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GWP Briefing Paper 17
Advancing Human Well-Being
Global Women’s Project
Julia Wartenberg, December 2012
For the past several years, the work of the Global Women’s Project (GWP) has focused on advancing human
well-being, an issue we believe is not currenlty substantially addressed in the public sphere. We are living
through a period of intertwined crises: care, environmental, ecological, economic and agricultural. These
crises, individually and collectively, are placing our and our society’s well-being at risk. You don’t need to
look far for evidence. The Great Recession, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, ended
in June 2009, but the lived reality of individuals does not reflect this. Unemployment hovers at 7.8 percent,
a number which does not include the millions who have given up and dropped out of the workforce nor the
countless who remain underemployed (BLS 2012). For too many their day-to-day is filled with struggles of
making ends meet and figuring out ways to provide quality care and support for their loved ones. Our society
is massively unequal and continues to be stratified. Gender, racial and economic hierarchies and stratification continue to exist. Indeed, the wealthiest one percent of Americans earns approximately 40 percent
of this nation’s wealth. And, as many economists (including Stiglitz) have noted, this gap has increased in
recent years (ThinkProgress 2011). Our well-being is in jeopardy not because of one policy or one root cause.
Instead, this is a multi-dimensional problem, with many layers precisely because human well-being is a multidimensional, multi-layered concept.
But What is Human Well-Being?
Human well-being means far more than being employed, making a living wage, meeting basic needs and
having access to health insurance. It is considerably more multifaceted and complex than such a simple enu-
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meration. Human well-being encompasses all aspects of a person’s life, from the economic to the ecological
to the social and to the political. Human well-being means having access to security – physical, social and
economic, education opportunities, freedom, fairness and the democratic process, employment opportunities, healthy foods and clean water, the ability to live in a healthy environment with clean air, social and political equity, access to justice, social mobility, health care, leisure and happiness, ability for social interaction,
the list goes on (this is by no means exhaustive). But access to these is not enough. These must be available
to and within reach of all individuals in society.
Important to acknowledge is that human well-being includes some basic human rights, such as food, water,
shelter, health and safety, but it also embodies context- and culture-specific aspects. Thus, well-being must
be studied, measured and understood from different perspectives and from the lived experiences of individuals around the world. Regardless of the context-specificity of each element enumerated above, it remains
that the items on the above list are intertwined. Upward mobility is not possible without education opportunities. Healthy, well-fed and socialized children tend to do best in school, but it is not possible to have
healthy kids if not all have access to quality health care, nutritious foods and live in an environment with
clean air and water. The connections between the above are endless, but suffice it to say that the elimination
of one harms the others.
For some time now, human well-being has generally been measured and equated with how well the nation’s
economy was doing through the measurement of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Many maintained, and
even more came to believe, that when an economy was thriving and money was made through the production and consumption of products, accordingly, the individuals of that society thrived. The more money one
made, the more one was able to purchase. But this has been shown to be false. The Easterlin Paradox illustrates that over the long term, a sense of well-being within a country does not rise with a corresponding rise
in income. Moreover, in international comparisons of countries where incomes are sufficient to meet basic
needs, the average reported level of happiness does not vary much with national income per person. In the
United States, one study found that individuals’ self-reported well-being and happiness did not improve or
proportionally rise with an income above $75,000 (Kahneman and Deaton 2010).
Indeed human well-being goes far beyond aggregate money units. Perhaps most detrimentally, the correlation of well-being with GDP came to mean that human well-being was something that one could purchase,
making it synonymous with wealth. No doubt, having access to financial resources can ease many burdens
– it can help one access health benefits, education, physical security and any one of the items mentioned
above. However, as has been witnessed over the past decades, this has increased stratification and the cycle
of poverty and has allowed a few elite unlimited use of fundamental rights all should be able to easily access.
Evidence is clear that human well-being cannot continue to be interlinked solely with objective measures of
the economy. Not only does it perpetuate false notions that certain societies and individuals are thriving, it
also fails to account for things money cannot buy or count: such as happiness and satisfaction. To fully understand the well-being of individuals, other objective measures must also be incorporated: such as the health
of the environment, the population’s access to health care, etc. But perhaps more significantly, subjective
measures, such as happiness and life satisfaction must also be incorporated.
Achieving Human Well-Being
That is not to say that only subjective measures should dictate human well-being or its measurement. No,
this, like utilizing only objective economic measures, would be erroneous and, most likely, detrimental. Instead, the two must be used in a complementary and analytical fashion. Yet policymakers continue to utilize
a single or a single-dimensional measure to evaluate such a multi-dimensional and, many times, contextspecific thing. To be sure, some of the elements of well-being are also based upon personal circumstances
and commitments, making some elements easier than others for individuals to achieve. But the point is that
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social and economic policies must be enacted which contribute to allowing all to achieve human well-being.
Policies must center on allowing individuals and communities the freedoms, tools and capabilities to work
toward and attain human well-being.
The first steps toward achieving human well-being are both the simplest steps and the most clear: ensure
that all have access to the basic human rights such as food, shelter, clean water and health. The next steps
tend to get tricky and some politicians choose to eschew them. The environment and eco-system must be
preserved and nurtured. That is the only way to ensure that all have access to healthy living environments
and foods. Simultaneously, individuals must be granted access to employment, and when not possible, social
and policies must be in place which protect an individual while she/he seeks employment. Policies must also
be enacted which ensure all individuals have access to freedom and the democratic process, social mobility,
security, fairness and equity. But perhaps most fundamentally, we need to realize that individuals’ well-being
will not improve if communal and societal well-being are not improved as well. That means policies must be
put in place which consider the global common good, not only the individual good.
GWP Advances Human Well-Being
The Global Women’s Project has identified care as fundamental to human well-being. Current policies meant
to address care of the human being, our community and our society are lacking and inadequate. As our
population rapidly ages, families will increasingly struggle to provide the support and care the elderly needs.
Individuals with elderly parents and children who both need care (known as the Sandwich Generation) will
face particular challenges. Inflexible work schedules and stagnating wages will make caring for ourselves and
our loved ones nearly impossible, leaving many to face these problems alone – providing care while remaining in the paid labor force so that other financial and care needs and responsibilities are met. As families
struggle with these issues, many turn to paid direct workers for help. This group is becoming increasingly
important in our ability to provide care for ourselves and our loved ones. We entrust these individuals with
the lives of family members, but these individuals often face poor working conditions – minimal compensation, often compulsory overtime and no access to paid time off to address their own personal issues. Yet, as
direct-care workers suffer these conditions, it still remains that direct paid care is out of the financial reach
of millions. These issues are far from a personal problem, they have economic and social welfare repercussions for us, our communities and society. The impacts go beyond being stretched for time: these issues will
affect the composition of our labor force and our national and societal welfare. As our care needs increase,
they will impact our lives and the lives of our family members in profound and very practical ways. Such
issues, issues which have direct impacts on our and our community’s well-being, must inform our political
dialogue and our social and economic policies.
Yet somehow, this is lost on many of our political leaders and a large part of our population, who believe
that now is the time to make cuts in the limited social protection policies which exist. Elder-care is addressed
only through scuffles over social security and Medicare, but elder-care needs go far beyond what either program alone, or together, can cover. Care for individuals with disabilities and the chronically ill is certainly not
addressed, unless it is cuts in services. And, lest we forget, our country is about to experience a care crisis
like never before. Millions of returning Iraq and Afghanistan soldiers and veterans face physical and mental
health-care needs. Just like other populations, these individuals and their families will face a hodgepodge of
services and policies which, like their care problems, they must decipher on their own.
As GWP has worked to advance human well-being through research and advocacy on numerous issues
such as the work-life conflict, elder-care, food security, quality jobs and alternative measures to the Gross
Domestic Product, we have used care for people and community as our perspective for evaluating and
interrogating economic and social policies. We maintain that care is the foundation for economic and social
prosperity and human well-being.
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Conclusion
Our world and society are incredibly unequal: millions struggle to find their next meal and put a roof over
their heads while others own multiple homes and live in extravagance. Our environment is suffering: on
a regular basis species are either added to the endangered species list or become extinct, sea levels are
rising as are carbon dioxide levels. Earth’s resources are quickly diminishing. Our economy now functions
to produce more and more material things so that consumption is increased and therefore so is money for
the producer. It has become dehumanized and devoid of those it is supposed to work for: human beings. As
we move forward in the 21st century, it is vital that human well-being and shared prosperity be realized. It
is only when everyone has the ability and potential to realize well-being that we as a society, national and
global, will have healthier individuals, stronger families, less violent communities and more cooperative and
cohesive societies.
What Can You Do:
• Vote
• Protect the environment
• Live and shop sustainably
• Bring care issues before your representative
Works Referenced
Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). 2012. “Unemployment Rate Demographics, September 2012.” Available for
download: http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2012/ted_20121010.htm
Kahneman, Daniel and Angus Deaton. 2010. “High Income Improves Evaluation of Life but Not Emotional
Well-Being.” Available for download: http://wws.princeton.edu/news/Income_Happiness/Happiness_Money_Report.pdf
ThinkProgress. 2011. “How Unequal We Are: The Top 5 Facts You Should Know About The Wealthiest One
Percent Of Americans.” Available for download: http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/10/03/334156/
top-five-wealthiest-one-percent/
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