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Journal of Happiness Studies

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01-03-2009 | Original Paper

Well-being, Happiness and Why Relationships Matter: Evidence from Bangladesh

Authors: Laura Camfield, Kaneta Choudhury, Joe Devine

Published in: Journal of Happiness Studies | Issue 1/2009

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Abstract

Although Bangladesh is known as one of the poorest and most densely populated countries in the world, qualitative research and anecdotal evidence suggests its people report levels of happiness that are higher than those found in many other countries. This includes ‘developed’ countries where people have larger per capita incomes and can access a wider range of public services and goods. The paper explores this apparent paradox by analysing primary quantitative and qualitative data, and engaging with existing literature on happiness and objective wellbeing in Bangladesh. The data and analysis presented makes an original and timely contribution to the limited knowledge we have of the construction and experience of happiness and life satisfaction in contexts of extreme and persistent economic poverty. It identifies and offers insights into the ‘personal’ as well as social or ‘relational’ values and goals that people in Bangladesh consider important to achieve happiness in life. It also reflects on how different people experience these values and goals in very different ways. This, we argue, leads to a better understanding of the influence of the social and cultural context in the construction of people’s happiness. In the conclusion, we reflect on the policy implications of our findings.

previous article Spirituality and Subjective Well-Being: Evidences for a New Domain in the Personal Well-Being Index

next article Development as Happiness: The Subjective Perception of Happiness and UNDP’s Analysis of Poverty, Wealth and Development

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Another explanation of this anomaly is that objective poverty is an academic concept and therefore should not be expected to correlate well with more bottom-up notions like subjective poverty or happiness (Sumner 2004). Our thanks to Mariano Rojas for this observation.

For example, if a three point scale had been used, the mean score would be calculated as follows: Mean score = (% of sample scoring 3 * 3) + (% of sample scoring 2 * 2) + (% of sample scoring 1 * 1). The % SM would be obtained by a further calculation as follows: (mean score−1) * 100 / (3−1) * 50.

Our perspective on the relationship between happiness and wellbeing has been influenced by Uchida et al. (2004) who define happiness as an emotional concomitant to people’s appraisal of the quality of their lives.

See for example Mahmuda (2003), Nabi et al. (1999), Mahbub and Roy (1997).

The items from the ‘Knowledge about social environment scale’ covered women’s empowerment, social relationships, gender equality in employment, and so on.

The ‘Consultations with the Poor’ study was a World Bank funded initiative synthesising participatory poverty assessments and new participatory fieldwork from over 70 developing countries. It was published in three volumes: “Can Anyone Hear Us?” (Narayan et al. 2000a); “Crying Out for Change” (Narayan et al. 2000b); and “From Many Lands” (Narayan and Walton 2002).

The WeD Programme involves detailed and intensive fieldwork in rural, peri-urban, and urban sites in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Peru and Thailand. For more information see http://www.welldev.org.uk

The exploratory quality of life data from all countries is also being used to develop a cross-cultural measure of QoL, provisionally called the WeD-QoL (see Camfield et al. 2006).

The other main research instruments applied in each site were community profiling, a Resources and Needs Questionnaire (RANQ), income and expenditure survey, monthly diaries, welfare regime analysis, and process orientated research.

Although the sample for the QoL was not large, the decision to consider age, gender, socio-economic status and religious affiliation in the selection of respondents helped in some way to acknowledge the great heterogeneity that exists across persons in Bangladesh. Happiness is ultimately an individual construct and it is important not to assume homogeneity when making statements about what constitutes a happy life in a particular country context.

Interviews were carried out in Bengali by local researchers of the same gender who had worked in the site for at least a year previously and were fluent in both Bengali and English. The interviews were not recorded, however detailed notes were made in Bengali and English both during and after the interviews.

These questions have been used successfully in many developing countries during the last 20 years (see for example, Moller 2006), and the World Values Survey has used a ‘General Happiness Question’ with a representative sample of the Bangladeshi population since 1996 (see www.worldvaluessurvey.org).

The sample size for the Resources and Needs Questionnaire (n = 1,500) is equivalent to that used in national happiness surveys, see World Database of Happiness http://www2.eur.nl/fsw/research/happiness/hap_nat/reports/Nreport/NA94.HTM

The responses to the QoL were coded into three categories: ‘happy (responses of ‘very happy’, ‘happy’, ‘moderately happy’ and ‘a little happy’), ‘neither happy nor unhappy’, and ‘unhappy’ (responses of ‘unhappy’ and ‘very unhappy’).

370 men and women were sampled across the six sites used for the QoL and RANQ research and the SWLS and PANAS were applied alongside ‘native’ scales measuring goal necessity, goal satisfaction, perceived resources, and perception of self and others (see www.welldev.org.uk/research/methods-toobox/qol-toolbox.htm for further details).

The most recent publicly accessible report is no:16 http://www.deakin.edu.au/research/acqol/index_wellbeing/index.htm.

Inglehart et al. 2004 gets an even lower figure for Bangladeshis’ subjective well-being (0.54 out of 5 or ‘medium low’) when he combines the life satisfaction and happiness scores. However, this may be an artefact of the method of questioning as the developer of the Personal Generated Index (an individualized measure of subjective quality of life similar to Cantril’s Ladder [1965]) had a similar experience when using satisfaction/dissatisfaction rather than good/bad as the question stem during piloting in Bangladesh (Ruta et al. 2004).

Respondents to RANQ were asked to classify themselves as rich, average, or poor in relation to others in the research site.

We are indebted to Geof Wood for reminding us of the need to distinguish between the happiness level of farmers and agricultural labourers.

Young was defined as 18–45 years old, while old was over 45 years old.

The small sample size, especially when broken down further by age and gender, means that any conclusions are tentative ones, which require further empirical support.

The names of all sites surveyed as part of the research have been anonymised.

As there is usually a substantial age difference between wives and their husbands, and remarriage for widows is not common, women are reliant on their children for support in later life. Their relationship with sons is particularly important, as sons are expected to offer their parents sustained financial support and ultimately a home. Daughters, on the other hand, tend to move away from their natal home at marriage and although they remain attached to their natal home, they must also assume responsibility for the care of their elderly in-laws.

‘Halal’ refers here to an income secured in a way that is considered legitimate.

For example, according to Rojas’s study in Mexico (2006), household income was a better proxy for wellbeing than personal income or expenditure, suggesting that in Mexico at least there are material benefits to living with your family.

Marriage in Bangladesh is predominantly patrilocal. New brides therefore have to make a double adjustment in their lives: to their new husbands, often strangers at the time of marriage, and to their husband’s household. This period of adjustment is a particular time of stress that impinges very directly on women’s ability to achieve happiness in life (Ewing 1991).

A ‘love marriage’ is a phrase used to describe a marriage in which husband and wife have fallen in love before marriage. This is distinct from the more common ‘arranged marriages’ in which the families of the spouses take a more active role in setting up the marriage, at times without the spouses meeting until discussions are well advanced.

See Wood’s analysis (2006) of dependent forms of security, where poor people use strategies that are embedded in social relationships to increase their chances of making their lives more secure and predictable.

The Conceptual Referent Theory is supported by the results of a large survey in Mexico that used simple summary statements (for example, “happiness is accepting things as they are”) to test whether there was a relationship between people’s satisfaction with life and their endorsement of one of eight different conceptual referents (stoicism, virtue, enjoyment, carpe diem, satisfaction, utopian, tranquility, and fulfillment). Rojas used mulitlogit techniques to show that the probability of choosing a particular conceptual referent was influenced by people’s socio-economic and demographic situation, and concluded that while no referent could be considered as superior in producing happiness, some were clearly inferior (for example, utopian and carpe diem).

Western ego psychologists define intrapsychic autonomy as the ability to maintain enduring mental representations of sources of self-esteem and comfort, which enable flexible adaptation to new environments. Its value in a developing country context is affirmed by Ewing, a psychological anthropologist working in Pakistan, who identifies it as a key factor in the successful integration of a new bride into her husband’s household (1991).

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Title: Well-being, Happiness and Why Relationships Matter: Evidence from Bangladesh
Authors: Laura Camfield
Kaneta Choudhury
Joe Devine
Publication date: 01-03-2009
Publisher: Springer Netherlands
Published in: Journal of Happiness Studies / Issue 1/2009
Print ISSN: 1389-4978
Electronic ISSN: 1573-7780
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-007-9062-5

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Other articles of this Issue 1/2009

Enhancing quality of life by shifting importance perception among life domains

How individualism–collectivism orientations predict happiness in a collectivistic context

Spirituality and Subjective Well-Being: Evidences for a New Domain in the Personal Well-Being Index

Development as Happiness: The Subjective Perception of Happiness and UNDP’s Analysis of Poverty, Wealth and Development

Life Satisfaction is not a Balanced Estimator of the Good Life: Evidence from Reaction Time Measures and Self-Reported Emotions