World Happiness Report 2013
surprising given the impact work has on many people’s overall quality of life.
Many more aspects of human development could be considered because there are as many variables for human development as there are ways of enlarging people’s choices. But for this analysis we will consider some of the key examples that were included in the very first Human Development Report in 1990 — namely work, security, and participation in economic and political life.26 And we also included freedom (which is intrinsic to the very notion of human development) and inequality.
6 5 4 .4
.6
Satisfaction with Job
95% CI Overall Life Evaluation
.8
1 Fitted values
Security Against Crime and Physical Violence Data on security against crime and violence are difficult to analyze at an international level in a single indicator because of difficulties in adding together different types of crimes into one indicator (homicide is far more serious than petty theft but how can they be combined?), while differences in police reporting practices also hamper genuine comparison. Instead one might use a perceptionbased measure of safety, which in any case might be a better measure of human development. An individual’s perception of their own security arguably has the greater effect on their capabilities: if we feel unsafe we are less likely to leave the
6 5
146
4
International data on overall working conditions per se are not available, however data on job satisfaction are available as the percentage of respondents answering “satisfied” to the Gallup World Poll question, “Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with your job?” While not a summary measure of overall working conditions it is arguably at least a partial indicator of them. There is a quite strong correlation between job satisfaction and overall life evaluation (0.78), though this ought not to be
3
Better Working Conditions
7
8
Some of these aspects are more amenable to direct measurement than others, and the measures in the analysis that follow are only partial proxies for each component of human development with which they are linked.
3
Which other aspects of human development, beyond the HDI, might be considered in this analysis? The 1990 Human Development Report listed several important aspects of human development, noting that “people often value achievements that do not show up at all, or not immediately, in higher measured income or growth figures: better nutrition and health services, greater access to knowledge, more secure livelihoods, better working conditions, security against crime and physical violence, satisfying leisure hours, and a sense of participating in the economic, cultural and political activities of their communities.”25
7
8
Question 2: What are the empirical links between life evaluations and other aspects of human development beyond the HDI?
.2
.4
.6 Perceptions of Safety
95% CI Overall Life Evaluation
.8 Fitted values
1