Understanding Human Well-Being

With more than a billion people living on less than one dollar per day, human well-being is a core issue for both researchers and policy-makers. The Millennium Development Goals are a powerful reminder of this point. We now know more about human well-being and the related concepts of poverty and inequality than ever before, as a result of many conceptual and methodological advances and better data. Yet despite this, the vitality of underlying concepts and the quality of data are repeatedly challenged and there remains much to be desired, particularly with regard to the world's poorest countries.

This book examines advances in underlying well-being, poverty, and inequality concepts and corresponding empirical applications and case studies. The authors examine traditional monetary concepts and measurements, and non-monetary factors including educational achievement, longevity, health, and subjective well-being.

"The [works] in question are remarkable not just for tackling difficult conceptual and methodological issues ..., but for their content, scope and coverage - which touch upon most, if not all, of the central topics and emerging issues in well-being research."

-Journal of Human Development vol. 9, no. 1 March 2008