Wellbeing and Social Policy in Developing Countries (Draft)

Wellbeing is a key term that has captured the imagination of those interested in extending the boundaries of social policy in the twenty first century. This has taken three major forms: new measures of progress through national and international statistics; wellbeing assessment as the means to evaluate the effectiveness of projects and programmes; and the enhancement of wellbeing as an objective of programmes, often, though not always, associated with physical or psychological health. This paper provides a short introduction to this rather large area of work.

Sarah C. White is a sociologist concerned with international development and wellbeing and Senior Lecturer at the University of Bath.