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The Well-Being of the Canadian Arctic Inuit: The Relevant Weight of Economy in the Happiness Equations

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Those who say that money can’t buy happiness.

don’t know where to shop.

Anon.

Abstract

Which of the three dimensions of Allardt’s model, “having, loving, and being”, best predicts the incidence of subjective feeling of well-being among the Canadian Arctic Inuit adults? To answer this question, two logistic regression equations have been constructed, one based on a negative assessment of well-being (feeling of despair), and the other on a positive assessment (satisfaction with life in the community). Each of them took first the form of a global model, and then of three scale models, one for each dimension of the Allardt’s model. The equations are likely to be more effective for predicting the incidence of Inuit’s feeling of satisfaction than for anticipating their feeling of despair. Furthermore, the “being” scale model is the one that will have contributed most to the predictive performance of the global model. In other words, what the Inuit “ARE” contributes more to the incidence of their satisfaction with life than what they “HAVE” or what they “LOVE”.

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Notes

  1. Among these authors, we cite: Easterlin (2011), Angeles (2011), Stiglitz et al. (2009), Binswanger (2006), Easterlin (1995, 2001), Frey and Stutzer (2002a, b); Gardner and Andrew (2001); Hagerty (2000), Helliwell (2001), Kenny (1999); Lane (1993); Oswald (1997); Sen (1993), to name only a few.

  2. We refer here to the work of Easterlin (2011), Angeles (2011), Stiglitz et al. (2009), Tella et al. (2001a, b), Diener and Oishi (2000), Hagerty (2000), Diener (1984, 2000), Veenhoven (1997a, b, 1999), Myers and Diener (1995).

  3. “In the field of economics, capital represents the goods used with labour and other production factors to produce goods and services. Capital includes the equipment, material, buildings, stocks, etc. In the business world, the word ‘capital’ often refers to the money available for investment. Capital is a very broad concept that encompasses public as well as private property, such as roads, bridges, airports, schools, hospitals, factories, computers, software, and transportation equipment.” [Our translation] (Government of Canada 2007).

  4. This conception of modern economics is the backbone of the neo-Classic school of thought lead by Léon Walras and Sir William Pretty.

  5. See Alber and Fahey (2004: 38), Hagerty and Veenhoven (2003), Easterlin (2001), Diener and Oishi (2000) and Diener et al. (1999).

  6. To our knowledge none of these studies systematically focused on the aboriginal populations of Canada, or even on the Inuit.

  7. “The striking thing about the happiness-income paradox, said Easterlin, is that over the long-term—usually a period of 10 years or more—happiness does not increase as a country’s income rises.” (2011: Abstract).

  8. Oswald (1997) notes that Great Britain like other industrialized societies, is twice as rich as it was in the 1960s and at least three times richer than after the war. But to what extent does this increase of real income bring about a surplus of happiness? Isabelle Bellin answers: while a large portion of the world is getting richer, "the proportion of people in developed countries who say they are very happy rarely exceeds 30 %" [Our translation] (2007: 1). This sounds like the Easterlin’ns Paradox revisited.

  9. For the purposes of this study, we preferred to categorize the indicators of the feeling of membership, and any other indicator of social representation, in the "being" dimension, which becomes for us the identity component of the model. Of course, this appellation could raise some criticism and questions primarily because there is an argument that some indicators of the "loving" dimension are somehow expressions of identity. But, for now, we do not have a better taxinomy.

  10. SLICA stands for Survey of Living Conditions in the Arctic. It is a statistical study of international scope on living conditions, based on a probabilistic sample, conducted with the Inuit of Alaska, the Canadian North and Groenland, with the Saami of Norway, Sweden and Russia, and with the Chukchis of the Russian Far East (Andersen and Poppel 2002). In essence, it is the first probabilistic survey of this magnitude, applied at this scale, which includes measurement of the objective living conditions of the Inuit (income, job market, housing, schooling level, health), their traditional activities such as hunting and fishing—these dimensions having been up till now studied separately from the other social situations, or studied for more limited geographic areas, generally communities—and which measures the point of view of populations on their own situation, that is, their subjective living conditions (perception regarding living conditions, social satisfaction, feeling of safety, psychological distress). Initiated in 1997, the SLICA research program comprises a national component and an international component. At the national level, the study was designed by an orientation committee made up of representatives from the regional Inuit associations (Inuvialuit Regional Corporation, Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated, Makivik Corporation, Labrador Inuit Association), the national Inuit association (Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami) and Université Laval. The questionnaire thus created was included in the 2001 Aboriginal Peoples Survey, administrated by Statistics Canada.

  11. This sample excludes a community of about 5,455 people and the 21 reserves selected at the onset that did not participate in the study. The excluded communities are not identified by Statistics Canada.

  12. The specific question for this indicator is: “On a scale of 1–6, with 1 being never and 6 being always, how much of the time, during the last month, have you been a happy person?” Statistics Canada (2006).

  13. It could be interesting to discuss how much these indicators are suitable to measure well-being. But, it is not the purpose of this study .

  14. The specific question of the survey is: “All things considered, are you satisfied or dissatisfied with your life at present in this community? Is that somewhat or very satisfied? Dissatisfied? Don’t know?” Statistics Canada (2006)

  15. This dependant variable is associated to this question: “On a scale of 1–6, with 1 being never and 6 being always, how much of the time, during the last month, have you felt so down that nothing could cheer you up?” Statistics Canada (2006)

  16. We thus propose that the income of the extended family better reflects the situation of the Inuit of Canada than the income of the nuclear family.

  17. The same postulate of the predominance of the extended family as compared to the nuclear family also prevails in matters of solidarity.

  18. The hypothesis here is that the intention of moving attests at least as much to the prevailance of the feeling of belonging to the territory as geographic inertia.

  19. It is worth specifying that these indications reflect an average effect, that is, the combination of the partial effects of the dimensions of our independent variables. Taken alone, the order of importance of the predictors would be altogether different.

  20. The statistical relationship betwen this dimension of the income variable and the feeling of satisfaction is not significant.

  21. The statistical relationship with the feeling of despair is clearly less nuanced. Only two trends are identified: one downward (from the first to the fourth decile), and one upward (from the fourth to the last decile), setting aside the seventh, ninth and tenth deciles.

  22. Let us mention that like the second and fourth deciles, the eighth and nineth deciles are not significantly associated with the Inuit's feeling of satisfaction. Not only does the statistical significance of the coefficients of these deciles reject the null hypothesis (Sig. > 0.05), in the confidence intervals calculated for each coefficient B, the odds-ratio takes the value of 1.

  23. In the literature, there is no shortage of examples where there is a discrepancy between the quality of life and the feeling of well-being, where income level contrasts with the degree of happiness. At least two concepts seem to help explain these cases: the dissatisfaction dilemma encountered when optimal external conditions are associated with a subjective perception of low degree of happiness (this would be the case of the higher deciles), and the paradox of dissatisfaction that befits the case in which a high degree of happiness is associated with difficult external conditions.

  24. However, the statistical relationship is not significant for this decile.

  25. Myers and Diener (1995) made a similar observation.

  26. This medicalization of the social context is applied in two ways: by the extension of medical jurisdiction, and by the administrative regulation of the social body through medicine and public health.

  27. Minor (1992) has in fact identified three forms of expression that have historically characterized social relationships among the Inuit: associations, kinship models, and dual relationships within the nuclear family. Several have described kinship as the backbone of the Inuit social organization (Bodenhorn 2000; Briggs 1994; Nuttal 2000, as quoted by Kral 2003). However, these kinship ties transcend blood ties and filial status.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to especially thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, which has funded the work of the Canada Research Chair on Comparative Aboriginal Condition.

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  1. Canada Research Chair on Comparative Aboriginal Condition, Department of Sociology, Université Laval, Suite 2439, Pavillon Charles-De Koninck, Quebec, QC, G1V 0A6, Canada

    Roberson Édouard & Gérard Duhaime

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Édouard, R., Duhaime, G. The Well-Being of the Canadian Arctic Inuit: The Relevant Weight of Economy in the Happiness Equations. Soc Indic Res 113, 373–392 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-012-0098-5

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