Introduction

Human well-being has always been a concern of academics, politicians, social activists and the general public. The material on well-being is massive and diverse, and the term ‘well-being’ has ‘many usages, meanings and conceptions’ (Gasper, 2004, p 2). Because conceptualising and measuring quality of life outcomes are still controversial (Bowling, 2005), there is still no single generally accepted method for measuring quality of life (Kind, 1990). This lack of a consensus on human well-being might provide opportunities for unscrupulous politicians selectively to adopt a measure of well-being at the expense of disadvantaged groups. More importantly, people's quality of life will suffer if dominant approaches cannot adequately address the physical, social, economic and political needs of human beings. Therefore, this chapter firstly reviews some key approaches to human well-being and then proposes an alternative framework for assessing quality of life.

Constraints of GDP and alternative measurements

Economics is a key part of modern life and national development has always been linked with the level of national income or GDP. In China, as with nearly every other industrialised country, the GDP growth rate has been a dominant criterion and, recently, the ‘blind pursuit of major GDP indicators’ has been criticised for creating negative effects on society (China Internet Information Centre, 2006). Cobb et al (1995, p 6) remind us of several weaknesses of GDP for measuring human well-being: firstly, GDP does not take into account valuable human activities such as unpaid work in households and voluntary work in the community; secondly, it includes expenditure that diminishes as well as expands welfare; and, thirdly, it takes no account of the depletion or degradation of natural resources.