Full Description
What are the methodologies for assessing and improving governmental policy in light of well-being? The Oxford Handbook of Well-Being and Public Policy provides a comprehensive, interdisciplinary treatment of this topic. The contributors draw from welfare economics, moral philosophy, and psychology and are leading scholars in these fields.
The Handbook includes thirty chapters divided into four Parts. Part I covers the full range of methodologies for evaluating governmental policy and assessing societal condition-including the leading approaches in current use by policymakers and academics, and emerging techniques. Part II focuses on the nature of well-being itself. What, indeed, constitutes an individual's welfare? What makes her life go better or worse? Part III addresses the measurement of well-being and the thorny topic of interpersonal comparisons. How can we construct a meaningful scale of individual welfare, which allows for comparisons of well-being levels and differences, both within one individual's life, and across lives? Finally, Part IV reviews the major challenges to designing governmental policy around individual well-being.
Contents
1. Introduction
Matthew D. Adler and Marc Fleurbaey
PART I: METHODS OF POLICY ASSESSMENT
2. GDP and Welfare
Paul Schreyer
3. Cost-Benefit Analysis
Robin Boadway
4. Inequality and Poverty Measures
Frank A. Cowell
5. Social Welfare Functions
John A. Weymark
6. QALY-Based Cost Effectiveness Analysis
Jose Maria Abellan, Carmen Herrero, and Jose-Luis Pinto-Prades
7. Fair Allocation
William Thomson
8. Social Ordering Functions
François Maniquet
9. Multidimensional Indicators of Inequality and Poverty
Satya R. Chakravarty and Maria Ana Lugo
10. Happiness-Based Policy Analysis
Daniel Fujiwara and Paul Dolan
PART II: CONCEPTIONS OF WELL-BEING
11. Preference-Based Views of Well-Being
Krister Bykvist
12. Mental-State Approaches to Well-Being
Daniel M. Haybron
13. Objective Goods
Thomas Hurka
14. Subjective Well-Being in Psychology
Richard E. Lucas
15. Subjective Well-Being in Economics
Carol Graham
PART III: MEASURING WELL-BEING: A DEBATE
16. Equivalent Income
Marc Fleurbaey
17. Extended Preferences
Matthew D. Adler
18. SWB as a Measure of Individual Well-Being
Andrew E. Clark
19. Does the Choice of Well-Being Measure Matter Empirically? An Illustration with German Data
Koen Decancq and Dirk Neumann.
20. Does Fairness Require a Multidimensional Approach?
Richard Arneson
21. The Capability Approach
Sabina Alkire
22. Measuring Poverty: A Proposal
Thomas Pogge and Scott Wisor
23. Multidimensional Poverty Indices: A Critical Assessment
Jean-Yves Duclos and Luca Tiberti
PART IV: CHALLENGES FOR POLICY ASSESSMENT
24. Social Evaluation under Risk and Uncertainty
Philippe Mongin and Marcus Pivato.
25. Individual Responsibility and Equality of Opportunity
Francisco H.G. Ferriera and Vito Peragine.
26. Welfare Comparisons with Heterogeneous Prices, Consumption, and Preferences
D.S. Prasada Rao
27: Welfare and the Household
P.A. Chiappori
28. Preference Inconsistency: A Psychological Perspective
Eldar Shafir
29. Lifetime Well-Being, Mortality Risk, and Public Policy
Grégory Ponthière
30. The Well-Being of Future Generations
John Broome
