Abstract
This chapter argues that the concept of personal autonomy helps explain the gap between economic growth and people’s well-being, which lags behind in many countries, and even slightly declines in the USA. The arguments, based on a variety of specific evidence drawn from psychology, and especially self-determination theory, from economics and sociology, run as follows. First, people’s well-being has been negatively affected by the deterioration of their autonomy, which is a basic psychological need, and by the compensatory need for financial success and status. Secondly, some important factors that appear to promote economic growth in the advanced countries, and especially in the USA, also hamper the development of people’s personal autonomy. Conventional explanations of the income/well-being gap based on social comparison, rising expectations, and deteriorated social relationships can thus be integrated and strengthened.
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Notes
- 1.
A notable example is the initiative by the President of the French Republic Nicholas Sarkozy to create a Commission, including Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen and Jean Paul Fitoussi, to identify the limits of Gross Domestic Product as an indicator of economic performance and social progress, and to consider what additional information might be required for a more satisfactory evaluation of economic performance, quality of life, and the sustainability of development and environment (http://www.stiglitz-sen-fitoussi.fr/documents/rapport_anglais.pdf).
- 2.
Typical questions, taken from the Word Value Survey, are: “All considered you would say that you are very happy; pretty happy; not too happy; not at all happy?”; “All considered are you satisfied or unsatisfied with your current life?”. The answer to this second question can be given on a scale from 1 to 10.
- 3.
Studies on less developed countries show that these are not immune to this phenomenon. For example, in Peru and Russia around half of the workers with the greatest upward income mobility reported that their economic situation was negative, or very negative, compared to 10 years previously, with deteriorating effects on their perceived well-being (Graham & Pettinato, 2002).
- 4.
The exact wording of the survey questions is “how much freedom of choice and control [do] you feel you have over the way your life turns out” (World Value Survey).
- 5.
Easterlin and Angelescu’s (2009) graphs show that Belgium, Austria, Canada, Portugal, and Greece have negative happiness trends. According to Layard et al.’s (2009) graph, Italy exhibits a break in the trend, from positive until the early 1990s to negative or no trend afterwards. Di Tella and McCulloch (2008) find a slightly negative trend for Europe as a whole. However, also some developing countries, China and Chile, exhibit a negative trend in happiness (Layard et al., 2009).
- 6.
Lester and Yang’s (1997) survey of several studies shows that the correlation between income per head and suicide rates has been positively significant for the USA since WWII, and for a cross-section of the European countries. They also regress suicide rates against the unemployment rate and income per head for European countries, finding that only the latter variable is positively significant. Similar findings have been obtained by Jungeilges and Kirchgaessner (2002) and Huang (1996).
- 7.
Suicides and depression can be taken as reliable indicators of the well-being of the entire population because they show a significant inverse correlation with self-reported well-being (Di Tella et al., 2003, p. 812; van Hemert, van de Vijver, & Poortinga, 2002), because both suicides and well-being appear to be statistically well-explained by the same variables (Helliwell, 2007), and because the diffusion of clinical mental disorder is positively related to the mean number of the related symptoms in the population (Huppert, 2005). According to the epidemiologists Eckersley and Dear (2002), the tendencies of objective indicators of well-being like suicides and depression among young people are even more reliable than self-reported well-being, which in Europe exhibits a rising trend (Blanchflower & Oswald, 2000; Pichler, 2006).
- 8.
Consider, for example, the importance of the perception of immigrants in income comparisons (Knight & Gunatilaka, 2009).
- 9.
Both Sen and Nussbaum stress the importance of the objective evaluation of individuals’ conditions, rather than the self-evaluations of own well-being. Sen (1985), in particular, is generally skeptical of the subjective evaluations of well-being, because adaptation would induce individuals to be content with their current material state, thus biasing the evaluation of their real conditions (see section “The Explanations in the Happiness Economics”). While empirical research shows that adaptation does not completely deprive subjective information on well-being of valuable content, recent theoretical research attempts to find synergies between the capability approach with happiness economics (Review of Social Economy 63(2), 2005; Bruni, Comim, & Pugno, 2008).
- 10.
This possible change of direction in the tastes for different kinds of needs is consistent with studies in neuroscience which report the particular plasticity of the brain during infancy, childhood and adolescence, with respect to adulthood (e.g. Siegel, 2001).
- 11.
Scitovsky’s The Joyless Economy has been classified as one of “The Hundred Most Influential Books Since World War II” (Times Literary Supplement, Oct. 6, l996).
- 12.
It has also been found that experiential avoidance fully mediated the association between materialistic values and emotional well-being (Kashdan & Breen, 2007).
- 13.
“Chronic stress can be defined as a pathologic state of prolonged threat to homeostasis by persistent or frequently repeated stressors and is considered a significant contributing factor in pathophysiology of manifestations that characterize a wide range of diseases and syndromes” (Kyrou, Chrousos, & Tsigos, 2006, p. 78).
- 14.
Inequality promotes [survival] strategies that are more self-interested, less affiliative, often highly anti-social, more stressful and likely to give rise to higher levels of violence, poorer community relations, and worse health. In contrast, the less unequal societies tend to be much more affiliative, less violent, more supportive and inclusive, and marked by better health….more unequal societies tend to have higher rates of violent crime and homicide, and …people living in them feel more hostility, are less likely to be involved in community life, and are much less likely to trust each other; in short, they have lower levels of social capital. (Wilkinson, 2005, p. 24).
- 15.
- 16.
Karoly, Kilburn, and Cannon (2003) estimate that early childhood interventions across the USA, working with children and parents to improve readiness for school, yield a rate of return for each dollar invested of 8.7 at age 27 and 17.1 at age 40.
- 17.
The evidence in these paragraphs comes from different sources, mainly UNICEF, US-General Social Survey and Eurobarometer. See Pugno (2009) for more details.
- 18.
A study has even found that the locus of causality measured on the Rotter scale in the USA persists from parents to offspring, and influences earnings in a significant way (Osborne, 2005).
- 19.
For example, a study on the introduction of an apparently desirable though intrusive norm in familiar relationship, like mandatory arrest for domestic violence in some states of the USA, have had a perverse effect (Iyengar, 2009).
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Pugno, M. (2011). Economy, People’s Personal Autonomy, and Well-Being. In: Chirkov, V., Ryan, R., Sheldon, K. (eds) Human Autonomy in Cross-Cultural Context. Cross-Cultural Advancements in Positive Psychology, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9667-8_10
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