IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hka/wpaper/2013-013.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Happy Peasants and Frustrated Achievers? Agency, Capabilities, and Subjective Well-Being

Author

Listed:
  • Carol Graham

    (The Brookings Institution)

  • Milena Nikolova

    (University of Maryland, College Park)

Abstract

We explore the relationship between agency and hedonic and evaluative dimensions of well-being, using data from the Gallup World Poll. We posit that individuals emphasize one well-being dimension over the other, depending on their agency. We test four hypotheses including whether: (i) positive levels of well-being in one dimension coexist with negative ones in another; and (ii) individuals place a different value on agency depending on their positions in the well-being and income distributions. We find that: (i) agency is more important to the evaluative well-being of respondents with more means; (ii) negative levels of hedonic well-being coexist with positive levels of evaluative well-being as people acquire agency; and (iii) both income and agency are less important to well-being at highest levels of the well-being distribution. We hope to contribute insight into one of the most complex and important components of well-being, namely, people's capacity to pursue fulfilling lives.

Suggested Citation

  • Carol Graham & Milena Nikolova, 2013. "Happy Peasants and Frustrated Achievers? Agency, Capabilities, and Subjective Well-Being," Working Papers 2013-013, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    • Handle: RePEc:hka:wpaper:2013-013
    Note: MIP
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://humcap.uchicago.edu/RePEc/hka/wpaper/Graham_Nikolova_2013_happy-peasants.pdf
    File Function: First version, April 2013
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Angus Deaton, 2005. "Measuring Poverty in a Growing World (or Measuring Growth in a Poor World)," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(1), pages 1-19, February.
    2. De Neve, Jan-Emmanuel & Oswald, Andrew J., 2012. "Estimating the influence of life satisfaction and positive affect on later income using sibling fixed-effects," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 51523, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Milena Nikolova & Carol Graham, 2014. "Employment, late-life work, retirement, and well-being in Europe and the United States," IZA Journal of European Labor Studies, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 3(1), pages 1-30, December.
    2. Pedro Mateu & Enrique Vásquez & Javier Zúñiga & Franklin Ibáñez, 2020. "Happiness and poverty in the very poor Peru: measurement improvements and a consistent relationship," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 54(3), pages 1075-1094, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. repec:wsr:wpaper:y:2012:i:083 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Alvaredo, Facundo & Bourguignon, François & Ferreira, Francisco H. G. & Lustig, Nora, 2023. "Seventy-five Years of Measuring Income Inequality in Latin America," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 13157, Inter-American Development Bank.
    3. Picarelli, Nathalie, 2016. "Who really benefits from export processing zones? Evidence from Nicaraguan municipalities," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 318-332.
    4. Charles Meth, 2006. "What was the poverty headcount in 2004 and how does it compare to recent estimates by van der Berg et al?," SALDRU Working Papers 1, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    5. Drouvelis, Michalis & Powdthavee, Nattavudh, 2015. "Are happier people less judgmental of other people's selfish behaviors? Experimental survey evidence from trust and gift exchange games," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 111-123.
    6. Denisova, Irina & Eller, Markus & Frye, Timothy & Zhuravskaya, Ekaterina, 2012. "Everyone hates privatization, but why? Survey evidence from 28 post-communist countries," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 44-61.
    7. Andrew E. Clark, 2015. "SWB as a Measure of Individual Well-Being," Working Papers halshs-01134483, HAL.
    8. Pottier, Antonin, 2022. "Expenditure elasticity and income elasticity of GHG emissions: A survey of literature on household carbon footprint," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 192(C).
    9. Dang, Hai-Anh H. & Serajuddin, Umar, 2020. "Tracking the sustainable development goals: Emerging measurement challenges and further reflections," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    10. Quibria, M.G., 2020. "Poverty and Policy in the Developing World: Before and After the Pandemic," MPRA Paper 104240, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 15 Oct 2020.
    11. Chattopadhyay, Amit K. & Mallick, Sushanta K., 2007. "Income distribution dependence of poverty measure: A theoretical analysis," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 377(1), pages 241-252.
    12. Mathias Silva, 2023. "Parametric models of income distributions integrating misreporting and non-response mechanisms," AMSE Working Papers 2311, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France.
    13. Richard ANKER, 2006. "Poverty lines around the world: A new methodology and internationally comparable estimates," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 145(4), pages 279-307, December.
    14. Can Sever & Emekcan Yucel, 2021. "Electoral Cycles in Inequality Abstract:," Working Papers 2021/01, Bogazici University, Department of Economics.
    15. Ann Harrison & John McLaren & Margaret S. McMillan, 2010. "Recent Findings on Trade and Inequality," NBER Working Papers 16425, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Tomas Hellebrandt & Paolo Mauro, 2015. "The Future of Worldwide Income Distribution," Working Paper Series WP15-7, Peterson Institute for International Economics.
    17. Decancq, Koen & Ooghe, Erwin, 2010. "Has the world moved forward? A robust multidimensional evaluation," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 107(2), pages 266-269, May.
    18. Gaurav Datt & Martin Ravallion & Rinku Murgai, 2020. "Poverty and Growth in India over Six Decades," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 102(1), pages 4-27, January.
    19. Sean Higgins & Nora Lustig & Andrea Vigorito, 2018. "The Rich Underreport their Income: Assessing Bias in Inequality Estimates and Correction Methods using Linked Survey and Tax Data," Working Papers 1808, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
    20. Rodríguez Weber, Javier, 2015. "Estimación de desigualdad de ingreso y otras variables relacionadas para Chile entre 1860 y 1970. Metodología y resultados obtenidos [Income inequality estimates for Chile between 1860 and 1970. Me," MPRA Paper 68400, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    21. Jan-Emmanuel De Neve & Daisy Fancourt & Christian Krekel & Sarah Swanke, 2020. "Are happier people more compliant? Global evidence from three large-scale surveys during Covid-19 lockdowns," CEP Occasional Papers 54, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    agency; capabilities; subjective well-being;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I14 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Inequality
    • G18 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • O5 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hka:wpaper:2013-013. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Jennifer Pachon (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/mfichus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.