Basic Needs and Wealth as Independent Determinants of Happiness: An Illustration from Thailand

Thailand has been a global economic success story, transforming from one of the poorest countries in Southeast Asia in the 1960s, to a modern and dynamic nation, and all within the lifetime of the current generation. However, growth has been accompanied by marked increases in economic inequality both at the regional and individual levels. In this context studying how relatively poor people appraise their situation (‘subjective wellbeing’) and how this relates to traditional ‘objective’ measures of wellbeing such as wealth and basic needs is particularly relevant. This paper investigates the relationship between basic needs as defined by the Theory of Human needs (THN, Doyal and Gough 1991), material wealth and happiness. Specifically, we intend to answer the following research question: Are wealth and basic needs indicators always interchangeable when analyzing happiness determinants in low income settings? The paper focuses on seven communities in the South and North-east of Thailand with contrasting levels of access to markets and services. It challenges the common assumption that at low economic levels, wealth or income matter for people’s happiness because they increase satisfaction of basic needs, arguing instead that wealth might contribute to happiness for personal or symbolic reasons, which are not related to the use of goods as basic needs satisfiers. Thus, it suggests that indicators of wealth and basic needs should not be used interchangeably when studying happiness determinants in low income settings.     

Reference group consumption and the subjective wellbeing of the poor in Peru

This paper studies the relationship between the consumption of the reference group and people’s subjective wellbeing in seven poor Peruvian communities. It presents an empirical analysis of the importance of relative consumption for people’s feelings of adequacy in five consumption domains (food, housing, education, clothes and health care). Against the assumption that relative consumption only matters for the rich and drawing on recent empirical work in Latin America, the study hypothesises that participants are likely to be influenced by the level of consumption of the area where they live when evaluating their situation. The data come from two surveys implemented in 2004 and 2005 in Peru by the Wellbeing in Developing Countries (WeD), ESRC research group at the University of Bath. The results indicate a negative effect of relative consumption on participants’ appraisal of their households’ clothes, housing and children’s education. However, the study also shows that in domains linked to the need for physical health such as health care and food, appraisals are made based on households’ objective situations and that the average consumption in the community does not play a significant role.     

Television,Sustainability and Subjective Wellbeing in Peru

Social Indicators Research - Earlier studies have concluded that television consumption is detrimental to environmental sustainability and people’s subjective wellbeing due to its promotion...     

Consumption and Subjective Wellbeing: Exploring Basic Needs,Social Comparison,Social Integration and Hedonism in Peru

Within material poverty contexts, consumption and subjective wellbeing are positively and strongly related. This is usually explained in terms of the increased possibilities to satisfy basic needs that additional spending provides. Other important aspects of consumption, such as its relative, symbolic and hedonic dimensions are not generally considered. The current study explores these aspects in seven poor Peruvian communities through expenditure and motives using regression analysis. Motives for consumption are included in the model drawing on psychologists’ research into the importance of accounting for motives when assessing the impact of material goals on subjective wellbeing. Results reveal that in the Peruvian corridor, consumption has a meaning beyond mere basic needs satisfaction. Status concerns, the reference group, the pleasure of consuming, providing for the household basics and the expectation of escaping social marginalisation are aspects of consumption significantly predicting people’s happiness.

Universal and Local Reconciled: Exploring Satisfaction with Universal and Local Goals in Thailand and Bangladesh

This paper explores factors affecting individual goal satisfaction in Bangladesh and Thailand. Analysing the determinants of goal satisfaction in two countries at different levels of development enables the paper to address the broader question of whether the common practice of classifying goals as ‘universal’ (e.g. health) or ‘local’ (e.g. community relationships) has any empirical support. The study uses data from communities in Thailand and Bangladesh that were researched from 2002 to 2007 by the Economic and Social Research Council’s Wellbeing in Developing Countries Research Group at the University of Bath. Results from the study based on regression analysis show that universal and local goals have the same determinants, supporting the view that they are interdependent. The implications of this finding are that both types of goals should be given equal priority and need to be taken into account to better understand people’s wellbeing. This finding is, however, moderated by the second finding of the paper, which is that socio-economic variables and the extent of need satisfaction play different roles in explaining goal satisfaction in countries at different stages of development. For example, whilst in Bangladesh wealth only contributes to goal satisfaction if it increases needs satisfaction, in Thailand it has an independent effect. The implications of both findings for global frameworks such as the Millennium Development Goals are addressed in the conclusions.