Measures Of Individual Well-being Research Articles

Did Elijah Muhammad's Message To the Black Man Uplift Adherents? The Treatment Effects of Membership In The Nation of Islam

Established in 1930, the Nation of Islam (NOI) offered uplift to the wellbeing of Black Americans. Its charismatic leader, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, articulated how membership in the NOI would improve the well-being of Black Americans. We consider the impact of NOI membership on several measures of individual well-being. Using data from the first wave of the National Survey of Black Americans, we appeal to the Rubin Causal Framework to estimate the treatment effect of being a member of the NOI on certain outcomes: e.g., overall socioeconomic status, self-employment, self-esteem, and health status. To enable causal interpretation, we estimate the treatment parameters by matching on observable covariates that are not affected by the treatment. Treatment parameter estimates suggest that, at least in the late 1970s, had the NOI been able to expand its membership, new adherents would have benefited from enhanced Black identity, a higher likelihood of not having common health problems, and a lower likelihood of hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and incarceration. Our findings suggest that the NOI could have had a substantial impact on the individual well-being of Black Americans if it were larger, and that NOI-like organizations can help mitigate race-based inequalities in well-being.

Occupational Wellness and its Determinants among Cocoa Farmers in South-West Nigeria

Occupational wellness is essential for cocoa farmers’ health and productivity since a significant proportion of their time is spent at work. It is a measure of individual wellbeing, focusing on the psychosocial status as it relates to individuals’ profession. This study assessed occupational wellness and its determinants among cocoa farmers in the South-West region of Nigeria. A descriptive cross-sectional study design was used to study 244 cocoa farmers in Ekiti and Osun States. Also, the local government areas were purposively selected as being well known for cocoa production. A semi-structured interviewer-administered questionnaire was used to obtain data on sociodemographic characteristics and occupational wellness. Occupational wellness was scored based on their response to eight sets of questions with a 4-point Likert scale response. Association between the farmers’ characteristics and occupational wellness was assessed using Mann Whitney U and Kruskal Wallis tests. Determinants of occupational wellness were assessed using quantile regression. The median occupational wellness score was 25.0 (IQR = 24.0 – 29.0). People of low educational status had higher occupational wellness scores, p < 0.001. Significant associations were also observed between other characteristics like sex, religion, marital status, geographical location, farm ownership, and occupational wellness. Farm ownership was also a significant determinant of occupational wellness. The occupational wellness status is due to a complex mix of occupational factors, sociodemographic factors, and geographic factors. Health promotion will be key in maintaining a balance of the mix to enhance the general wellbeing and productivity of the farmers.

A model of ambition, aspiration and happiness

Can payoffs buy happiness? People's perception on their current payoffs depends on the social context and the historical context. This paper develops a utility model that captures both effects of interpersonal comparisons and self-adaptations in evaluating time streams of payoffs. Moment utility represents subjective happiness over payoffs, which hinges on three state variables: retaliation, aspiration, and ambition. Retaliation incorporates insights of fairness thinking and formulates people's psychological reaction on relative payoff comparisons interpersonally. Aspiration displays habit formation that formulates people's self-adaptation on their own history of payoffs. Ambition captures the net influence of the past situations to the present. Over a time window, our model delivers a new measure of individual well-being under both social and historical contexts.

THE WELLBEING EFFECT OF COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT. SOME MEASUREMENT AND MODELING ISSUES1

Abstract The two interconnected methodological tasks – measurement and modeling – become especially challenging in the context of exploration of the interaction between the local community development and individual wellbeing. In this paper, the preliminary results illustrate usefulness of an analytical framework aimed to assess an impact of the local development on individual wellbeing through multilevel modeling, accounting for spatial effects is. To this aim, a dual measurement system is employed with data from two independent sources: (i) the Local Data Bank (LDB) for calculating a multidimensional index of local deprivation (MILD), and to capture variations in geographically embedded administrative units, communes (the country’s finest division), and (ii) the Time Use Survey data to construct the U-index (‘unpleasant’), considered as a measure of individual wellbeing. Since one of the implications of the main hypothesis on the interaction between community development and individual wellbeing was the importance of ‘place’ and ‘space’ (effect of neighborhood and proximity), a special emphasize has been put on spatial effects, i.e. geographic clusters and spatial associations (autocorrelation, dependence The evidence that place and space matter for this relationship provides support for validity of both multilevel and spatial approaches (ideally, combined) to this type of problems.

Putting measures of individual well-being to use for ex-ante policy evaluation

Most studies using microsimulation techniques have considered the effect of potential reforms on the income distribution. However, it has become increasingly recognized, both at the academic and political level, that focusing purely on income provides a limited picture of social progress. We illustrate how ex-ante policy evaluation can be performed in terms of richer concepts of individual well-being, such as subjective life satisfaction and equivalent incomes. Our analysis makes use of EUROMOD, the EU-wide tax-benefit microsimulation model, along with 2013 EU-SILC data for Sweden, which for the first time provides information on life satisfaction. Our results show that the effect of potential reforms varies widely depending on the well-being concept used in the evaluation. We discuss the normative questions that are raised by this finding.

Relative Economic Position and Subjective Well-Being in a Poor Society: Does Relative Position Indicator Matter?

Concern for relative income (or status in general) may have important implications for poverty and individual well-being. This paper examines the impact of relative economic position on individual’s level of well-being among poor communities in rural Ethiopia. The analysis uses a self-reported measure of overall life-evaluation as a measure of individual well-being. Despite the fact that well-being is multidimensional, the impact of non-money metric measures of relative economic position on individual well-being has not been given a lot of attention in the literature. In this study, relative economic position is measured using consumption data, asset index, and respondent’s own perception of relative wealth. The asset index captures the non-monetary dimensions of economic welfare, including education, physical assets, and social capital. We use data from the 2004 and 2009 waves of the Ethiopia Rural Household Survey and employ a multilevel modelling technique to account for individual and group level heterogeneity in our empirical analysis. We find no significant relationship between individual well-being and relative economic position measured with in consumption terms. In contrast, we do find a significant negative impact of relative position on individual well-being when we use asset indices and respondent’s own perception of relative wealth to measure relative economic position. Our findings suggest that when individuals compare themselves with others, they evaluate various aspects of their life, including their financial conditions, asset holdings, and social relations, which are hardly captured by consumption or income data in many poor countries.

Does hurricane risk affect individual well-being? Empirical evidence on the indirect effects of natural disasters

While natural disasters might have numerous direct (typically negative) effects, the effect of an increase of natural disaster risk on individual well-being is often neglected. In this paper we study the effects of natural disaster risk on self-reported happiness and life satisfaction at the example of tropical storms. Combining several waves of the integrated European/World Values Survey and appropriate storm data we find a systematically negative effect of hurricane risk on both measures of individual well-being in relatively poor countries in which the population has little possibilities to take protective measures against storms. In highly developed countries, we find a systematic negative and much smaller effect only for life satisfaction. Altogether we conclude that disaster risk tends to play a role for individual well-being, especially on low levels of development.

Exploring Social Quality and Community Health Outcomes: An Ecological Model.

Quality of life is widely used as a measure of individual well-being in developed countries. Social quality (SQ), however, describes how favorable the socioenvironmental components are that impact the life chance of an individual. Despite the associations between SQ, including institutional capacity and citizen capacity, and other community indicators, the impact of SQ on community health status has not been fully examined. This study investigated the interrelationships among institutional capacity, citizen capacity, and their associations with community-level health indicators such as mortality and suicide among 230 local governments in South Korea. Under the principles of conceptual suitability, clarity, reliability, consistency, changeability, and comparability, a total of 81 SQ indicators were collected, and 19 indicators of the 81 indicators were selected. The 19 indicators were transformed by the imputation of missing values, standardization, and geographic information system transformation. It was found that the health outcome of local government was superior as social welfare, political participation, and education were higher. According to the result of the regression analysis based on the regional type, social welfare had the most influence on the health level of local government in both metropolises and small-/medium-sized cities. In addition, education and political participation had a positive effect on the health indicator of local metropolis government. However, SQ indicators did not have any meaningful influence at the county level. Therefore, small- and medium-sized cities need to promote the collective health of the local government through improving social welfare, and metropolises need to consider the complex relationship among other indicators while increasing the level of social welfare and education. Meanwhile, counties need to develop health indicators that reflect aged population characteristics and social environment of rural areas. Therefore, fundamental social welfare benefits need to be guaranteed while improving SQ capacities in order to improve the health status of local governments.

On the Cross-Country Relationship between Poverty, Income Distribution, and Development

The familiar cross-country relationship between the incidence of poverty and the level of development is derived via a three-stage process, which avoids restrictive parametric assumptions regarding the shape of income distribution. It starts with the relationship within a given household survey data set between the incidence of poverty and the mean value of the ratio m/z, where m is a measure of individual well-being and z is the critical value of m relative to which the poor are identified. It is then shown that there is a one-to-one relationship between this relationship and the Lorenz curve. In the second stage of our analysis we establish inter alia a sufficient condition for the incidence of poverty to be less in whichever of any two countries the average value of m/z is smaller. These conditions are tested empirically. Conditions under which this average value will be proportional to the Gross Domestic Product per capita (GDP) are identified in the third stage. Both the second and third stages of our procedure provide opportunities for improving on the 'explanation' of poverty offered by the GDP per capita. In particular, the Sen Index apparently provides a much better way of accounting for differences in the incidence of poverty across countries. The importance of economic growth for reducing poverty should be qualified accordingly.

Harsanyi, Sen ou Bentham

Résumé Les économistes de la santé débattent des fondements normatifs de l’évaluation économique en opposant une approche welfariste (le bien-être social est défini à partir des seules fonctions d’utilité) à une approche extra-welfariste inspirée de celle des capacités de Sen. Nous participons à ce débat en étudiant l’aptitude de trois théories du bien-être individuel (le bien-être comme satisfaction des préférences, comme bonheur ressenti ou selon les capacités au sens de Sen) à refléter la valeur de l’autonomie et à permettre une gestion satisfaisante des conséquences de l’adaptation psychologique lors de l’évaluation des états sociaux. Notre analyse met en évidence les limites des mesures du bien-être conçu en tant qu’utilité de décision ou expérimentée face à ces deux contraintes. Elle présente et discute, en mêlant des aspects conceptuels et opérationnels, la possibilité de les prendre en compte à l’aide de représentations du bien-être individuel s’appuyant sur la notion de capacité et introduisant l’utilité expérimentée parmi les fonctionnements valables.

Effects of Own and Spousal Disability on Loneliness Among Older Adults

This study examines the effects of own and spousal disability on social and emotional loneliness among married adults aged 65 and older. Data from 710 men and 379 women of a Dutch community sample were analyzed with linear regression analyses. For men, only their wives' disability was related to higher levels of social loneliness, whereas for women mainly their own disability was related to higher levels of social loneliness. Own disability and spousal disability were related to higher levels of emotional loneliness among both men and women. Effects of disability remained unaffected after controlling for characteristics of the social network and the marital relationship. Findings underscore the importance of considering effects of both spouses' health on measures of individual well-being. Also, the traditional division of social roles makes older married men relatively vulnerable to social loneliness when their wives suffer from disability.

Income and well-being: an empirical analysis of the comparison income effect

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the importance of ‘comparison income’ for individual well-being or happiness. In other words, the influence of the income of a reference group on individual well-being is examined. The main novelty is that various hypotheses are tested: the importance of the own income, the relevance of the income of the reference group and of the distance between the own income and the income of the reference group, and most importantly the asymmetry of comparisons, i.e. the comparison income effect differing between rich and poor individuals. The analysis uses a self-reported measure of satisfaction with life as a measure of individual well-being. The data come from a large German panel known as GSOEP. The study concludes that the income of the reference group is about as important as the own income for individual happiness, that individuals are happier the larger their income is in comparison with the income of the reference group, and that for West Germany this comparison effect is asymmetric. This final result supports Dusenberry's idea that comparisons are mostly upwards.

Individual and dyadic predictors of family functioning in a chinese context

The links between individual well-being and dyadic relationships and family functioning were examined in 378 Chinese parents and their children at two time points. Results showed that measures of individual well-being (life satisfaction and midlife crisis in parents, and adolescent life purpose, esteem, hopelessness, and general psychological health) and dyadic relationships (marital adjustment, marital satisfaction, parent-child relationship, and parent-adolescent conflict) were concurrently and longitudinally related to parents' and children's views of family functioning. Relative to measures of individual well-being, dyadic measures were found to exert stronger influence on family functioning perceived by parents and adolescents.