Hello Jack, thanks for the comment. As you note, the document doesn’t attempt to address the issues you raised. We’re particularly interested to have people engage with the details of how we’ve done the analysis, although we recognise this will be far too far much ‘in the weeds’ for most (even members of this august forum).
I’d like to reply to your comment though, seeing as you’ve made it. There are quite a few separate points you could be making and I’m not sure which you mean to press.
You wonder about the suitability of SWB scores in low-income settings and raise Sen’s adaptive preferences point.
One way to understand the adaptive preferences point is as an argument against hedonism: poor people are happy, but their lives aren’t going well, so happiness can’t be what matters. From this it would follow that SWB scores might not be a good measure of well-being anywhere, not just in low-income contexts. Two replies. First, I’m pretty sympathetic to hedonism: if people are happy, then I think their lives are going well. Considering adaptive preferences doesn’t pull me to revise that. Second, as an empirical aside, it’s not at all obvious that people do adapt to poverty: the IDInsight survey found the Kenyan villagers had life satisfaction of around 2⁄10. That’s much lower than life satisfaction on average in Kenya of around 4.5. A quick gander at the worldwide distribution of life satisfaction scores (https://ourworldindata.org/happiness-and-life-satisfaction) tells you the poorer people are less satisfied than richer ones. The story might be interestingly different for measures of happiness (sometimes called ‘affect balance’).
Another way to understand the force of adaptive preferences is about what we owe one another. Here the idea is that we should help poor people even if doing so doesn’t improve their well-being (whatever well-being is) - the further thought being that it won’t improve their well-being because they’ve adapted. I don’t find this plausible. If I can provide resources for A or B, but helping A will have no impact on their well-being, whereas B will have their well-being increased, I say we help B. (To pull out the intuition that adaptive preferences is really about normative commitments, note we might think it makes sense for people in unfavourable circumstances to change their views to increase their well-being, but that there’s something odious about not helping people because they’ve managed to adapt; it’s as if we’re punishing them for their ingenuity)
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. In this case, it is mistaken to take these numbers at face value. The response to this problem is to have a theory of how and why people differently interpret subjective scales so you can account for and adjust the score: e.g. determine what the true SWB values are on the same scale. This is one of the most important issues not adequately addressed by current research. I’ve got a (long) paper on this I’ve nearly finished. The very short answer is that I think the answers are (cardinally) comparable and this is because individuals try to answer subjective scales in the same way as everyone else in order to make themselves understood. On this basis, I think it’s reasonable to interpret SWB scores at face value.
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.
Hello Jack, thanks for the comment. As you note, the document doesn’t attempt to address the issues you raised. We’re particularly interested to have people engage with the details of how we’ve done the analysis, although we recognise this will be far too far much ‘in the weeds’ for most (even members of this august forum).
I’d like to reply to your comment though, seeing as you’ve made it. There are quite a few separate points you could be making and I’m not sure which you mean to press.
You wonder about the suitability of SWB scores in low-income settings and raise Sen’s adaptive preferences point.
One way to understand the adaptive preferences point is as an argument against hedonism: poor people are happy, but their lives aren’t going well, so happiness can’t be what matters. From this it would follow that SWB scores might not be a good measure of well-being anywhere, not just in low-income contexts. Two replies. First, I’m pretty sympathetic to hedonism: if people are happy, then I think their lives are going well. Considering adaptive preferences doesn’t pull me to revise that. Second, as an empirical aside, it’s not at all obvious that people do adapt to poverty: the IDInsight survey found the Kenyan villagers had life satisfaction of around 2⁄10. That’s much lower than life satisfaction on average in Kenya of around 4.5. A quick gander at the worldwide distribution of life satisfaction scores (https://ourworldindata.org/happiness-and-life-satisfaction) tells you the poorer people are less satisfied than richer ones. The story might be interestingly different for measures of happiness (sometimes called ‘affect balance’).
Another way to understand the force of adaptive preferences is about what we owe one another. Here the idea is that we should help poor people even if doing so doesn’t improve their well-being (whatever well-being is) - the further thought being that it won’t improve their well-being because they’ve adapted. I don’t find this plausible. If I can provide resources for A or B, but helping A will have no impact on their well-being, whereas B will have their well-being increased, I say we help B. (To pull out the intuition that adaptive preferences is really about normative commitments, note we might think it makes sense for people in unfavourable circumstances to change their views to increase their well-being, but that there’s something odious about not helping people because they’ve managed to adapt; it’s as if we’re punishing them for their ingenuity)
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. In this case, it is mistaken to take these numbers at face value. The response to this problem is to have a theory of how and why people differently interpret subjective scales so you can account for and adjust the score: e.g. determine what the true SWB values are on the same scale. This is one of the most important issues not adequately addressed by current research. I’ve got a (long) paper on this I’ve nearly finished. The very short answer is that I think the answers are (cardinally) comparable and this is because individuals try to answer subjective scales in the same way as everyone else in order to make themselves understood. On this basis, I think it’s reasonable to interpret SWB scores at face value.
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.