to belong just to her, she could achieve immortality through it. ``No'', responds Yajnavalkya, ``like the life of rich people will be your life. But there is no hope of immortality by wealth''. Maitreyee remarks, ``What should I do with that by which I do not become immortal?''. Maitreyee's rhetorical question has been cited again and again in Indian religious philosophy to illustrate both the nature of the human predicament and the limitations of the material world. I have too much scepticism of other worldly matters to be led there by Maitreyee's worldly frustration, but there is another aspect of this exchange that is of rather immediate interest to economics and to understanding the nature of development. This concerns the relation between incomes and achievements, between commodities and capabilities, between our economic wealth and our ability to live as we would like. While there is a connection between opulence, on the one hand, and our health, longevity and other achievements, on the other, the linkage may or may not be very strong and may well be extremely contingent on other circumstances. The issue is not the ability to live forever on which Maitreyee Ð bless her soul Ð happened to concentrate, but the capability to live really long (without being cut off in one's prime) and to have a good life while alive (rather than a life of misery and unfreedom) Ð things that would be strongly valued and desired by nearly all of us. The gap between the two perspectives (that is, between an exclusive concentration on economic wealth, and a broader focus on the lives we can lead) is a major issue in the conceptualization of development. As Aristotle noted at the very beginning of the Nicomachean Ethics (resonating well with the conversation between Maitreyee and Yajnavalkya three thousand miles away): ``Wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else''. The usefulness of wealth lies in the things that it allows us to do Ð the substantive freedoms it helps us to achieve, including the freedom to live long and to live well. But this relation is neither exclusive (since there are significant other influences on our lives other than wealth) nor uniform (since the impact of wealth on our lives varies with other influences). It is as important to recognize the crucial role of wealth on living conditions and the quality of life, as it is to understand the qualified and contingent nature of this relationship. An adequate conception of development must go much beyond the accumulation of wealth and the growth of gross national product and other income-related variables. Without ignoring the importance of economic growth, we have to look well beyond it. The ends and means of development require examination and scrutiny for a fuller understanding of the development process; it is simply not adequate to take as V Keynote address to the Fifty-second World Health Assembly, Geneva, 18 May 1999. 1 Master of Trinity College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 1TQ, England. a In answering this Ð and related Ð questions, I draw on my forthcoming book, Development as freedom, to be published by Alfred Knopf, New York, in September 1999. The present keynote address also has considerable affinity with the keynote address ``Economic progress and health'' that I delivered to the Ninth Annual Public Health Forum at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, on 22 April 1999. b Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, II, iv, 2±3.

Amartya Sen

Papers

Markets, Money and Capital

The Pattern of British Enterprise in India 1854-1914: A Causal Analysis

What’s the Point of a Development Strategy?

Critical reflection: health in development

Commoditisation and the Standard of Living