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Conceptualisations and Measurement

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Abstract

This chapter presents the rationale for the studies of happiness and related concepts in economics and discusses definitions and alternative conceptualisations. Topics covered include utility, welfare and well-being, happiness, human development, and quality of life (the latter particularly in connection with health and long-term care).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Even better news: Haucap and Heimeshoff (2014) reported that studying economics also boosts your happiness!

  2. 2.

    A rather finicky note on spelling. The editors of the International Journal of Wellbeing explain that ‘wellbeing’ was chosen in the title of the publication instead of ‘well-being’ as the latter expression would stand as the antonym of ‘ill-being’. I am mindful of this potential connotation, but I have chosen the hyphenated version—except when quoting authors who used the alternative spelling—because it is more widely used throughout the English-speaking world.

  3. 3.

    For a good survey of the recent history of happiness studies and related terms in various social sciences (albeit not economics), see Angner (2011), and for a history of happiness in philosophy, see McMahon (2006).

  4. 4.

    See MacKerron (2012) for a concise introduction to economics of happiness.

  5. 5.

    Pareto (1896).

  6. 6.

    Fisher (1918).

  7. 7.

    Phillips (2006) presents a classification of measures similar to the one that follows (see also Gasper 2010).

  8. 8.

    …‘no doubt unforgettable and, yet, already forgotten’, as Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges put it in his poem ‘Las cosas’.

  9. 9.

    See Andrews and Robinson (1991), Larsen et al. (1985), and McNeil et al. (1986), for comparisons between different measures.

  10. 10.

    See also https://www.upress.umn.edu/test-division/mpq.

  11. 11.

    From the Greek \(\varepsilon \acute {\upsilon }\delta \alpha \iota \mu o\nu \acute {\iota }\alpha \), literally a good spirit, soul, or inner self (Vittersø 2016)—although there is disagreement among philosophers about what, for example, Aristotle exactly meant; see Shiner and Jost (2003).

  12. 12.

    This is closely aligned with the so-called Golden Rule either in its biblical form of doing onto others as you would have them do onto you (Matthew 7:12; Luke 6:31) or in the literature on optimal economic growth as a consumption-maximising steady state growth path.

  13. 13.

    See also Caiels et al. (2010) and Netten et al. (2009, 2010).

  14. 14.

    ISOQOL’s Mission Statement, available at http://www.isoqol.org/.

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    José Luis Iparraguirre

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Iparraguirre, J.L. (2019). Conceptualisations and Measurement. In: Economics and Ageing . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29013-9_1

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