Human welfare

El artículo señala la importancia que tienen las medidas antropométricas y de la estatura en particular, como indicadores de los cambios en el estado nutricional y de la salud de las poblaciones. Muestra la utilidad y los problemas de los registros militares españoles que proporcionan información sobre la talla y el peso de los reclutas. Y a través de unas series locales de talla de los reemplazos se exploran los cambios en ei bienestar de los españoles desde mediados del siglo xix. Los datos revelan una correlación entre salud, riqueza, renta y estatura, y ponen de manifiesto la relación de la talla con los ciclos económicos y demográficos que se registran en la España del siglo XX.

The concept and arguments about the relationship between economic growth and social well being has been evident since the history of National Income Accounting (McGillivray, 2007:6). There has been growing literature on such issue since 1974 when Richard Easterlin demonstrated a fact through his
studies that happiness or well being does not have much impact after a level even when income increases, something that is known as Easterlin Paradox [Easterlin, 1974]. The dilemma of income happiness paradoxical correlation suggested by Easterlin is still controversial as countered by Helliwell (2002), Stevenson and Wolfers (2008. (as cited in Senik, 2011).
Human well being and happiness are quite multidimensional and subjective and it requires more than one single indicator to measure it if it can be truly measured at all. “Along with well-being, the most common ones include the quality of life, living standards and human development. Others include utility,
life satisfaction, prosperity, needs fulfilment, empowerment, capability expansion, poverty, and, more recently, happiness
”( McGillivray, 2007).
The essay centers round the concept of per capita income and its impact as an indicator to measure
human welfare within a country or economy. The paper is an attempt to establish the much celebrated
argument that economic indicators such as per capita income is not sufficient enough to measure or derive human and social development.
The paper attempts to establish with empirical reasoning that increase in per capita income does not necessarily derive improved human welfare of the state.

The paper is organized in 4 parts. 1) Defining the 2 major key terms ‘per capita income’ and ‘human welfare’, 2) Analyzing problems with income as measure of human welfare 3) Discussing alternatives to measure social well being and finally 4) Concluding remarks.

This paper will explore demand side barriers to increasing immunisation coverage rates. For vaccination programmes to wipe out infectious diseases, herd immunity needs to be achieved. To do this requires that vaccination programmes be reflexive and adapt to differing environments. This paper will examine how vaccination programmes are rife with political, social, and religious symbolism, and how fears of national and religious autonomy prevent people from getting their children vaccinated. To support this claim, it will also look at differing socio-cultural understandings of disease. This paper will conclude that micro-engagement can help overcome resistance to vaccinations but, on an institutional level, factors causing resistance are neither being recognised nor addressed.

The Cycle of Abuse refers to conflict within domestic settings and shows the relationship between animal abuse, abuse of humans and domestic violence. This ‘Cycle’ can potentially be broken through a process known as Humane Education, which is based on a non-threatening format that does not impose a belief system, but attempts to create a platform for independent critical thinking, so individuals, even a young child, can evaluate information and make informed choices. It is an area of study that fosters in individuals a sense of empathy that extends to the web of life – to humans, animals and the natural world, recognising that all are interrelated.

The right to a livelihood has been ideologically, politically and socially constructed through the development of an agenda for human rights. There has been a systematic and incremental advance within the social policy arena in the articulation, institutionalisation and legalisation of human rights in terms of people’s livelihoods. Such rights entail two aspects: firstly, the right to work and enjoy employment security, and secondly the right to welfare benefits under conditions in which citizens are unable to work or lose their jobs due to physical disability, economic failure or any other relevant social constraints.

When HA Prichard launched his attack on the “mistake” in moral philosophy of “supposing the possibility of proving what can only be apprehended directly by an act of moral thinking,” he had Plato squarely in his sights.1 Plato, in fact, is the poster boy for the strategy of trying to “ ...