SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING IN LOW INCOME COUNTRIES: POSITIONAL, RELATIONAL AND SOCIAL CAPITAL COMPONENTS

Economics has always been interested in people's well-being and its maximization, nevertheless recent studies show that hardly this aim is achieved. Recently, the so-called happiness economics is proposing a paradigmatic shift moving the focus of its research towards subjective well-being. So long, different theories have been advanced to explain what really makes people happy or satisfied with their life, but they are mainly focused on developed countries. Present work tries to identify positional and relational determinants of subjective well-being in low income countries using data from the World Values Survey. Focusing on low income countries can have notable effects on these economies allowing to better evaluate the effects of possible development policies and above all to identify policies socially and environmentally more sustainable than those proposed and adopted so far by developed countries.