Disentangling the Circularity in Sen’s Capability Approach: An Analysis of the Co-Evolution of Functioning Achievement and Resources

There is an ambiguity in Amartya Sen’s capability approach as to what constitutes an individual’s resources, conversion factors and valuable functionings. What we here call the “circularity problem” points to the fact that all three concepts seem to be mutually endogenous and interdependent. To econometrically account for this entanglement we suggest a panel vector autoregression approach. We analyze the intertemporal interplay of the above factors over a time horizon of 15 years using the BHPS data set for Great Britain, measuring individual well-being in functionings space with a set of basic functionings, comprising “being happy”, “being healthy”, “being nourished”, “moving about freely”, “being well-sheltered” and “having satisfying social relations”. We find that there are indeed functionings that are resources for many other functionings (viz. “being happy”) while other functionings (“being well-sheltered” and “having satisfying social relations”) are by and large independent, thus shedding light on a facet of the capability approach that has been neglected so far.     

Accounting for family background when designing optimal income taxes: a microeconometric simulation analysis

We develop an extended version of Roemer’s Equality of Opportunity (EOp) criterion that accounts for income differentials between as well as within types, where types are defined by circumstances that are beyond people’s control (parental education, in this study). A microeconometric model of labour supply in Italy is employed to identify income tax-transfer rules that are optimal according to the extended EOp criterion. Overall, the results do not conform to the perhaps common expectation that the more conventional Equality of Outcome criterion is more supportive of “interventionist” (redistributive) policies than the EOp approach.     

The World Social Situation: Development Challenges at the Outset of a New Century

World social development has arrived at a critical turning point. Economically advanced nations have made significant progress toward meeting the basic needs of their populations; however, the majority of developing countries have not. Problems of rapid population growth, failing economies, famine, environmental devastation, majority-minority group conflicts, increasing militarization, among others, are pushing many developing nations toward the brink of social chaos. This paper focuses on worldwide development trends for the 40-year period 1970–2009. Particular attention is given to the disparities in development that exist between the world’s “rich” and “poor” countries as well as the global forces that sustain these disparities. The paper also discusses more recent positive trends occurring within the world’s “socially least developed countries” (SLDCs), especially those located in Africa and Asia, in reducing poverty and in promoting improved quality of life for increasing numbers of their populations.     

Labor supply responses and welfare effects from replacing current tax rules by a flat tax: Empirical evidence from Italy, Norway and Sweden

This paper employs a microeconometric framework to examine the labor supply responses and the welfare effects from replacing current tax systems in Italy, Norway and Sweden by a flat tax on total income. The flat tax rates are determined so that the tax revenues are equal to the revenues as of 1992. The flat tax rates vary from 23 per cent in Italy, 25 per cent in Norway, to 29 per cent in Sweden. In all three countries the labor supply responses decline sharply with pre-reform disposable income. The results show that the efficiency costs of the current tax systems relative to a flat tax may be rather high in Norway and much lower, but positive, in Italy and Sweden. In all three countries “rich” households – defined by their pre-tax-reform income – tend to benefit (in terms of welfare) more than “poor” households. In Italy and Sweden a majority will lose from a shift to a flat tax, while in Norway a majority is predicted to win. Received: 19 May 1998/Accepted: 02 July 1999     

Fraught with Ambivalence: Reproductive Intentions and Contraceptive Choices in a Sub-Saharan Fertility Transition

Demographic studies that search for signs of fertility transition in sub-Saharan Africa rarely examine the complex gamut of individual aspirations and misgivings, hopes and frustrations, failures and triumphs that accompany the emerging declines of fertility rates in the subcontinent. This study draws upon qualitative data collected in peri-urban areas of Maputo, Mozambique’s capital and largest metropolis, to explore contradictory meanings and feelings surrounding changes in fertility intentions and contraceptive choices. It argues that although changes in these two aspects of reproductive life are interrelated, they are predicated on distinct types and configurations of external pressures and psychological apparatus, which is often manifested as a puzzling disjunction between fertility preferences and contraceptive use. This disjunction can be further reinforced by persistent gender divisions in reproductive views and strategies. Informal social interaction plays an important role in building societal consensus over fertility matters, but because such interaction deals with reproductive intentions and contraceptive use through largely different mechanisms, it may also help accentuate the intentions-contraception disjunction. This study’s findings therefore call upon both researchers and policymakers to attend more closely to the multidimensionality of fertility transitions in sub-Saharan societies and specifically to the complexities underlying such popular notions as “unmet need for family planning,” “spacing” versus “limiting” births, or “spousal communication” on reproductive matters.     

Where are the Children? Children’s Role in Measuring and Monitoring Their Well-Being

This paper starting point is the dynamic changes and shifts in the field of measuring and monitoring children’s well being. In the paper we focus on one specific change – the “new” role of children in measuring and monitoring their own well being – a role of active participants rather then of subjects for research. We then turn to present based on a sequence of arguments and findings what role children should carry in measuring and monitoring their well being. Followed by a presentation of five possible roles for children involvement in such studies and in regard to the specific roles existing knowledge from various studies and suggested directions for future research are presented. The danger of children’s involvement is such studies are then discussed followed by a presentation of what do children think on this all issue. Finally we conclude that the potential involved in children’s involvement is much greater then the hazards.     

Internet Service Cognition and Use,and Their Promotion of Quality of Life in Taiwan

The “e-Taiwan Program” implemented by Taiwan government is aimed at showing the e-advantage in people’s life and bring about essential benefits. This research follows the e-Life indicators of the Quality of Life measurement system developed by “e-Taiwan Program”, which including four major dimensions of e-Daily Life, e-Business, e-Government, Broadband to home. By using telephone interview, 3,024 respondents aged 15 and above were validly interviewed. In Taiwan, the cognition of e-Life service is high, and 71.4% of e-Life services have been well heard of by residents. Although the penetration of e-Life services is not as high as the degree of cognition; there are 31.3% of the e-Life services promoted by “e-Taiwan Program” has been used. The average score of overall quality of life promotion of e-Life is 63.9. It represents that, in general, people think their life has been slightly improved by e-Life services. Through stepwise regression analysis models, we found that most of Internet services usages will bring highly positive influence on the quality of life promotion, but the cognition and usage in e-Government usually bring negative influence on the quality of promotion.     

Child support and non-resident fathers’ contact with their children

The paper presents a model of a non-resident father’s child support and contact with his child, which combines the public good treatment of “child quality” with “trade” in father–child contact time in a setting of non-cooperative interaction. It predicts that father’s income and mother’s non-labour income should have exactly the same effect on the frequency of father–child contact if he chooses to make lump sum payments to the mother. If he does not or there is a binding child support payment order, they have effects opposite in direction. A higher binding support order reduces father–child contact but may well raise “child quality”.

Childhood and Capability Deprivation in Germany: A Quantitative Analysis Using German Socio-Economic Panel Data

Child poverty has been widely discussed in Germany since the publication of the third official Poverty and Wealth Report of the German government in 2008 which—inter alia—focused on the situation of children and families. However, child poverty is not only caused by low household incomes and impacts of child poverty are not only restricted to financial consequences. The capability approach takes into account this multidimensionality of well-being and poverty of children. It conceptualizes human well-being as not only depending on financial means but also gives the same importance to the personal and social conversion factors which determine how far financial means can be converted into personal well-being. Before 2008 the capability approach had only been applied to the well-being of adults in Germany, but not specifically to the well-being of children. However, there are several reasons why a capability analysis for children will differ from a capability analysis for adults. Adults’ capability sets comprise dimensions that are less relevant for small children while other valuable capabilities have to be added. Furthermore the capability set depends to a large extent on the age of the child. The paper focuses on a multidimensional poverty analysis in the capability perspective of 5–6 years old children. In the domains of “Education/Leisure”, “Health”, “Social Participation” and “Income” child poverty is measured by predefined indicators. The relationship to the social and personal conversion factors of the caretakers is then evaluated. Additionally, a multidimensional poverty measure is analyzed.     

Immigration,ethnicity, and the loss of white students from California public schools, 1990–2000

This article investigates whether and the extent to which “white flight” from Hispanic and Limited English Proficient (LEP) students has been occurring in California’s public schools and further, examines the level (school or district) on which “white flight” may operate. Using school-level administrative data from the California Department of Education from 1990 to 2000, we estimate exponential growth rate models of white enrollment with school-level fixed effects. The results shed light on the implications of immigration for school segregation in the United States. The analysis indicates that white enrollment declined in response to increases in the number of Spanish-speaking LEP and Hispanic students, and that “white flight” from LEP or Hispanic students occurred more at the district than the school level in the case of primary schools, and at the school level for secondary schools. In addition, schools with higher percentages of Spanish LEP students in the school than the district, and with higher percentages in the district relative to the county, experienced greater losses in white enrollments than other schools, thus suggesting that higher levels of segregation in the wider metropolitan area accelerate white flight.     

Population Policies in Developed Countries: How do Australia’S Policies Compare?

This paper compares international population policies with respect to population growth, fertility and immigration, and discusses current attitudes to the demographic situation in developed countries. Only Canada, the United States and Australia have a policy of continuing high immigration, and Australia’s migrant intake per head of population is considerably higher than for the other two countries. An emerging philosophy in Britain and Europe is a focus on “child quality” and the well-being of a near stationary population, rather than continued population growth. There is also an awareness that immigration is not a solution to the ageing “problem” and that there are more efficient non-demographic means of coping with an older population.     

Quality of Life as a Social Representation in China: A Qualitative Study

This study explores the meaning of quality of life (QOL) in China from the perspective of social representations. The data were collected by open-ended individual interviews with 16 ordinary Chinese people. The study shows that social thinking about QOL in Chinese society is activated in five critical domains of life: health, family, work, social relations and the natural environment. Meanwhile, “having” and “being”, the two antinomic, yet dialogical interdependent, interpretive repertoires, have an overarching generative and normative power over the discourse about QOL. They permeate and underpin the different domains of life. Dominated by an “economic logic”, the “having” repertoire constructs these life domains through a set of economic consequences and posits them as resources leading to material possessions. While dominated by an “existential logic”, the “being” repertoire confesses existential meanings to the same life domains, and emphasises the joy derived from them. Thereby, it infers that QOL as a social representation is generated from, and organised around, a central thema of “having” and “being”.     

Measuring Accessibility for Inclusive Development: A Census Based Index

State is often involved in the challenging process of judicious allocation and apportioning of resources for an inclusive growth through creating infrastructure and ensuring accessibility- the “ability of the people to reach and engage in opportunities and activities”. The issue at the heart of the debate concerns with the “opportunities” available in a geographic area and the inhabitants’ use of those opportunities in terms of their “behaviour”. The extant literature suggests that the dominant component of the accessibility is mobility infrastructure. The present paper argues that the impact of the human development and the information infrastructure should also be considered. This paper uses the Indian census data of 2001 and develops the methodology for creating an accessibility index for a geographic unit. The paper also discusses the use of the accessibility index (AI) as a tool for evaluating the efficacy of a public policy initiative towards decreasing the exclusion of geographic units. Validation of the tool is done using the patient inflow data at a large charitable hospital in Central India and household level employment data from National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS).     

Theorizing indicators

Policymakers and social theorists have increasingly come to rely on social indicators to guide their decisions and theories. Social indicators are also useful in bridging theory and empirical research as well as the traditional gap between policymaking and social theory. The concept of social indicators covers interpretation of cultural signs, simple statistical measures, and complex statistical indexes related to sets of domains. The article views the development of child well-being indicators as central not only in the social welfare field, but as an indicator of future societal conditions, given that children’s lives are especially sensitive to social change. The paper addresses the development of indicators of children’s well-being, arguing that the expansion of the field, the complexity of new domains and indicators, and the position of children as “being” and “becoming”, they are citizens of the present as well as being socialized for the future, illustrates that the next crucial step for the field is to further elaborate theories and models.     

On Nonstable and Stable Population Momentum

This article decomposes total population momentum into two constituent and multiplicative parts: “nonstable” momentum and “stable” momentum. Nonstable momentum depends on deviations between a population’s current age distribution and its implied stable age distribution. Stable momentum is a function of deviations between a population’s implied stable and stationary age distributions. In general, the factorization of total momentum into the product of nonstable and stable momentum is a very good approximation. The factorization is exact, however, when the current age distribution is stable or when observed fertility is already at replacement. We provide numerical illustrations by calculating nonstable, stable, and total momentum for 176 countries, the world, and its major regions. In short, the article brings together disparate strands of the population momentum literature and shows how the various kinds of momentum fit together into a single unifying framework.     

Cultural Consumption Patterns in South Africa: An Investigation of the Theory of Cultural Omnivores

Contrary to Bourdieu’s theory (Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press (1984)) that cultural consumption of so-called “high” versus popular culture is determined by socio-economic class, Peterson (Poetics 21:243–258, 1992; Poetics 33:257–282, 2005) finds that higher income and education groups are more likely to be “cultural omnivores”—consumers of a wide variety of both high and popular cultural goods. Omnivores were also found to be much less likely to exclude other cultures and to be more open to, and tolerant of, the views of others than those with narrower cultural tastes, called “cultural univores”. This article investigates the omnivore/univore hypothesis in a South African context, using survey data collected from 500 attendees of live theatre performances at the National Arts Festival in 2008. Multiple correspondence analysis (also called perceptual mapping) shows an interesting intermediate state between Boudieu-like high culture univores and Peterson omnivores, which could have interesting implications for the development of social tolerance in multi-cultural South Africa.     

Critical factors for improving social sustainability of urban renewal projects

This study reviews the sustainable urban design concept and identifies critical factors for enhancing social sustainability of urban renewal projects. Through a questionnaire survey carried out in Hong Kong, the opinions of architects, planners, property development managers, and local citizens were sought and evaluated. The results derived from factor analysis indicated that certain design features should be incorporated for achieving social sustainability. “Satisfaction of Welfare Requirements”, “Conservation of Resources & the Surroundings”, “Creation of Harmonious Living Environment”, “Provisions Facilitating Daily Life Operations”, “Form of Development” and “Availability of Open Spaces” were believed to be the significant underlying factors for enhancing social sustainability of local urban renewal projects.

Does Individual Secularism Promote Life Satisfaction? The Moderating Role of Societal Development

This study was designed to examine the link between values and life satisfaction, examining the role of culture in this process. Secularism was found to predict life satisfaction scores at a small but statistically very significant level in persons from all nations participating in all four waves of the World Values Survey. The direction and strength of this relationship was moderated, however, by the country’s human development index—people in low-HDI countries consistently showed a negative relationship between secularism and happiness across the four waves of the WVS; people in high-HDI countries initially showed a negative relationship between secularism and happiness in Waves 1 and 2, but a positive relationship between secularism and happiness in Waves 3 and 4. These results thus appear to support a “cultural fit” hypothesis consistently for persons in low HDI countries, and a transition towards a “cultural fit” for persons in HDI countries as data was collected across the four waves. By Wave 4, it is clear that citizens who endorse values consistent with their county’s developmental trajectory are more satisfied with their lives. This study demonstrates the amenability of the data collected by the World Values Survey to individual-level analysis of psychological process that is responsive to the shaping influence of variations in their nation’s societal characteristics.     

Estimating a Dynamic Model of Sex Selection in China

High ratios of males to females in China, which have historically concerned researchers (Sen 1990), have increased in the wake of China’s one-child policy, which began in 1979. Chinese policymakers are currently attempting to correct the imbalance in the sex ratio through initiatives that provide financial compensation to parents with daughters. Other scholars have advocated a relaxation of the one-child policy to allow more parents to have a son without engaging in sex selection. In this article, I present a model of fertility choice when parents have access to a sex-selection technology and face a mandated fertility limit. By exploiting variation in fines levied in China for unsanctioned births, I estimate the relative price of a son and daughter for mothers observed in China’s census data (1982–2000). I find that a couple’s first son is worth 1.42 years of income more than a first daughter, and the premium is highest among less-educated mothers and families engaged in agriculture. Simulations indicate that a subsidy of 1 year of income to families without a son would reduce the number of “missing girls” by 67% but impose an annual cost of 1.8% of Chinese gross domestic product (GDP). Alternatively, a three-child policy would reduce the number of “missing girls” by 56% but increase the fertility rate by 35%.     

Measuring and understanding the well-being of South Africans: Everyday quality of life in South Africa

South Africa has a Gini co-efficient of 62, one of the world’s highest (Finmark: Project FinScope 2004 and 2005, FinMark Trust, Johannesburg). Hence, measures of wealth are ubiquitous social indicators in South Africa. However, a growing emphasis in government towards measurable service delivery targets and remedial action to redress the inequalities of our past makes the reliable measurement of people’s quality of life in greater depth in quantitative terms an imperative.We have developed a simple framework to measure people’s quality of life in key domains that extend beyond that simply of wealth, using composite indices to allow progress to be tracked and to make valid comparisons across our diverse population. Termed the Everyday Quality of Life Index (EQLi), it comprises a suite of measures encompassing socio-economic status (with special reference to poverty), urbanisation, health (nutrition, exercise and fitness), stress/pressure, quality of the environment, satisfaction of human needs, connectivity, optimism, subjective well-being (happiness, after Diener and Lucas: 2000, in M. Lewis, J.M. Haviland (eds.), Handbook of Emotions. (2nd ed) (Guilford, New York)), and the overall measure of well-being, the EQLi itself.The initial framework was developed from a structured questionnaire administered to a probability sample of 2000 South African adults in 2002. From this, a 52-item shortlist was derived to create the series of measures. This has been tested and refined in three subsequent annual studies, each of 3500 people across urban and rural South Africa. In 2004, items involving work as well as determining the balance of skills and challenges at work using the concept of “flow” (Csikszentmihalyi: 1990, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper and Row, New York)) were added.This paper outlines the rationale behind the selection and development of these measures, describes the EQL of South Africans using these and other key measures and concludes with implications for policy-makers and service providers in South Africa. Some marketing implications are also given: there is a growing emphasis worldwide on corporate social investment initiatives and, particularly in South Africa, on community upliftment and development – poverty alleviation and improving the lives of the disadvantaged (“people” rather than “consumers”). Further, people’s well-being affects how they react to marketing activities.