Table Of ContentInternational Handbooks of Quality-of-Life
Richard J. Estes
M. Joseph Sirgy Editors
The Pursuit of
Human Well-Being
The Untold Global History
International Handbooks
of Quality-of- Life
Chair of the Editorial Board
Graciela Tonon, Universidad Nacional de Lomas de Zamora and
Universidad de Palermo, Argentina
Editorial Board
Alex Michalos, University of Northern British Columbia, Canada
Rhonda Phillips, Purdue University, USA
Don Rahtz, College of William & Mary, USA
Dave Webb, University of Western Australia, Australia
Wolfgang Glatzer, Goethe University, Germany
Dong Jin Lee, Yonsei University, Korea
Laura Camfield, University of East Anglia, UK
Aims and Scope
The International Handbooks of Quality-of-Life Research offer extensive bibliographic resources.
They present literature reviews of the many subdisciplines and areas of study within the growing field
of quality of life research. Handbooks in the series focus on capturing and reviewing the quality of life
research literature in specific life domains, on specific populations, or in relation to specific disciplines
or sectors of industry. In addition, the Handbooks cover measures of quality of life and well-being,
providing annotated bibliographies of well-established measures, methods, and scales.
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/8365
Richard J. Estes • M. Joseph Sirgy
Editors
The Pursuit of Human
Well-Being
The Untold Global History
Editors
Richard J. Estes M. Joseph Sirgy
School of Social Policy and Practice Pamplin College of Business
University of Pennsylvania Department of Marketing
Philadelphia, PA, USA Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State
University (Virginia Tech)
Blacksburg, VA, USA
ISSN 2468-7227 ISSN 2468-7235 (eBook)
International Handbooks of Quality-of-Life
ISBN 978-3-319-39100-7 ISBN 978-3-319-39101-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-39101-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016960752
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or
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This book is dedicated to Harry Halloran and Joseph “Tony”
Carr—two remarkable visionaries who appreciate the rich
contributions made by quality-of-life and well-being scholars.
Without their investment and dedication to the science
of well-being, this work would never have been possible.
Foreword
Developing a history of human well-being has been a passion and core belief
of mine for years. As a businessman, I have been fortunate to be associated
with colleagues who are committed to making our world a better place. I
believe strongly that people want to improve their lives for themselves, their
families, and their communities. It is with these beliefs that I, along with my
lifelong friend Tony Carr, began Halloran Philanthropies. Our mission was
then, and continues to be, “creating the world we all want”—a world different
from the one we live in today.
As we began in 2007 to set in motion the vision of Halloran Philanthropies,
we knew early on that we wanted to focus on and support innovation and
remarkable innovators who demonstrated a wide range of visions to improve
the human condition across various areas of health, education, and livelihood.
As this strategy unfolded, I realized that creating a plan for the future of well-
being required a deep understanding of the history of well-being. We needed
to look at change with a wider, more inquisitive lens. As we investigated
further the concepts of human well-being and quality of life, we found a
dearth of research specifically centered on the history of human experience.
By the latter, I mean an analysis that transcends the academic definition of
good economies, good trade, good incomes, and good governance. How can
we move forward in our thinking and doing without a comprehensive under-
standing of how human happiness and well-being have evolved? How can we
design our strategies and our collective global agenda for raising the bar for
the greatest number, when our opinions, thoughts, and feelings are shaped
largely by the media—media that fail to champion a systematic focus on
research and analysis?
Let me reflect for a moment on why Halloran Philanthropies decided to
fund this project. I have been unimpressed and uninspired by the lack of per-
spective of the popular media. By lack of perspective, I mean the failure of
the media to report stories and events in the context of a well-researched,
complete picture of what is really going on in the world. Unfortunately, pol-
icy makers and the public depend primarily on the mass media for informa-
tion and analysis of world events. Although there are certainly many
exceptions, what keeps the media alive is their ability to sell negative stories,
but not necessarily balanced critical thinking. The media often have neither
vii
viii Foreword
the money nor the orientation to do the research required and to do justice to
the many complex social issues that confront humanity. And we have all
heard the expression, good news does not sell.
I take a contrarian and a “change-maker” view about the human condition
and the improvements in the world. I am challenged by the question: Are
things improving in health, education, and human welfare in a few
regions of the world, many regions of the world, or all regions of the
world? The answer to this question has a lot to say about the ideal goals for
the future: How do we get to the world that we all want? Or, as Buckminster
Fuller would say, the “100 % world,” where 100 % of humanity enjoys the
“good life.”
The question “… are things improving in the world?” has become the
driving force behind my commitment to support this research led by the
extraordinary editorial team of Professors Richard J. Estes and M. Joseph
Sirgy. Our editors selected well-respected specialists from every major region
of the world to examine the questions from a common point of departure,
agreed upon from the beginning as the basic indicators of the Human
Development Index. With the HDI indicators as the starting point, each team
was “challenged to explore the extensive data that underlie the rich fabric of
human experience documented in this research.” Through analysis we uncov-
ered a complex tapestry that integrates Western, Near Eastern, and Eastern
philosophical conceptions of what it means for humans to live “well”; our
editors examined in detail the socioeconomic, political, and historical experi-
ences of every region, incorporating the major religions and the historically
disadvantaged populations. Above all, every aspect of this project is rooted,
to my delight, in data.
In every corner of the world, in both objective and subjective arenas, the
core questions about the scope of improvements in human development hold
a vital key to our collective future. For me, this is paramount for the following
reason: If life is improving in a few, many, or all of the regions of the world,
particularly over the last 70 years or so, then getting to the “world we all
want” in these regions or all regions will be a lot more probable than if we
find that life is deteriorating in core areas of health, education, and welfare in
the regions we have studied. In such a scenario, forging a path ahead will
obviously be far more difficult. If we find the former scenario to be true, con-
firming that well-being is improving in all regions of the world, this outcome
for me is nothing short of a revelation that can create optimism that human
progress and betterment are being achieved. It may be a revelation that we
can enthusiastically stand behind and strongly support. Whatever one’s faith
tradition, I believe that we are all connected by a common force for good with
a desire for continued improvement.
I will not give away the conclusions of this research journey here or the
richness of what I have learned; I invite all readers of this work simply to
benefit from the amazing opportunity for immersion and learning that this
book represents. We plan to update this body of research every 5 years to
determine whether the trends we have discovered endure, and we will do so
with all the humility and good faith set in place by our editors. We will
endeavor to tell this story widely, to share the outcomes of this robust body of
Foreword ix
research, and to translate the information into as many literal and visual forms
as possible for the benefit of all who care to read it. This book provides the
untold story of human well-being: the truth about our experience as human
beings in our search to create the world we all want.
Halloran Philanthropies Harry Halloran
West Conshohocken, PA, USA
Chuvisco—a man’s memory of his childhood farm and the wall he is not sure he had ever
climbed over (© Brian Fernandes-Halloran. Used with permission)
Preface
Organized human history has been unfolding for more than 40,000 years.
Indeed, evidence exists that Homo sapiens has been a major force on the
planet for at least as long as 6–8 millennia, albeit many scholars suggest even
longer. In either case, “modern” men and women are of comparatively recent
origin and postdate the period of the great dinosaurs by millions of years.
Homo sapiens appeared around the beginning of the current global ice age,
the Pliocene-Quaternary glaciation, an ongoing period that is largely respon-
sible for the creation of a broad range of social, political, economic, and tech-
nological innovations (especially those designed to keep the people living in
northern countries warm). The current ice age, with all of the challenges that
it presented and continues to present to humanity, has compelled people
throughout the world to live in highly interdependent communities; to share
in advancing the well-being of one another, but especially that of their fami-
lies and local communities; and to create forms of housing, energy sources,
transportation sources and networks, and communication systems that keep
people in close proximity to one another.
This volume covers developments in human well-being that have taken
place worldwide over the past 3000 years. We have limited our focus to this
time period, given the absence of written or other interpretable records prior
to 2500 before the Common Era (BCE). We do, of course, have archeological
evidence of human well-being prior to 2500 BCE, but many of those records
are only fragments of more complete documents that have been lost to history
or, as of now, remain largely uninterpretable. Future generations of scholars
are expected to gradually extend the boundaries of the history of well-being
beyond what is known today, but, as of now, only the major centers of these
most ancient of civilizations are known to us, e.g., the Olmec people of
Central America (Fig. P.1) (1500 BCE to about 400 BCE centered on the San
Lorenzo Tenochtitlán site near the coast in southeast Veracruz in Central
America), as well as the Sumerians of Mesopotamia (the portion of modern
Iraq situated between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers) (c. 5500 BCE and 4000
BCE), long considered to be one of the progenitors of human civilization
(Fig. P.2) (Running Reality 2015). More specifically, we have drawn on the
component measures of the United Nations Human Development Index (HDI)
xi
