Life Satisfaction in Malawi

Abstract

Subjective wellbeing has two main components: cognition and affect. Cognition is how individuals process information, and often involves a judgment and comparison. Affect refers to a person's moods and emotions; they are instant reactions to events that people face. For economists it is the cognition of happiness that is of most interest. However given that cognition involves judgments and comparisons, decisions that look easy to make may not be made. Cognition comprises four psychological processes; aspirations, comparisons, adaptation and coping. Whilst in this chapter we implicitly assume that life satisfaction and happiness are similar, there has been much discussion as to whether we should use them interchangeably. For instance quality of life or subjective wellbeing may capture all of the characteristics and more of these two terms. From the work of the World Health Organization Quality of Life Group and Diener there is a view that both quality of life and subjective wellbeing respectively, are umbrella notions. Quality of life is defined as 'an individual's perception of their position in life, in the context of the culture and value systems in which they live and in relation to their goals, expectations, standards, and concerns. It is a broad ranging concept, affected in a complex way by the person's physical health, psychological state, level of independence, social relationships, and their relationship to salient features of their environment'. Pioneered by Diener subjective wellbeing has been defined as 'an umbrella term for different valuations that people make regarding their lives, the events happening to them, their bodies and minds, and the circumstances in which they live'. Clearly the two concepts are similar in how values of people are important and how these depend on the society and culture they live within. Happiness, on the other hand, is normally defined as positive affect but can also be thought of as a universal evaluation of a person's life satisfaction. Life satisfaction is thus subordinate to the general concept of happiness. However, Sirgy argues that life satisfaction is accepted as a measure of subjective wellbeing. To proceed further it seems appropriate to discuss how life satisfaction is normally measured and how we measure it in this chapter. In many survey questionnaires, satisfaction is measured by the response to a question such as, 'How satisfied are you with your life so far?' or 'How satisfied with your life are you?'. A number or Likert scale is provided as an answer, with these numbers normally increasing from 1 to 5, 1 to 7 or 1 to 10. Similarly, in the Malawian data set we use the following question for measuring life satisfaction; 'Overall, how satisfied (content, happy) are you with your life? Are you... Very unsatisfied; Unsatisfied; Neither satisfied or unsatisfied; Satisfied; Very satisfied? This type of question implicitly means people have to compare their satisfaction with some ideal where they think their life will be completely satisfied and hence fulfilled. Questions on happiness tend to be answered more spontaneously and are more likely to reflect the mood of the person. The fact that satisfaction and happiness are assumed identical in the question reveals that many researchers assume the two concepts are the same, which begs the question, 'Are they'? This is a statistical issue but there is evidence that happiness and life satisfaction do act similarly in the empirical literature. Quality of life and subjective wellbeing embrace a far wider view of human welfare and cannot feasibly be captured in such a simple question as the above. To our knowledge, no qualitative research has been done on how people view the concept of happiness in Malawi. This paper will use quantitative methods which will provide some indication of which factors correlate with this general question on life satisfaction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)