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Capability Approach
The capability approach (also referred to as the capabilities approach) is a normative approach to human welfare that concentrates on the actual capability of persons to achieve lives they value rather than solely having a right or freedom to do so. It was conceived in the 1980s as an alternative approach to welfare economics. In this approach, Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum combine a range of ideas that were previously excluded from (or inadequately formulated in) traditional approaches to welfare economics. The core focus of the capability approach is improving access to the tools people use to live a fulfilling life. Assessing capability Sen initially argued for five components to assess capability: # The importance of real freedoms in the assessment of a person's advantage # Individual differences in the ability to transform resources into valuable activities # The multi-variate nature of activities giving rise to wellbeing # A balance of materialistic and nonmateria ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Welfare
Welfare, or commonly social welfare, is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with welfare, or refer specifically to social insurance programs which provide support only to those who have previously contributed (e.g. most pension systems), as opposed to ''social assistance'' programs which provide support on the basis of need alone (e.g. most disability benefits). The International Labour Organization defines social security as covering support for those in old age, support for the maintenance of children, medical treatment, parental and sick leave, unemployment and disability benefits, and support for sufferers of occupational injury. More broadly, welfare may also encompass efforts to provide a basic level of well-being through free or subsidized ''social services'' such as healthcare, education, infrastructure, vocational training ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Microeconomics
Microeconomics is a branch of mainstream economics that studies the behavior of individuals and firms in making decisions regarding the allocation of scarce resources and the interactions among these individuals and firms. Microeconomics focuses on the study of individual markets, sectors, or industries as opposed to the national economy as whole, which is studied in macroeconomics. One goal of microeconomics is to analyze the market mechanisms that establish relative prices among goods and services and allocate limited resources among alternative uses. Microeconomics shows conditions under which free markets lead to desirable allocations. It also analyzes market failure, where markets fail to produce efficient results. While microeconomics focuses on firms and individuals, macroeconomics focuses on the sum total of economic activity, dealing with the issues of growth, inflation, and unemployment and with national policies relating to these issues. Microeconomics also d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Game Theory
Game theory is the study of mathematical models of strategic interactions among rational agents. Myerson, Roger B. (1991). ''Game Theory: Analysis of Conflict,'' Harvard University Press, p.&nbs1 Chapter-preview links, ppvii–xi It has applications in all fields of social science, as well as in logic, systems science and computer science. Originally, it addressed two-person zero-sum games, in which each participant's gains or losses are exactly balanced by those of other participants. In the 21st century, game theory applies to a wide range of behavioral relations; it is now an umbrella term for the science of logical decision making in humans, animals, as well as computers. Modern game theory began with the idea of mixed-strategy equilibria in two-person zero-sum game and its proof by John von Neumann. Von Neumann's original proof used the Brouwer fixed-point theorem on continuous mappings into compact convex sets, which became a standard method in game theory and mathem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Economics
Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyzes what's viewed as basic elements in the economy, including individual agents and markets, their interactions, and the outcomes of interactions. Individual agents may include, for example, households, firms, buyers, and sellers. Macroeconomics analyzes the economy as a system where production, consumption, saving, and investment interact, and factors affecting it: employment of the resources of labour, capital, and land, currency inflation, economic growth, and public policies that have impact on these elements. Other broad distinctions within economics include those between positive economics, describing "what is", and normative economics, advocating "what ought to be"; between economic theory and applied economics; between rati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Agent (economics)
In economics, an agent is an actor (more specifically, a decision maker) in a model of some aspect of the economy. Typically, every agent makes decisions by solving a well- or ill-defined optimization or choice problem. For example, ''buyers'' (consumers) and ''sellers'' ( producers) are two common types of agents in partial equilibrium models of a single market. Macroeconomic models, especially dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models that are explicitly based on microfoundations, often distinguish households, firms, and governments or central banks as the main types of agents in the economy. Each of these agents may play multiple roles in the economy; households, for example, might act as consumers, as workers, and as voters in the model. Some macroeconomic models distinguish even more types of agents, such as workers and shoppers or commercial banks. The term ''agent'' is also used in relation to principal–agent models; in this case, it refers specifically to some ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Values
In ethics and social sciences, value denotes the degree of importance of something or action, with the aim of determining which actions are best to do or what way is best to live (normative ethics in ethics), or to describe the significance of different actions. Value systems are prospective and prescriptive beliefs; they affect the ethical behavior of a person or are the basis of their intentional activities. Often primary values are strong and secondary values are suitable for changes. What makes an action valuable may in turn depend on the ethical values of the objects it increases, decreases, or alters. An object with "ethic value" may be termed an "ethic or philosophic good" (noun sense). Values can be defined as broad preferences concerning appropriate courses of actions or outcomes. As such, values reflect a person's sense of right and wrong or what "ought" to be. "Equal rights for all", "Excellence deserves admiration", and "People should be treated with respect and digni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lifestyle (sociology)
Lifestyle is the interests, opinions, behaviours, and behavioural orientations of an individual, group, or culture. The term was introduced by Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler in his 1929 book, ''The Case of Miss R.'', with the meaning of "a person's basic character as established early in childhood". The broader sense of lifestyle as a "way or style of living" has been documented since 1961. Lifestyle is a combination of determining intangible or tangible factors. Tangible factors relate specifically to demographic variables, i.e. an individual's demographic profile, whereas intangible factors concern the psychological aspects of an individual such as personal values, preferences, and outlooks. A rural environment has different lifestyles compared to an urban metropolis. Location is important even within an urban scope. The nature of the neighborhood in which a person resides affects the set of lifestyles available to that person due to differences between various neighborho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quality Of Life
Quality of life (QOL) is defined by the World Health Organization 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". Standard indicators of the quality of life include wealth, employment, the environment, physical and mental health, education, recreation and leisure time, social belonging, religious beliefs, safety, security and freedom. QOL has a wide range of contexts, including the fields of international development, healthcare, politics and employment. Health related QOL (HRQOL) is an evaluation of QOL and its relationship with health. Engaged theory One approach, called engaged theory, outlined in the journal of ''Applied Research in the Quality of Life'', posits four domains in assessing quality of life: ecology, economics, politics and culture. In the domain of culture, for example, it includes the following subdomain ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intrinsic Value (ethics)
In ethics, intrinsic value is a property of anything that is valuable on its own. Intrinsic value is in contrast to instrumental value (also known as extrinsic value), which is a property of anything that derives its value from a relation to another intrinsically valuable thing. Intrinsic value is always something that an object has "in itself" or "for its own sake", and is an intrinsic property. An object with intrinsic value may be regarded as an end, or in Kantian terminology, as an end-in-itself. The term "intrinsic value" is used in axiology, a branch of philosophy that studies value (including both ethics and aesthetics). All major normative ethical theories identify something as being intrinsically valuable. For instance, for a virtue ethicist, eudaimonia (human flourishing, sometimes translated as "happiness") has intrinsic value, whereas things that bring you happiness (such as having a family) may be merely instrumentally valuable. Similarly, consequentialists may ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Instrumental Value
In moral philosophy, instrumental and intrinsic value are the distinction between what is a ''means to an end'' and what is as an ''end in itself''. Things are deemed to have instrumental value if they help one achieve a particular end; intrinsic values, by contrast, are understood to be desirable in and of themselves. A tool or appliance, such as a hammer or washing machine, has instrumental value because it helps you pound in a nail or cleans your clothes. Happiness and pleasure are typically considered to have intrinsic value insofar as asking ''why'' someone would want them makes little sense: they are desirable for their own sake irrespective of their possible instrumental value. The classic names ''instrumental'' and ''intrinsic'' were coined by sociologist Max Weber, who spent years studying good meanings people assigned to their actions and beliefs. The ''Oxford Handbook of Value Theory'' provide three modern definitions of intrinsic and instrumental value: # They are "th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fasting
Fasting is the abstention from eating and sometimes drinking. From a purely physiological context, "fasting" may refer to the metabolic status of a person who has not eaten overnight (see " Breakfast"), or to the metabolic state achieved after complete digestion and absorption of a meal. Metabolic changes in the fasting state begin after absorption of a meal (typically 3–5 hours after eating). A diagnostic fast refers to prolonged fasting from 1 to 100 hours (depending on age) conducted under observation to facilitate the investigation of a health complication, usually hypoglycemia. Many people may also fast as part of a medical procedure or a check-up, such as preceding a colonoscopy or surgery, or before certain medical tests. Intermittent fasting is a technique sometimes used for weight loss that incorporates regular fasting into a person's dietary schedule. Fasting may also be part of a religious ritual, often associated with specifically scheduled fast days, as dete ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Starving
Starvation is a severe deficiency in caloric energy intake, below the level needed to maintain an organism's life. It is the most extreme form of malnutrition. In humans, prolonged starvation can cause permanent organ damage and eventually, death. The term ''inanition'' refers to the symptoms and effects of starvation. Starvation may also be used as a means of torture or execution. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), hunger is the single gravest threat to the world's public health.Malnutrition The Starvelings The WHO also states that is by far the biggest contributor to |
