Between 2005 and 2007 the Ministry of Social Development of Uruguay implemented the National Plan for Social Emergency (PANES). One of the most outstanding results in the evaluations was the de-naturalization of some socio-cultural phenomena that were strongly rooted within society: domestic...

Subjective indicators are often criticized since they are thought to be particularly affected by the phenomenon of adaptive preferences and social comparison. For social policy purposes, processes of downward adaptation in disadvantaged individuals are of particular importance, i.e., it is...

While standard economic theory takes individual preferences as stable and “given”, i.e., independent of situational context, real-world preferences tend to vary with changing opportunity sets. This is exemplified by Aesop’s fable of the fox and the sour grapes. This phenomenon of...

This paper attempts to re-examine the notion of equality, going beyond the classic opposition in France between affirmative action and meritocratic equality. Hence, we propose shifting the French debate about equality of opportunities in education to the question of how to raise equality of...

According to Epictetus, mental freedom and happiness can be achieved by distinguishing between, on the one hand, things that are upon our con- trol (our acts, opinions and desires), and, on the other hand, things that are not upon our control (our body, property, offi ces and reputation), and by...

This paper aims at developing the Capability Approach's (CA) underlying philosophical anthropology and ethics by focusing on the work of its major exponents, Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. I first discuss CA's critique of happiness as subjective well-being and defend the idea of 'flourishing'...

The phenomenon of adaptive preferences – sometimes also known under the name of sour grapes – has long caused a stir in Social Theory. In this paper, the precise problem posed by adaptive preferences, as seen from the point of view of a theoretician who intends to model or understand the...

This paper reports our experiences with the application of a number of alternative approaches to a study of women's economic circumstances and quality of life in a typical western city. The important work of, especially, Martha Nussbaum on the capabilities approach to evaluations of “quality...

Alcohol consumption patterns vary across Europe. Northern Europeans frequently engage in excessive drinking in social situations (EDSS), behavior less common in southern Europe. We develop a model to explore whether these behavioral differences could be rooted in genetic variations across Europe...