Well-Being across America

Subjective Well-Being Across Cultures

All individuals strive to be happy. How they pursue this ultimate human goal, however, seems to vary in interesting ways across cultures. Three key findings have emerged from recent scientific research: 1) individualist cultures are happier than collectivists, 2) psychological attributes characterizing the self (e.g., self-esteem, self-consistency) are more relevant to the happiness of Western ...

Risk Attitudes and Well-Being in Latin America

Risk Attitudes and Well-Being in Latin America A common premise in both the theoretical and policy literatures on development is that people remain poor because they are too impatient to save and too risk averse to take the sort of chances needed to accumulate wealth. The empirical literature, however, suggests that this assumption is far from proven. We report on field experiments designed to ...

Biodiversity and Social Well-being: the Case of South America

1.Current Ecological and Social Problems in South America 1.1. Antagonism between Conservation and Development 1.2. The Blindness of Macroeconomic Parameters 2.Diversity and Homogenization in Southern South America since European Colonization 2.1. Three Waves of Eco-Cultural Homogenization: The Case of Southern Chile 2.1.1. European Conquerors (1500–1800) 2.1.2. Independence and Modernization (...

Comparing Well-being across Nations: Conceptual and Empirical Issues

A Dominance Approach to Well-being Inequality across Countries

This paper proposes a dominance approach to study well-being inequality across countries at the world level. We consider a class of wellbeing indices based on the three attributes considered in the HDI (Human Development Index). Indices are required to satisfy preference for egalitarian marginal distributions of income, health and education, inclination for less correlation between attributes a...