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

3. Clarifications
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interventions (Cummins et al. 2003). The effect of one policy measure
such as improved child care facilities will be reflected hardly or not at all
in reported overall life satisfaction, even if such policies have significant
effects on the real opportunities of parents to organise their lives as they
think best — hence on their capabilities. Overall ‘happy life expectancy’
is, by contrast, well-suited for comparing the effects of fundamental
political and economic institutions on subjective wellbeing. This
emerges clearly from the work of Veenhoven (1996), which concentrates
on studies whereby the unit of analysis is the country. In other words,
Veenhoven mainly uses happy life expectancy as an indicator for macroanalysis.
The variables that emerge as the determinants of happy life
expectancy are therefore typically system variables such as the degree
of political freedom, or the presence of rule of law. But the quality
of life in a micro-situation (say, living in a particular community or
neighbourhood) is also influenced by many other variables.
The previous sections argued that happiness can’t be taken to represent
a person’s wellbeing for many purposes, including policy purposes. Yet
it would also be deeply counter-intuitive to say that happiness doesn’t
matter at all. It may be the right concept of wellbeing for other aims.
How, then, can happiness be given a proper place within the capability
approach?
The first possibility is to see happiness, or some more specific
capabilities that are closely related to the affective component of
subjective wellbeing, as one important dimension to be selected. In fact,
Amartya Sen has for many years argued that we could take ‘feeling
happy’ as one of the functionings to be selected. For example, Sen (2008,
26) wrote:
happiness, however, is extremely important, since being happy is a
momentous achievement in itself. Happiness cannot be the only thing
that we have reason to value, nor the only metric for measuring other
things that we value, but on its own, happiness is an important human
functioning. The capability to be happy is, similarly, a major aspect of
the freedom that we have good reason to treasure. The perspective of
happiness illuminates one critically important element of human living.