Session 1: 9.00-10.30
- ‘A sketch of an account of the human good’ - John Mackinnon
- ‘Capitalism and Human Flourishing’ – Des Gasper
- ‘The Roles of Human, Social and Cultural Resources in Adapting Livelihood Strategies to Meet Wellbeing Aspirations in Contemporary Thailand’ - Awae Masae
- Indigenous Peoples perspectives of well-being - Björn-Sören Gigler

Session 2: 14.00-15.30
- ‘Income, Expenditure and Debt in the Construction of Wellbeing: Does ‘Relationship’ Matter?’ - Zulfiqar Ali
- ‘The role of income in mitigating the relationship between resources and needs satisfaction: Evidence from Bangladesh’ – Andy McKay with Wan-Jung Chou
- ‘The Development of Capability Indicators and their Relation to Life Satisfaction’ – Paul Anand et al.
- Social Capabilities and Economic Development - Paul Auerbach (Reader, Kingston)

Session 3: 16.00-17.30
- ‘Ill-health, urban livelihoods and wellbeing in Kenya and Zambia’ - Carole Rakodi and Emmanuel Nkurunziza
- ‘Poverty Dynamics and Life Trajectories in Rural Bangladesh’ - Bob Baulch and Peter Davis
- ‘Destitution Pathways, Risks and Shocks: Case studies of households in the four rural sites of the Wellbeing in Developing Countries Research Project’ - Alula Pankhurst

Ill-health, urban livelihoods and wellbeing in Kenya and Zambia - Carole Rakodi and Emmanuel Nkurunziza

International Development Department, University of Birmingham. E-mail: [email protected]

It is alleged that ill-health, especially HIV-AIDS, has devastating effects on both the composition and livelihoods of many urban households and the social networks on which they draw for mutual support, with the result that poverty has deepened and become entrenched and social capital has deteriorated in African cities with high prevalence rates. The paper will present the outcomes of research that examined the livelihoods of urban households living in informal settlements in Nairobi, Lusaka and Ndola. Using a semi-random sample of households, and a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, the study attempted to assess the nature and extent of the impacts of ill-health on livelihood strategies and household wellbeing. A comparative analysis of the findings will be complemented by discussion of the conceptual and methodological issues that arose during the study. Urban Zambia is characterised by long duration chronic poverty – households have generally been poor for a long time, ‘churning’ appears to be limited and people have adapted to their poverty. In Nairobi, in contrast, urban households appear to be better off on the whole than in Zambia, but the economic situation in which they find themselves is also more volatile. These and other findings will be reported in the paper. Concern that studies which concentrate on households in crisis or under severe stress over-estimate the prevalence of shocks, household breakdown and deteriorating social capital led us to select semi-random samples for the household surveys, complemented by qualitative research. This approach has indeed provided a picture of ‘more typical’ households in low income informal settlements, but also encountered a number of methodological difficulties which will be discussed in the paper.

Link to paper available soon

Poverty dynamics and life trajectories in rural Bangladesh - Bob Baulch and Peter Davis

E-mail: [email protected], [email protected]

This paper presents interim findings from an ongoing longitudinal study into poverty dynamics and life trajectories in rural Bangladesh. The study integrates a quantitative panel survey of 1787 core households with a sub-sample of approximately 300 qualitative life history interviews with the aim of exploring the dynamics of poverty and the main drivers of change in people’s lives. In this paper, we report on the lessons we have learned in integrating the two qualitative and quantitative approaches, present some interim findings based on the data collected in two of the study sites (involving 847 households and 71 life history interviews), and discuss initial implications for policy aimed at reducing poverty and protecting the poorest. We draw particular attention to the importance of shocks and other intermittent events and the ‘lumpy’ expenditure patterns (involving the costs, inter alia, of medical treatment, dowries and weddings, or court cases) they create, which have long-term impacts on people’s life trajectories. Because of the periodic ‘one off’ nature of these events, the serious impacts which such ‘lumpy’ expenditures have on poor people’s lives tend to be missed in many household surveys. Crises associated with the division of households and other family disputes (which are often associated with land or dowries) are also very important sources of decline, even for richer households. As a consequence, many of the life trajectories we observed resemble either upward or downward ‘saw tooth’ patterns, rather than the smooth process of accumulation or sharp declines that are hypothesised by quantitative analysts. While we find it is sometimes difficult to reconcile qualitative and quantitative findings, we believe that a fully integrated and sequenced approach to the study of poverty dynamics helps to compensate for the blind spots of any single approach, and strengthens the overall research process. The process of understanding differences provided us with many opportunities for mutual learning, and the cross checking and triangulation of findings, and is helping us gain a deeper understanding of the opportunities and challenges that poor people face as they struggle to improve their lives.

Link to paper

Destitution Pathways, Risks and Shocks: Case studies of households in the four rural sites of the Wellbeing in Developing Countries Research Project - Alula Pankhurst

E-mail: [email protected]

This paper is based on household level data from four rural sites, and considers case studies of households that have moved into poverty and become trapped into destitution particularly over the past 10 years and the effects of social shocks on households’ status. The households included for analysis comprise households studied by the WeD research project, which showed a marked decrease in terms of livestock assets, consumption and self assessment between 1994 and 2004, selected by economists on the basis of the Ethiopian Rural Household Survey (ERHS) as well as households that were found to be very poor according to an asset index based on the WeD Resources and Needs Survey (RANS), and households that suffered from social shocks. The paper seeks to understand the factors that underlie processes of destitution and the dynamics of household downward trajectories using data from diaries, adult lives, household standard of living and contentment graphs and timelines, household profiles, histories, shocks, events, and relationships. It identifies routes of impoverishment, and describes the complexities of processes through analysing selected in-depth case studies to suggest a more subtle understanding of local realities and people’s individual and collective efforts to cope with impoverishment in the selected sites.

Full Paper

Income, Expenditure and Debt in the Construction of Wellbeing: Does ‘Relationship’ Matter? -
Zulfiqar Ali

E-mail: [email protected]

The paper discusses the role of income, expenditure and debt in the construction of wellbeing with special emphasis on the ‘relational’ dimensions. Income and expenditure patterns offer a powerful analysis of how people use resources at their disposal to meet specific needs and enhance their quality of life. The paper offers a statistical analysis of income and expenditure patterns to identify and examine sources of income and priority areas of expenditure. The analysis of income against expenditure reveals the level and extent of people’s indebtedness, and how important this is to achieve particular wellbeing outcomes. How people manage their debts becomes therefore an important focus of the paper. It also tries to seek to answer the question of ‘what does income, expenditure and debt tell us about the particular circumstances of the community in order to have an improved understanding of resources and needs relationship’. It also discusses variations and fluctuations in the composition of income, areas of expenditure, and debt management across sites, class and season. The analysis highlights the relational dimension of wellbeing as it identifies key actors in the provision of credit, as well as examines the terms or rules under which people interact with these actors. ‘Debt’ and ‘relational’ dimensions therefore play the central role in the analysis of this paper.

Link to paper available soon

A sketch of an account of the human good - John Mackinnon

E-mail: [email protected]

This paper summarises an account of the human good based on non-utilitarian foundations, arising from experience as an economist working on poverty reduction and dissatisfaction with existing conceptual frameworks. The human good is the property of human lives that gives us reason to be glad they exist. Even given an absolute ranking of possible worlds, any philosophical account of the human good will be an approximation, because no verbal account can capture all ethically relevant aspects of possible worlds. Different approximations are useful for different purposes and contexts. The account draws on both Greek and Jewish residues in English, and on both continental and Anglo-Saxon philosophy. The account is developed from a schema for describing lifestyles, which, like Aristotle, focuses on activity (not capability or virtue). A lifestyle is defined as a set of regular or occasional activities: the reasons for which they are undertaken: the attitudes held towards them: the experiences derived from them: and the beliefs held about them. A very important complication is that our activities at any moment can be described in many different ways. There is considerable empirical potential in this schema. Considering each dimension, it is suggested that better human lives have to do with activities performed for their own sake; with activities carried out in a certain spirit; and with positive experiences including pleasure, happiness and joy, but that the implication of taking these terms seriously is towards an ethic of attentiveness. It is also argued that important aspects of the human good are best thought of beyond the individual level.

Link to paper

The Roles of Human, Social and Cultural Resources in Adapting Livelihood Strategies to Meet Wellbeing Aspirations in Contemporary Thailand - Awae Masae

The adaptation of livelihood strategies is important if individuals and households in Thailand are to improve their living conditions and meet rising wellbeing aspirations in the context of population growth and increasing pressures on natural resources. Rapid changes in economy and society, and the development of physical infrastructure have enabled a considerable degree of flexibility in changing livelihood strategies at the local level, but it is important that other aspects of adaptation to development and change are considered. This paper draws on the research of WeD Thailand and uses empirical evidence from comprehensive field studies in seven communities in both the South and Northeast Regions of Thailand. The research confirms that most rural and peri-urban households can no longer depend on a single economic activity and that ‘pluriactivity’ is increasingly common. While farming activities continue to provide an important foundation for livelihoods in rural and peri-urban communities, the trend for young household members to seek non-agricultural or ‘modern sector’ work outside their communities is increasingly evident. This trend provides important insights for our understanding of the dynamics of wellbeing in contemporary Thailand. The research explores the resource profiles of households and individuals and identifies a number of key factors that differentiate them in the processes of adaptation to change. Social resources are important as these provide networks through which it is possible to make connections to and secure non-agricultural work. Additionally, strongly embedded social resources that appear in the form of strong ties with families and close relatives help in easing obstacles and hardship faced in some processes of livelihood adaptation. Human resource development is also highlighted as providing an important means of effectively adapting livelihood strategies to meet wellbeing aspirations. The educational improvement of young household members plays a significant role in them acquiring “good jobs” in the modern sector, as well as in broadening their opportunities for further learning for continued livelihood adaptation. However, it is also important to take account of the cultural dimensions of these processes. A good education is still highly regarded in much of Thai society and it can defer social status. As such, a ‘good education’ can be regarded as an important cultural resource in the context of change. But, cultural resources acquire their significance from their foundations in social values. These same systems of value affect a persons’ decisions about what “to do” or “not to do” in the process of livelihood adaptation. The study indicates that these decisions differ among different groups of people and this affects the ways in which they adapt to change. Differences in all of these resource dimensions, between regions, communities and household socio-economic categories are discussed and compared.

The role of income in mitigating the relationship between resources and needs satisfaction: evidence from Bangladesh – Andy McKay with Wan-Jung Chou

E-mail: [email protected]

Central to the WeD research framework is the relationship between the different categories of resources to which households have access and the extent to which they are able to satisfy basic and intermediate needs. Previous analysis based on the resources and needs questionnaire (RANQ) household survey conducted as part of the WeD project has provided significant evidence across the four countries in which the survey was conducted for the strong association between resources and the extent of need satisfaction (McGregor et al, 2007). Unsurprisingly there is a strong association between access to material and human resources and needs satisfaction; but social resources also play an important role, for example through participation in community activities or having relatives in positions of responsibility in public policy (government or NGO). There are different channels through which the relationship between resources and needs satisfaction is mitigated, both public and private. This paper is a preliminary investigation looking specifically the role of income in this process, by combining data from the RANQ survey with the results of a household income and expenditure survey conducted on a subset of the same households. Besides looking at the levels of household income in relation to the resources to which households have access (in descriptive terms and through a multivariate model), the paper also presents a profile of the different income sources to which households have access, also looking at the income combinations – and hence diversification – households are able to achieve. It considers the extent to which access to high earning income sources, as well as positive forms of income diversification, are related to the resources to which households have access, also asking to what extent social resources play an important role in this process. The analysis is primarily at the household level because this is the level at which income – and much of the resource data – is primarily collected. The paper also briefly considers the links between income levels and sources to which households and their members have access and their levels of needs satisfaction. Unsurprisingly this relationship between income and needs satisfaction is less strong, for various reasons including the intermediate role of expenditure and the importance of intra-household allocation issues. These issues need to be investigated more in future research, both based on further analysis of the quantitative data (to the extent that the survey data enables this) and through combination with qualitative research.

Capitalism and Human Flourishing – Des Gasper

Email: [email protected]

Much discussion considers how efficacious capitalism is with respect to some conception or conceptions of human flourishing. Two provisos are vital. First, we can too easily essentialize ‘capitalism’. Second, defences of capitalism are in terms of its instrumentality for far more than economic growth. It is also defended as being: a field of freedom; a forcing ground of innovation; a system for widespread involvement in decision making and hence for the growth of skills, knowledge and experience; a mechanism to reward effort and creativity; and a stable basis for political democracy. Each of these defences carries a potential for critical assessment too. After this clarification, I will focus more on which conception(s) of human flourishing capitalism promotes. Multiple conceptions of flourishing may exist under capitalism, but certain types of conception are promoted by and in harmony with it. Capitalism does not match existing theorised conceptions of well-being very well – pleasure/satisfaction, preference fulfilment, needs fulfilment, and so on. Its motor of unending restless expansion and destruction seems rather to fit an activist, productivist conception of well-being—activity itself is the good. Yet paradoxically, the typical conception of work under capitalism is as a cost. Extending capitalist accounting categories from an individual capitalist enterprise to an entire society has profound implications. The results it produces in discounting of future costs and benefits are well-known. I will examine the prior categorization of costs and benefits: the classification of paid work time as a cost, despite extensive evidence that for many people work is a major source of fulfilment. This categorization can produce major distortions in assessments and prioritizations. Can an alternative conceptualization of work be used for a more adequate treatment of human flourishing?

Full paper

The Development of Capability Indicators and their Relation to Life Satisfaction

Paul Anand, Dept of Economics, Open University, [email protected]

The paper is motivated by sustained interest in the capabilities approach to welfare economics combined with the purported paucity of economic statistics that measure capabilities at the individual level. Specifically, it takes a focal account of normatively desirable capabilities constitutive of a good life and operationalizes that account by means of a new survey instrument used to elicit information about capabilities at the individual level. The paper explores the extent to which these capabilities are co-variates of a life satisfaction measure of utility (‘happiness’) and finds that many are. Aspects of robustness are explored using standard socio-demographic variables as well as a relatively novel control for personality; in addition, a range of different models are explored and sub-population differences are examined.

Full paper

Social Capabilities and Economic Development

Paul Auerbach [email protected]

Development is different from economic growth. The capabilities approach of Amartya Sen yields important insights into the development process, but has been criticised for having an overly individualistic orientation that puts culture and social structure to one side. But even from a strictly economic perspective, individualistic approaches, including standard growth measures, are deficient for evaluating and measuring development in Sen’s sense - the expansion of capabilities. The standard economic growth measure precludes consideration of a broad range of factors which impinge upon the expansion of a nation’s capabilities such as income distribution and, most specifically, the positive externalities incumbent upon improvements in the stock of human assets from education; the latter improvements are likely to manifest themselves in ordinary growth statistics with a considerable lag. The presence of such lagged effects on growth is supported with historical and statistical evidence.

Full paper

Indigenous Peoples perspectives of well-being

Björn-Sören Gigler [email protected]

Development interventions have frequently failed to produce positive results or had negative effects on indigenous communities, due to important conceptual differences in the vision about development between development professionals and indigenous peoples. Whereby development agencies have frequently overemphasized the material and economic dimensions of development, indigenous peoples stress the importance of the non-income dimensions, including the social, cultural and spiritual aspects of well-being.
For the first time in Bolivia’s history the government of Evo Morales has based its National Development Plan on a holistic view of development which places the concept of people’s well-being in the center of its strategy. This raises the key question on how to define an indigenous peoples’ perspective of well-being?
This article—based on fieldwork carried out in the Bolivia between 2003 and 2006 — offers an analysis of indigenous peoples’ own perspectives on their individual and collective well-being. The article analyzes the different aspects and relationships among the social, economic, political, ecological, organizational and psychological dimensions of well-being. Using the results from the fieldwork in the city of El Alto, Tiahuanacu (highlands), Comarapa (valleys) and Concepción (lowlands), the article highlights the important difference between indigenous communities. The results also show that important difference within communities exists, whereby the views of indigenous women and youth are frequently not being adequately represented by the indigenous leadership. Thus an open question remains on how the central government can base its new National Development Plan on an indigenous perspective of well-being, given the vast cultural and social differences between and within indigenous communities.

Keywords: indigenous peoples, well-being, Bolivia, multiple dimensions of poverty, capability approach, social capabilities