Introduction to the special ACS issue of population research and policy review

This article presents a brief history of the American Community Survey's development. It also provides an overview of the structure and content of this special issue of Population Research and Policy Review.     

A Well-Being Indicator for the Italian Provinces

Social Indicators Research - In recent years, a significant number of papers has been published providing alternative measures of progress and well-being to Gross Domestic Product. Most of these...     

Exploring Wider Well-Being in the EU-15 Countries: An Empirical Application of the Stiglitz Report

We draw on the recommendations of the Stiglitz Report to select a set of economic and social variables that can be used to make cross-country comparisons of wider well-being. Using data for the EU-15 countries for 1999 and 2005, we show how three-way analysis can be used to extract synthetic information from a large data set to determine the main latent explanatory factors. In our case, we identify one dominant factor that we term the development profile, which is positively associated with the level of education outputs, technological progress and female labour market participation and negatively associated with the level of pollution. We rank the countries according to this factor and compare these rankings with simpler GDP comparisons and find that the two rankings are only weakly correlated.     

A Review Essay on the Measurement of Child Well-Being

Research on indicators related to the state of child well-being is a growing field that has experienced several changes over time. The growing supply of data on children, as well as the need to facilitate conclusions and to track trends, has led researchers to develop a number of child well-being indexes. This paper critically reviews the most recent and relevant child well-being indexes, i.e., the Index of Child and Youth Well-Being in the United States, the Child Well-being Index for the European Union, the Microdata Child Well-being Index, and the Deprivation Index. The study focuses primarily on the contributions and innovations the indexes have brought to the field, making a critical assessment of the methods used in the construction of the indexes and identifying their main limitations.     

On the Use of Shadow Prices for Sustainable Well-Being Measurement

Social Indicators Research - This paper tries to answer the following research question: can multidimensional concepts like well-being or sustainability be measured by using a single metric such as...     

The Subjective Well-Being of the Homeless, and Lessons for Happiness

The current study assessed the subjective well-being of a broad spectrum of homeless people. One-hundred-and-eighty-six homeless people from the streets of Calcutta (India), California, and a tent camp in Portland (Oregon) were interviewed, and responded to measures of subjective well-being. They answered questions about life satisfaction, satisfaction with various life domains, and their experience of positive and negative emotions. The mean rating of life satisfaction was slightly negative for both American samples but positive for the pavement dwellers in Calcutta. Satisfaction with self-related domains was positive, whereas satisfaction with material related domains was generally negative. Satisfaction with social domains appears to be the area of largest variation among the groups. We discuss the importance of social factors and basic material needs as they relate to overall subjective well-being of the homeless.     

Construction and Evolution of a Multidimensional Well-Being Index for the Spanish Regions

The study presented here is an attempt to calculate a comparative multidimensional index of economic well-being for the Spanish Autonomous Communities. Based on the dimensions of adjusted consumption, real wealth, equity and economic security per inhabitant, we obtain one relative index using a system of uniform weightings, a second resulting from a factor analysis and a third provided by a DEA analysis. We elaborate the index for the year 2000 and for 2006, thereby providing the relative results with greater robustness and permitting some conclusions to be reached with regard to the evolution over time of the index.     

Assessing Spirituality Through Personal Goals: Implications for Research on Religion and Subjective Well-Being

This article is concerned with the conceptual and methodological issues in the measurement of personal goals, with special emphasis on assessing spiritual and religious content in goals. The research literature on personal goals and subjective well-being is reviewed and synthesized. A comparison of several popular goal units in the research literature is included. Goal content and goal conflict have been reliably associated with well-being in past research. Spiritual or religious content in personal goals emerges as having an especially strong influence on well-being, and recent research on spiritual personal strivings and well-being is summarized. One of the primary purposes of the article is to consider conceptual and methodological challenges in the measurement of spirituality through personal goals. The advantages of a combined idiographic-nomothetic approach to measuring spirituality through purposive behavior are enumerated. A personal goals approach to studying spiritual motivation can make an important contribution to understanding how religiosity affects well-being, thus expanding religion's role in quality of life research.     

Empirical Research on Factors Related to the Subjective Well-Being of Chinese Urban Residents

Data from the China General Social Survey are used in order to investigate the factors that are related to the subjective well-being of Chinese urban residents. Factors predicting higher subjective well-being include female gender, high-income class, marriage, employment, fashionable consumption, less sense of relative deprivation, and party membership. Among these, the sense of relative deprivation has the strongest explanatory power. This suggests that the most direct threat to current subjective well-being in urban China is that its residents are living in a society with dramatic change, competition and increasing inequalities.     

Well-Being Outcomes in Bolivia: Accounting for the Effects of Ethnicity and Regional Location

This study assesses well-being differences in Bolivia. We specifically investigate whether ethnicity and regional location explain differences in housing quality, material wealth, sanitation, and educational achievement in Bolivia. We use the 1994 and 1998 DHS surveys of 9114 and 12109 cases, respectively, to test the study hypotheses, which predict that indigenous ethnicity and highland location negatively affect well-being. Results show that in both surveys, indigenous households had lower levels of housing quality, material wealth, and sanitation as compared to non-indigenous households. Indigenous heads of household also showed lower levels of education as compared to non-indigenous heads of household. Households located in the highlands showed lower levels of housing quality and sanitation in both 1994 and 1998. Highland location was a significant predictor of material wealth in the 1998 model but not in the 1994 one. Highland location was not a significant predictor of education in either the 1994 or 1998 models. Rural–urban location had the largest influence on well-being.     

Subjective Well-Being Approach to the Valuation of International Development: Evidence for the Millennium Development Goals

The subjective well-being approach to the valuation of international development is applied to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Results indicate that the rich countries have particular preference for education, healthcare, and housing; they are willing to accept compensation for a failure to meet the three targets by 2015. The poor countries view all the MDGs as important; they are willing accept compensation for a failure to achieve all the targets by 2015. Results also indicate that what the poor countries are willing to accept in terms of compensation matches the amount that would have been the pledge of 0.7% proportion of incomes of the rich countries for international aid. These findings imply that the MDGs can be accomplished at an affordable cost.     

DEA-Like Model and Common Weights Approach for the Construction of a Subjective Community Well-Being Indicator

A growing literature assesses the quality of life and well-being in geographically and/or politically divided areas. The paper proposes a new subjective well being (SWB) indicator based on residents’ satisfaction with environment and community, personal life and leisure activities. Our approach is a novel construction and new application of the well-being index, specifically, a DEA-like model with common weights under the benefit of the doubt (BoD) approach. This approach is very interesting in the SWB framework, allowing us to differentiate efficient individuals or estimate the relative importance of each domain in the SWB indicator. The results state that Personal life is the domain that most profoundly affects SWB index; it also differs in groups of individuals and geographic spaces.     

Measuring and Monitoring Poverty and Well-Being: A New Approach for the Synthesis of Multidimensionality

The aim of this paper is to introduce a new approach for the synthesis and analysis of multidimensional poverty and well-being indicators. Our general perspective is inspired by the theoretical foundations of the capability approach and sustainable human development paradigm. The new synthesis of indicators aims at monitoring outcomes of units of interest. Its defining features include: full sensitiveness, continuity, flexibility in substitution between dimensions, and the straightforward interpretation of the results. All these properties are obtained through a transparent and accountable process that is fully open to public scrutiny and reason (as suggested by Amartya Sen). The main contribution of this approach is that the degree of substitutability between dimensions can be directly linked to the general level of well-being of a person, which addresses the so-called “inescapable arbitrariness” issue discussed by Anand and Sen (Concepts of human development and poverty: a multidimensional perspective. Human Development Papers. UNDP, New York, 1997). The new synthesis proposed opens up new possibilities for different types of applications, including monitoring and evaluating development programmes.