Ian Gough

Wellbeing in developing countries: from theory to research

In a world where many experience unprecedented levels of wellbeing, chronic poverty remains a major concern for many developing countries and the international community. Conventional frameworks for understanding development and poverty have focused on money, commodities and economic growth. This 2007 book challenges these conventional approaches and contributes to a new paradigm for development centred on human wellbeing. Poor people are not defined solely by their poverty and a wellbeing approach provides a better means of understanding how people become and stay poor. It examines three perspectives: ideas of human functioning, capabilities and needs; the analysis of livelihoods and resource use; and research on subjective wellbeing and happiness. A range of international experts from psychology, economics, anthropology, sociology, political science and development evaluate the state-of-the-art in understanding wellbeing from these perspectives. This book establishes a new strategy and methodology for researching wellbeing that can influence policy.Introduction: 1. Theorising wellbeing in international development Ian Gough, J. Allister McGregor and Laura Camfield Part I. Human Needs and Human Wellbeing: 2. Conceptualising human needs and wellbeing Des Gasper 3. Basic psychological needs: a self-determination theory perspective on the promotion of wellness across development and cultures Richard Ryan and Aislinn Sapp 4. Measuring freedoms alongside wellbeing Sabina Alkire 5. Using security to indicate wellbeing Geoff Wood 6. Towards a measure of non-economic wellbeing achievement Mark McGillivray Part II. Resources: From Material to Cultural: 7. Wellbeing, livelihoods and resources in social practice Sarah White and Mark Ellison 8. Livelihoods and resource accessing in the Andes: desencuentros in theory and practice Tony Bebbington, Leonith Hinojosa-Valencia, Diego Munoz and Rafael Enrique Rojas Lizarazu 9. Poverty and exclusion, resources and relationships: theorising the links between economic and social development James Copestake Part III. Quality of Life and Subjective Wellbeing: 10. Cross-cultural quality of life assessment: approaches and experiences from the health care field Monika Bullinger and Silke Schmidt 11. Researching quality of life in a developing country: lessons from the South African case Valerie Moller 12. The complexity of wellbeing: a life-satisfaction conception and a domains-of-life approach Mariano Rojas Conclusion. Researching Wellbeing: 13. Researching wellbeing across the disciplines: some key intellectual problems and ways forward Philippa Bevan 14. Researching wellbeing: from concepts to methodology J. Allister McGregor.

Insecurity and Welfare Regimes in Asia, Africa and Latin America: Latin America : towards a liberal-informal welfare regime

Introduction Esping-Andersen (1990; 1999) has developed a typology of welfare regimes for developed countries. His analysis focuses on the production of welfare, understood as the articulation of welfare programmes and institutions – including the state, markets and households – insuring households against social risks. In his later book he notes that understanding welfare regimes, and their change over time, involves ‘(a) a diagnosis of the changing distribution and intensity of social risks, and (b) a comprehensive examination of how risks are pooled between state, market, and family’ (Esping-Andersen 1999: 33). This chapter undertakes this task for Latin America. The welfare regime approach can provide a much-needed framework enabling a comprehensive analysis of changes in welfare production in Latin America, including the study of the linkages existing between social protection and labour market institutions, and an evaluation of the outcomes of these changes. There is important research on specific programmes or institutions, but few have attempted to compare and integrate their findings. Extending this framework beyond its original focus on industrialised nations can provide a valuable new dimension, and the chapter will consider whether the fundamental change in economic and social institutions undergone by most countries in Latin America provides a rare example of a welfare regime shift. The chapter is organised as follows. The next section identifies welfare systems in Latin America and the Caribbean. The following section considers the welfare mix prior to recent social protection and labour market reform and identifies a welfare regime for Latin America.

Social Assistance Regimes: A Cluster Analysis

countries, my colleagues and I distinguished eight ‘social assistance regimes’ (Gough et al., 1997), set out in Table 1. This slightly modified our earlier classification where we identified seven (Eardley et al., 1996: Ch. 8). These derived from our own judgements concerning three dimensions of countries’ social assistance systems: their extent, programme structure and generosity. The purpose of this note is to apply cluster analysis to the same data to test our judgements. It also illustrates the benefits offered by this simple statistical technique. Cluster analysis measures the distance between cases on a combination of dimensions and uses this to identify groups of cases within which there is considerable homogeneity and between which there are clear boundaries. Despite its obvious relevance in confirming or otherwise the existence of ‘welfare regimes’ it has rarely been applied to cross-national data on social policy: Kangas (1994), Wagschal (1999) and Pitruzello (1999) are two exceptions. I follow Pitruzello in using two distinct clustering techniques: hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) and k-means cluster analysis (KCA). HCA is the simplest technique: it begins by finding the closest pair of cases (normally using squared Euclidean distance) and combines them to form a cluster. The algorithm proceeds one step at a time, joining pairs of cases, pairs of clusters or a case with a cluster, until all the cases are in one cluster. The steps are displayed in a tree or dendogram. The method is hierarchical because once two cases are joined in a cluster they remain joined. KCA, however, permits the recombination of cases and clusters over repeated iterations. It requires the researcher to specify a priori the number of clusters (k) and thus provides a preliminary testing of alternative typologies. The clustering begins by using the values of the first n cases as temporary estimates of the k cluster means. Initial cluster centres form by assigning each case in turn to the cluster with the closest centre and then updating the centre, until final cluster centres are identified. At each step, cases are grouped into the cluster with the closest centre, the centres are recomputed, and so on until no further change occurs in the centres (Pitruzello, 1999). It offers a good range of information to help interpret the results, and for these and other reasons, is the technique used here. Social assistance regimes: a cluster analysis

Social assistance in Southern Europe

This article summarizes social assistance programmes and outcomes in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece and Turkey drawing material from a comparative study of OECD countries. A distinct social assistance regime is identified, characterized by the absence of a national minimum income safety net with categorical schemes for the aged and local discretionary relief for most other groups. Benefits are low or non‐existent and out of line with the rest of Europe. These characteristics are explained in terms of their common structural features and political processes. It is argued that fundamental reforms are unlikely owing to the marginality of social assistance programmes in southern Europe.

Welfare regimes in development contexts: a global and regional analysis

Written by a team of internationally respected experts, this book explores the conditions under which social policy, defined as the public pursuit of secure welfare, operates in the poorer regions of the world. Social policy in advanced capitalist countries operates through state intervention to compensate for the inadequate welfare outcomes of the labour market. Such welfare regimes cannot easily be reproduced in poorer regions of the world where states suffer problems of governance and labour markets are imperfect and partial. Other welfare regimes therefore prevail involving non-state actors such as landlords, moneylenders and patrons. This book seeks to develop a conceptual framework for understanding different types of welfare regime in a range of countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa and makes an important contribution to the literature by breaking away from the traditional focus on Europe and North America.

Insecurity and Welfare Regimes in Asia, Africa and Latin America: East Asia : the limits of productivist regimes

Written by a team of internationally respected experts, this book explores the conditions under which social policy, defined as the public pursuit of secure welfare, operates in the poorer regions of the world. Social policy in advanced capitalist countries operates through state intervention to compensate for the inadequate welfare outcomes of the labour market. Such welfare regimes cannot easily be reproduced in poorer regions of the world where states suffer problems of governance and labour markets are imperfect and partial. Other welfare regimes therefore prevail involving non-state actors such as landlords, moneylenders and patrons. This book seeks to develop a conceptual framework for understanding different types of welfare regime in a range of countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa and makes an important contribution to the literature by breaking away from the traditional focus on Europe and North America.

Human well-being and social structures: relating the universal and the local

There exists a contradiction between the domination of postmodernism and cultural relativism in intellectual life and the universalism and globalism dominant in the real world of institutions and politics. In this topsy-turvy world, core values and needs are relative and local, while means and policies are global and universal. This article contributes to those challenging this world-view. The first part looks at human well-being and contrasts the intellectual case for a universalist understanding of all people’s capabilities and the case for localism, respect for people’s values and knowledges, before exploring theoretical attempts to reconcile the two. The second part turns to the world of institutions and structures. It considers ideas of globalization as a universal trajectory before moving on to defend multi-level and middle-range frameworks. The article concludes by arguing for a clearer distinction between universal needs, local need satisfiers and subjective understandings, together with a comparative middle-range theory to explain contemporary success and failure in improving human well-being.

Global Welfare Regimes A Cluster Analysis

This article tests the claim that a small number of distinct ‘welfare regimes’, combining institutional patterns and social welfare outcomes, can be identified across the developing world. It develops a methodology for clustering a large number of developing countries, identifying and ranking their welfare regimes, assessing their stability over the decade 1990—2000, and relating these to important structural variables. It confirms the distinction between three meta-welfare regimes: proto-welfare state regimes, informal security regimes and insecurity regimes. However, it discriminates between relatively successful and failing informal security regimes. Regime membership is ‘sticky’ over time, but has been modified by two global trends: the HIV-AIDS pandemic in Africa and the growing role of remittances in some countries. Les régimes mondiaux de protection sociale: Une analyse de groupement Cet article cherche à valider I’hypothèse selon laquelle il est possible d’identifier au sein des pays en développement un petit nombre de « régimes de welfare » fondé sur une combinaison de modèles institutionnels et de résultates en matière de bien-être social. L’article développe une méthodologie particulière pourregrouper dans des catégories un grand nombre de pays en voie de développement, afin d’identifier et classer leurs « régimes de welfare », d’évaluer leur stabilité pendant la décennie 1990—2000, et de mettre en relation ces données avecdes variables structurelles importantes. L’étude valide la possibilité d’établir une distinction entre trois « meta-régimes de welfare »: des régimes de quasi Etat-providence (‘proto-welfare’), des régimes informels de sécurité sociale, et des régimes d’insécurité sociale. Cependant, il apporte une distinction complémentaire entre les regimes informels de sécurité sociale qui ont été relativement couronnés de succès, et ceux qui ont connu un échec. L’inclusion à un régime est relativement stable dans le temps, mais a néanmoins été affectéeée par deux tendances mondiales: la pandémie du VIH/SIDA en Afrique, et le rôle de plus en plus important des versements de fonds des migrants dans quelques pays. Los Regímenes Globales de Bienestar: Un Análisis de Conglomerados El presente documento pone a prueba la afirmación que un pequeño número de distintos sistemas de bienestar, combinando pautas institucionales con resultados de bienestar social, pueden ser identificados en todo el mundo en vías de desarrollo. El documento propone una metodología para agrupar un gran número de países en vías de desarrollo, identificando y clasificando sus sistemas de asistencia social, evaluando su estabilidad durante la década 1990—2000, y relacionando estos datos con ciertos factores estructurales importantes. Confirma la distinción entre tres regímenes basados sobre el bienestar (regímenes ‘meta-welfare’): los sistemas del estado social (regímenes ‘proto-welfare’), los regímenes informales de seguridad social, y los regímenes de inseguridad social. No obstante, discrimina entre los regímenes informales de seguridad social que han tenido bastante éxito, y los que están fallando. El pertenecer a un régimen puede ser ‘peliagudo’ con el tiempo, pero ha sido modificado por dos tendencias globales: la pandemia del VIH/SIDA en África, y el papel creciente de las remesas en algunos países.

Theorising wellbeing in international development

Development and wellbeing At first sight it appears incongruous to discuss wellbeing in relation to developing countries. Most often, and properly, our attention and concern is for the many people who experience suffering as a consequence of their poverty. However, there are a number of reasons why it is important to confront this apparent incongruity. The first is to acknowledge the fully rounded humanity of poor men, women and children in developing countries; recognising that they are not completely defined by their poverty, nor can they be fully understood in its terms alone. Poor people in developing countries strive to achieve wellbeing for themselves and their children. For the poorest, and in the worst instances, this will largely be a struggle to limit the extent of their illbeing and suffering. But even alongside deprivations, poor men, women and children are able to achieve some elements of what they conceive of as wellbeing, as Biswas-Diener and Diener (2001) demonstrate; without this, we would argue, their lives would be unbearable. Furthermore, it is striking that the non-poor in developing countries can often experience what appear to be high levels of life satisfaction. Wellbeing is far from an irrelevant concept in the study of international development. From this perspective the notion of poverty (or rather poverties) has a number of limitations and the literature around it is becoming increasingly complex and to some extent muddled.

Economic Institutions and the Satisfaction of Human Needs

The purpose of this chapter is to evaluate different economic systems using as a criterion their ability to satisfy human needs. The conceptual basis is the theory of human need developed in Doyal and Gough (1991), summarised in Chapter 1. To assess the potential of economic systems to satisfy human needs, thus defined, I use a family of theoretical approaches from different disciplines broadly labelled ‘new institutionalist’ or ‘new political economy’. The economic systems to be investigated are distinguished according to their dominant organising principle: the market, the state and the community. Recognising that ‘pure’ models of each are historically and logically impossible, I evaluate combinations of institutions that are as close as possible to the pure model: minimally regulated capitalism, state socialism and variants of communitarianism. After summarising my conclusions at that point, I then, in the next three sections, go on to consider three variants of ‘mixed economy’ capitalism: statist capitalism, corporatist capitalism and neoliberal capitalism. Again I evaluate each according to our criteria of need satisfaction, before drawing some general conclusions.