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999 _c1444
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020 _a0-8157-0326-0
040 _cIZA
100 _aGraham, Carol
_94030
_c(ed.)
100 _a Lora, Eduardo
_c(ed.)
_96585
245 0 _aParadox and Perception: Measuring Quality of Life in Latin America
260 _c2009
_bThe Brookings Inst.,
_aWashington, DC,
300 _a258 pages
340 _hD6 59
520 _aThe "quality of life" concept of quality of life is a broad one. It incorporates basic needs but also extends beyond them to include capabilities, the "livability" of the environment, and life appreciation and happiness. Latin America's diversity in culture and levels of development provide a laboratory for studying how quality of life varies with a number of objective and subjective measures. These measures range from income levels to job insecurity and satisfaction, to schooling attainment and satisfaction, to measured and self-assessed health, among others. Paradox and Perceptiongreatly improves our understanding of the determinants of well-being in Latin America based on a broad "quality of life" concept that challenges some standard assumptions in economics, including those about the relationship between happiness and income. The authors' analysis builds upon a number of new approaches in economics, particularly those related to the study of happiness and finds a number of paradoxes as the region's respondents evaluate their well-being. These include the paradox of unhappy growth at the macroeconomic level, happy peasants and frustrated achievers at the microlevel, and surprisingly high levels of satisfaction with public services among the region's poorest. They also have important substantive links with several of the region's realities, such as high levels of income inequality, volatile macroeconomic performance, and low expectations of public institutions and faith in the capacity of the state to deliver. Identifying these perceptions, paradoxes, and their causes will contribute to the crafting of better public policies, as well as to our understanding of why "populist" politics still pervade in much of the region.
650 _aquality of life
_9600
650 _adepriviation
_96586
650 _aincome satisfaction
_96587
650 _awell-being
_95296
650 _ahealth
_93379
650 _aeducation
_96588
650 _aemployment
_9151
650 _aperceptions
_96589
651 _aLatin America
_91333
856 _uhttps://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7864/j.ctt12805r
_yJSTOR
942 _cANTH
_2ddc