The Quality of Life / Edition 1

by Martha Nussbaum, Amartya Sen

Overview

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

The idea of the quality of life is central to economic and social assessment and also to public policy, social legislation, and community programs. However, the commonly used indicators of economic success such as per capita income are at best crude measures of the quality of life. There is a strong need for a systematic exploration of the content, reach, and relevance of the concept of the quality of life, and ways of making it concrete and usable. In this collection of essays, some leading economists and philosophers rise to that challenge and provide a wide-ranging investigation. The essays include examinations of recent attempts to replace incomes and utilities by the concept of capability and also an exploration of the classic Aristotelian accounts of human flourishing, which provide insights into capability-based assessment of the quality of life. Some underlying methodological problems are also examined, including cultural relativism and utility as a measure of advantage. Possibilities of application are discussed in the context of important practical problems, such as correcting gender-based inequalities, determining medical priorities, and promoting living standards. The overall result is a major contribution to the understanding and use of the idea of the quality of life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198287971
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	04/01/1993
Series:	WIDER Studies in Development Economics
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	468
Product dimensions:	9.20(w) x 6.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

University of Chicago Law School

Trinity College, Cambridge

Editorial Reviews

"The effort recorded here will help to draw philosophical and economic theory a little closer to the world of crying children and inflamed conflict."—American Political Science Review

"The book makes a worthy contribution to facilitating interaction among researchers in various fields...I highly recommend it for expanding the confines of thought."—Review of Political Economy

From the Publisher