Thanks for your response. Apologies that I chose to sidestep the actual analysis itself. For what it’s worth I was very impressed when I was reading through it. I might revisit at some point to see if there are any specific comments I can provide on the analysis.
There are quite a few separate points you could be making and I’m not sure which you mean to press.
Apologies if I wasn’t clear. The main point I want to press isn’t that I disagree with the use of SWB in LMIC analysis, it’s actually just to highlight that, to my knowledge, this isn’t the preferred approach of economists to analyse wellbeing in LMICs. Therefore if such analysis is going to feature heavily in HLI’s work I personally think it would be worth your while to address this tension formally in some way. This could be by doing a write-up to justify your choice to use SWB rather than say the capability approach or multi-dimensional poverty indices. If you address this formally I think it would increase the probability that the work of HLI is taken seriously by economists, and you may even win over some converts to your cause. If you don’t address this I have a feeling many economists (and perhaps some other people of interest) would ignore your work citing concerns over adaptive preferences.
Of course I’m not an expert so if I were you I’d test this with some academic economists. The director of The Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative, Sabina Alkire, is a leader in multidimensional poverty and the capability approach. She would be a brilliant person to talk to get a clearer sense of the current views of economists regarding the use of SWB in LMIC. It may well be the case that economists are more accepting of this approach than I realise.
A different concern one might have is that those in low-income contexts use scales very differently from those elsewhere: someone who says there are 4⁄10 but lives in poverty actually has a very different set of psychological states from someone who says they are 4⁄10 in the UK.
For what it’s worth I think that this might be the most prominent concern. I look forward to seeing your paper arguing for cardinal comparability. If your paper covers cardinal comparability between those in low-income and high-income contexts, then I think it would go some way to addressing the tension that I have raised.
Glad you were impressed! Would welcome any suggestions on how to improve the analysis.
Thanks for clarifying. Yes, I understand that economists lean towards a desire satisfaction theory of well-being and development economists lean towards Sen-style objective list theories. We’re in discussion with a development economist about whether and how to transform this into an article for a development econ journal, and there we expect to have to say a lot more about justifying the approach. That didn’t seem so necessary here: EAs tends to be quite sympathetic to hedonism and/or measuring well-being using SWB, and we’ve argued for that elsewhere, so we thought it more useful just to present the method.
Oh that’s great. I very much hope that goes well! I hope I didn’t give the wrong impression from my comments, I would love to see SWB be taken more seriously in the development economics literature.
Hi Michael,
Thanks for your response. Apologies that I chose to sidestep the actual analysis itself. For what it’s worth I was very impressed when I was reading through it. I might revisit at some point to see if there are any specific comments I can provide on the analysis.
Apologies if I wasn’t clear. The main point I want to press isn’t that I disagree with the use of SWB in LMIC analysis, it’s actually just to highlight that, to my knowledge, this isn’t the preferred approach of economists to analyse wellbeing in LMICs. Therefore if such analysis is going to feature heavily in HLI’s work I personally think it would be worth your while to address this tension formally in some way. This could be by doing a write-up to justify your choice to use SWB rather than say the capability approach or multi-dimensional poverty indices. If you address this formally I think it would increase the probability that the work of HLI is taken seriously by economists, and you may even win over some converts to your cause. If you don’t address this I have a feeling many economists (and perhaps some other people of interest) would ignore your work citing concerns over adaptive preferences.
Of course I’m not an expert so if I were you I’d test this with some academic economists. The director of The Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative, Sabina Alkire, is a leader in multidimensional poverty and the capability approach. She would be a brilliant person to talk to get a clearer sense of the current views of economists regarding the use of SWB in LMIC. It may well be the case that economists are more accepting of this approach than I realise.
For what it’s worth I think that this might be the most prominent concern. I look forward to seeing your paper arguing for cardinal comparability. If your paper covers cardinal comparability between those in low-income and high-income contexts, then I think it would go some way to addressing the tension that I have raised.
Glad you were impressed! Would welcome any suggestions on how to improve the analysis.
Thanks for clarifying. Yes, I understand that economists lean towards a desire satisfaction theory of well-being and development economists lean towards Sen-style objective list theories. We’re in discussion with a development economist about whether and how to transform this into an article for a development econ journal, and there we expect to have to say a lot more about justifying the approach. That didn’t seem so necessary here: EAs tends to be quite sympathetic to hedonism and/or measuring well-being using SWB, and we’ve argued for that elsewhere, so we thought it more useful just to present the method.
Oh that’s great. I very much hope that goes well! I hope I didn’t give the wrong impression from my comments, I would love to see SWB be taken more seriously in the development economics literature.