Well-being, capabilities, living standards, and quality of life.
Human welfare research asks how to assess whether people's lives are actually going well — a question that income statistics alone answer poorly. The field spans income-based measures, capability-based measures, and subjective well-being surveys, each capturing a different and only partly overlapping slice of what it means for a life to go well.
Why income-based measures of welfare fall short, and how the Human Development Index and subjective well-being research try to fill the gap.
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