Major welfare reform legislation passed the U.S. Congress in August 1996 by a broad bipartisan majority and was signed into law by President Clinton. Almost 10 years and many research articles later, the long-term effects of welfare reform are still being debated.

The paper offers an analysis of how to operationalize the development goal of promoting well-being, and provides an exemplar. It focuses on one element of a comprehensive methodology to operationalize empirical research into the social and cultural construction of well-being in developing...