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Author: M. McGillivray
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2006-11-28
Total Pages: 308
ISBN-13: 0230625606
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This book provides insights into how human well-being could be better defined and empirically assessed. It takes stock of and reviews various concepts and measures and provides recommendations for future practice and research.
Author: Inka Weissbecker
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Published: 2011-08-04
Total Pages: 229
ISBN-13: 1441997423
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Climate change is increasing the severity of disasters and adverse weather conditions worldwide, with particularly devastating effects on developing countries and on individuals with lower resources. Climate change is likely to impact mental health and psychosocial well-being via multiple pathways, leading to new challenges. Direct effects such as gradual environmental changes, higher temperatures, and natural disasters, are likely to lead to more indirect consequences such as social and economic stressors, population displacement, and conflict. Climate change, largely the product of industrialized nations, is projected to magnify existing inequalities and to impact the most vulnerable, including those with low resources, individuals living in developing countries and specific populations such as women, children and those with pre-existing disabilities. This book outlines areas of impact on human well being, consider specific populations, and shed light on mitigating the impact of climate change. Recommendations discuss ways of strengthening community resilience, building on local capacities, responding to humanitarian crises, as well as conducting research and evaluation projects in diverse settings.
Author: Ann Sloan Devlin
Publisher: Academic Press
Published: 2018-08-21
Total Pages: 482
ISBN-13: 0128114827
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Environmental Psychology and Human Well-Being: Effects of Built and Natural Settings provides a better understanding of the way in which mental and physical well-being is affected by physical environments, along with insights into how the design of these environments might be improved to support better health outcomes. The book reviews the history of the field, discusses theoretical constructs in guiding research and design, and provides an up-to-date survey of research findings. Core psychological constructs, such as personal space, territoriality, privacy, resilience, stress, and more are integrated into each environment covered. Provides research-based insight into how an environment can impact mental and physical health and well-being Integrates core psychological constructs, such as coping, place attachment, social support, and perceived control into each environment discussed Includes discussion of Kaplan's Attention Restoration Theory and Ulrich's Stress Reduction Theory Covers educational settings, workplace settings, environments for active living, housing for the elderly, natural settings, correctional facilities, and more
Author: Richard J. Estes
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2017-01-09
Total Pages: 808
ISBN-13: 3319391011
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This handbook informs the reader about how much progress we, the human race, have made in enhancing the quality of life on this planet. Many skeptics focus on how the quality of life has deteriorated over the course of human history, particularly given World War II and its aftermath. This handbook provides a positive perspective on the history of well-being. Quality of life, as documented by scientists worldwide, has significantly improved. Nevertheless, one sees more improvements in well-being in some regions of the world than in others. Why? This handbook documents the progress of well-being in the various world regions as well as the differences in those regions. The broad questions that the handbook addresses include: What does well-being mean? How do different philosophical and religious traditions interpret the concept of well-being within their own context? Has well-being remained the same over different historical epochs and for different regions and subregions of the world? In which areas of human development have we been most successful in advancing individual and collective well-being? In which sectors has the attainment of well-being proven most difficult? How does well-being differ within and between different populations groups that, for a variety of socially created reasons, have been the most disadvantaged (e.g., children, the aged, women, the poor, racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities)?
Author: Partha Dasgupta
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
Published: 2001-11-15
Total Pages: 328
ISBN-13: 0199247889
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →In Human Well-Being and the Natural Environment, Partha Dasgupta explores ways to measure the quality of life. Although the problem pervades a number of academic disciplines, it is not confined to the academic realm. International organizations regularly publish cross-country estimates of the quality of life, journalists and commentators publicize them, and national governments are obliged to take note of them. Today, quality-of-life indices broker political arguments andtogether form a coin that even helps purchase economic and social policy.It is therefore ironic that indices of human well-being in current use are notably insensitive to our dependence on the natural environment, both at a moment in time and across generations. Moreover, international discussions on economic development in poor regions all too frequently ignore the natural resource base. In developing quality-of-life measures, Professor Dasgupta pays particular attention to the natural environment, illustrating how it can be incorporated, more generally, intoeconomic reasoning in a seamless manner. The result is a treatise that goes beyond quality-of-life measures and offers a comprehensive account of the newly emergent subject of ecological economics. The connections between biodiversity, ecosystem services, resource scarcities, and economic possibilitiesfor the future are developed in a quantitative, but accessible, language. Such familiar terms as 'sustainable development', 'social discount rates', and Earth's 'carrying capacity' are given a firm theoretical underpinning. The theory that is developed is then put to use in extended commentaries on the economics of population, poverty traps, global warming, structural adjustment programmes, and free trade. The author shows that, whether we are interested in valuing the state of affairs in acountry or in evaluating economic policy there, the index that should be used is the economy's wealth, which is the social worth of its capital assets. The concept of wealth adopted here is a comprehensive one, including not only manufactured assets, but also human capital, knowledge, and the naturalenvironment. Wealth is contrasted with such popular measures of human well-being as gross national product and the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Index.Although the theory developed here is not restricted in its applicability to the circumstances facing poor countries, the exposition is prompted by the author's concerns over the dilemmas facing poor people in those parts of world. Repeatedly, he applies the theory to data on poor countries. The picture that emerges is a sobering one and contrasts sharply with that portrayed in the contemporary literature on economic development.The book has been written not only for fellow economists, but also for students of economics, environmental studies, political science, and political philosophy. It is intended even more broadly for the general citizen interested in human well-being and the centrality of the natural environment to our everyday lives.
Author: Joseph Alcamo
Publisher:
Published: 2003
Total Pages: 272
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Ecosystems and Human Well-Being is the first product of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a four-year international work program designed to meet the needs of decisionmakers for scientific information on the links between ecosystem change and human well-being. The book offers an overview of the project, describing the conceptual framework that is being used, defining its scope, and providing a baseline of understanding that all participants need to move forward. The Millennium Assessment focuses on how humans have altered ecosystems, and how changes in ecosystem services have affected human well-being, how ecosystem changes may affect people in future decades, and what types of responses can be adopted at local, national, or global scales to improve ecosystem management and thereby contribute to human well-being and poverty alleviation. The program was launched by United National Secretary-General Kofi Annan in June 2001, and the primary assessment reports will be released by Island Press in 2005. Leading scientists from more than 100 nations are conducting the assessment, which can aid countries, regions, or companies by: providing a clear, scientific picture of the current sta
Author: Frank Ackerman
Publisher: Island Press
Published: 1997-11-01
Total Pages: 472
ISBN-13: 9781559635608
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →What are the ends of economic activity? According to neoclassical theory, efficient interaction of the profit-maximizing "ideal producer" and the utility-maximizing "ideal consumer" will eventually lead to some sort of social optimum. But is that social optimum the same as human well-being? Human Well-Being and Economic Goals addresses that issue, considering such questions as: Does the maximization of individual welfare really lead to social welfare? How can we deal with questions of relative welfare and of equity? How do we define, or at least understand, individual and social welfare? And how can these things be measured, or even assessed? Human Well-Being and Economic Goals brings together more than 75 concise summaries of the most significant literature in the field that consider issues of present and future individual and social welfare, national development, consumption, and equity. Like its predecessors in the Frontier Issues in Economic Thought series, it takes a multidisciplinary approach to economic concerns, examining their sociological, philosophical, and psychological aspects and implications as well as their economic underpinnings. Human Well-Being and Economic Goals provides a powerful introduction to the current and historical writings that examine the concept of human well-being in ways that can help us to set goals for economic activity and judge its success. It is a valuable summary and overview for students, economists, and social scientists concerned with these issues.
Author: William J. Talbott
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2010-11-01
Total Pages: 432
ISBN-13: 9780199813193
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →In the last half of the twentieth century, legalized segregation ended in the southern United States, apartheid ended in South Africa, women in many parts of the world came to be recognized as having equal rights with men, persons with disabilities came to be recognized as having rights to develop and exercise their human capabilities, colonial peoples' rights of self-determination were recognized, and rights of gays and lesbians have begun to be recognized. It is hard not to see these developments as examples of real moral progress. But what is moral progress? In this book, William Talbott offers a surprising answer to that question. He proposes a consequentialist meta-theoretical principle of moral and legal progress, the "main principle", to explain why these changes are examples of moral and legal progress. On Talbott's account, improvements to our moral or legal practices are changes that, when evaluated as a practice, contribute to equitably promoting well-being. Talbott uses the main principle to explain why almost all the substantive moral norms and principles used in moral or legal reasoning have exceptions and why it is almost inevitable that, no matter how much we improve them, there will always be more exceptions. This explanation enables Talbott to propose a new, non-skeptical understanding of what has been called the "naturalistic fallacy". Talbott uses the main principle to complete the project begun in his 2005 book of identifying the human rights that should be universal-that is, legally guaranteed in all human societies. Talbott identifies a list of fourteen robust, inalienable human rights. Talbott contrasts his consequentialist (though not utilitarian) account with many of the most influential nonconsequentialist accounts of morality and justice in the philosophical literature, including those of Ronald Dworkin, Jurgen Habermas, Martha Nussbaum, Phillip Pettit, John Rawls, T.M. Scanlon, Amartya Sen, Judith Thomson.
Author: Ingrid Brdar
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Published: 2011-06-16
Total Pages: 277
ISBN-13: 9400713754
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This book brings together the latest research on positive psychology from an international cast of researchers and particularly from the growing body of European researchers. The chapters describe research and practice from diverse fields of positive psychology, covering topics such as happiness and well-being, motivation and goals, personality, academic performance and coping, measurement and interventions. The book emphasizes a cultural approach to the human pursuit of well-being. It is unique in that it presents research from a range of cultures, such as Russia, Croatia, and Egypt, in addition to ten different Western cultures. This approach helps broaden our understanding of those aspects of human experience that make life worth living in diverse cultural conditions. The book includes well-known and new authors from the field and contains selected papers that were presented at the 4th European Conference of Positive Psychology held in 2008 in Croatia.
Author: Len Doyal
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 1991-08-23
Total Pages: 374
ISBN-13: 1349215007
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Rejecting fashionable subjectivist and cultural relativist approaches, this important book argues that human beings have universal and objective needs for health and autonomy and a right to their optimal satisfaction. The authors develop a system of social indicators to show what such optimization would mean in practice and assess the records of a wide range of developed and underdeveloped economies in meeting their citizens' needs.
