Poverty: International Conference on Hedonic Adaptation and Prediction, Harvard University

Poverty Mariano Rojas FLACSO-Mexico & UPAEP International Conference on Hedonic Adaptation and Prediction, Harvard University 14/09/2007 Poverty and Happiness The happy poor More than 50% of Mexican poor are satisfied with their lives Is this adaptation to poverty? Resignation? Can poor people really be happy? Should they be happy? One would expect poor people to be unhappy Poverty is understood as low well-being, lack of well-being, ill-being But there are happy poor Poverty and Happiness Poor people who are satisfied with their lives!!!! Resignation??????? They get used to it They lower their evaluation norms They do not have aspirations Resignation is seen as unacceptable False happiness (Prodicus) Happiness is circumstantial. Some circumstances are not the right ones to judge own life satisfaction They should not be happy They should not be happy But maybe they are Poverty and Happiness Facing the happy poor fact maybe there is something wrong with happiness Reported happiness is incorrect Reported happiness is not important after all maybe there is something wrong with their happiness They are not in a position to make a correct assessment of their life satisfaction maybe there is something wrong with our poverty theories and measurements Poverty should be defined in terms of life satisfaction Poverty and Happiness Explaining the happy poor: My Research Poor people: Less than US$2 dollars of household per capita income per day Domains of life Going beyond our focus on income There is more in life than the standard of living, and for many people there are more important things Poverty as an academic/policy-making construct Bad income proxies Happiness founded on different conceptual referents for the good life Poverty and Happiness Meaning of poverty and wealth, development and underdevelopment Need of also explaining The unhappy rich High happiness in LDC: E.g. ‘Latin America factor’ Unhappiness in DC Poverty and Happiness Judging the well-being of others Difficulty of third-party judgments What do they focus on? What conceptual referents for the good life they do use? Judging from someone else’s circumstance Judge contingent to her adaptation, social conditioning, indoctrination, interests Third-party judgments have consequences own assessments based on what others say about me Influence design of social, aid and development programs Poverty and Happiness Resignation and a bigger question Resignation could be everywhere How do ‘the rich’ know they have not resigned to their poverty? False sense of wealth, false sense of development The focus of their concern: Academically/third-parties constructed areas of concern Life satisfaction is circumstantial Judging circumstances: How circumstances must be judged? Happiness criterion But in case of full adaptation: ethical criterion power-centered criterion Getting out of Poverty LIFE SATISFACTION Out of well-being deprivation while remaining in income poverty C B WELL-BEING DEPRIVATION LINE Out of income and of wellbeing deprivation Out of income poverty while remaining in well-being deprivation D A INCOME INCOME POVERTY LINE