Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice The Capability Approach Re-Examined, 2017a

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3. Clarifications 127 mental state. In recent decades, this approach has been revitalised in ‘the happiness approach’, although empirical scholars prefer the term ‘subjective wellbeing’ (SWB). The happiness and SWB literatures have in recent years gone through a revival. On the empirical front, significant progress has been made in the last few decades by an international network of economists and psychologists, such as Andrew Clark, Ed Diener, Ada Ferrer-i-Carbonell, Bruno Frey, Richard Layard, Andrew Oswald, David Schkade, Bernard van Praag and Ruut Veenhoven. 10 Many of these scholars have concluded that sufficient scientific progress has been made for public policies to focus on subjective wellbeing. The measures of subjective wellbeing have been tested and refined, and much is supposedly known about the determinants of happiness that the government can influence. The happiness and SWB approaches are strongly focussed on empirical analysis and policy design, and this is also, therefore, the main lens that will be used in the comparison with the capability approach, although we will very briefly discuss the comparison between the theoretical happiness approach and the capability approach. From the perspective of the capability approach, the happiness approach raises three questions: First, what is the happiness approach, exactly? Second, what are its strengths and weaknesses? Third, what role can happiness play in the capability approach? 11 The happiness approach is based on the assumption that wellbeing (or quality of life) is constituted by the subjective experiences of a person, expressed in terms of utility, happiness, or satisfaction. Satisfaction can be expressed in terms of overall satisfaction with life, or satisfaction within particular domains, such as income, health, family relationships, labour, and so forth. 10 See, for example, Veenhoven (1996); Kahneman et al. (2006); Schkade and Kahneman (1998); Diener and Seligman (2004); Van Praag and Ferrer-i-Carbonell (2004); Ferrer-i-Carbonell (2005); Ferrer-i-Carbonell and Gowdy (2007); Frey and Stutzer (2002). 11 This section draws on, yet also modifies and expands, the analysis presented in Robeyns and Van der Veen (2007, 33–42).
128 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice In the happiness approach, life satisfaction is understood as a concept that combines two components: how we normally feel in everyday life — the affective or ‘hedonistic’ component — and how we judge the degree to which our preferences and aspirations in life have been realised — the cognitive component. In order to find out how ‘happy’ a person is, respondents are asked, for example, to rate how satisfied they are with their life on a scale from 1 to 10 (to measure the cognitive component) and to report their mood at particular moments of the day, sometimes even with the aid of a buzzer set to go off at random times (to measure the affective component). In another method, the respondents are asked to imagine the worst possible life and to give that life a value of 0, to imagine the best possible life and give that a value of 10, and then to rate their own life on a scale from 0 to 10. The view in the happiness literature is that overall life satisfaction should be adopted as the official ‘policy guide’, and the task of the government is to aim for the highest possible average level of life satisfaction (Hagerty et al. 2001; Layard 2011). For comparisons in the long term, Ruut Veenhoven also proposes to measure the quality of life based on ‘happy life expectancy’. This is an index obtained from multiplying life expectancy in a country with average overall life satisfaction (Veenhoven 1996). Is the happiness approach, or the SWB approach, the best basis for thinking about wellbeing and the quality of life, especially against the background of policy design? The happiness approach certainly has a number of attractive features. Firstly, it puts the human being centre stage, rather than focusing on the means that human beings use to improve their quality of life. Hence the approach satisfies the core criterion from module A that means and ends should not be conceptually confused. Secondly, in considering the means to happiness, the subjective approach is not limited to material means, which is the major shortcoming of the dominant economic empirical methods. Income has only a limited (but not unimportant) role to play in generating happiness. In conclusion, the happiness approach does have some significant strengths, but it also gives rise to some concerns. We will briefly discuss the main theoretical problem, and then look in more detail at the worries raised for empirical research and policy making.
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Contents Acknowledgements 3 1. Intr
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3. Clarifications 89 3.1 Introducti
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4.7 What about power and political
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Acknowledgements In 1998, when I st
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Acknowledgements 5 the capability a
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1. Introduction Many people who en
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1. Introduction 9 capability approa
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1. Introduction 11 Moreover, it bri
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1. Introduction 13 Countries Outsi
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1. Introduction 15 capabilities of
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1. Introduction 17 their collaborat
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1. Introduction 19 This book has a
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