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Quality of Life and Human Well-Being in Sub-Saharan Africa

Prospects for Future Happiness

  • Book
  • © 2021

Overview

  • Presents an overview of the major milestones achieved in the region in political and economic development
  • HIghlights the significant changes that have affected the health, education and wealth of Sub-Saharan Africans
  • Introduces happiness as the new buzzword in Africa

Part of the book series: Human Well-Being Research and Policy Making (HWBRPM)

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Table of contents (12 chapters)

  1. Introduction

  2. Indicators and Drivers of Well-Being

  3. A New African Dawn?

Keywords

About this book

This volume presents an account of how people in sub-Saharan Africa have fared under changing life circumstances of the past centuries until the present. By introducing the geography of the region it traces a time line of different historical periods that have shaped livelihoods of ordinary people of the region, and addresses the major milestones in political and economic development. It focuses on social indicators pointing to significant changes that have affected the health, education and wealth of sub-Saharan Africans and their outlook on the future since the wind of change blew through the region. With case studies and vignettes the book highlights how individual citizens across the 44 different countries of sub-Saharan Africa experience well-being and express their aspirations for the future. This book provides relevant material for practitioners and policy makers, including community and development workers, in non-governmental and other organizations in sub-Saharan Africancountries.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Institute of Social and Economic Research, Rhodes University, Grahamstown (Makhanda), South Africa

    Valerie Møller

  • Developmental, Capable and Ethical State (DCES) Research Division, Human Sciences Research Council, Durban, South Africa

    Benjamin J. Roberts

About the authors

Benjamin Roberts is Research Director at the Human Sciences Research Council’s Developmental, Capable and Ethical State (DCES) research division and coordinator of the South African Social Attitudes Survey (SASAS), Durban, South Africa. He helped develop the SASAS series in 2002 and has coordinated each annual round of surveying since its inception in 2003. His research interests and areas of expertise include attitudinal measurement and social change, subjective well-being and quality of life, poverty and inequality, and social cohesion. He co-edited the HSRC Press volumes South African Social Attitudes: Changing Times, Diverse Voices (2006), South African Social Attitudes: Reflections on the Age of Hope (2010), and the forthcoming Family Matters: Family cohesion, values and strengthening in South Africa.  He was the lead author on a chapter on wellbeing in sub-Saharan Africa for the 2015 Springer volume The Global Handbook of Wellbeing and Quality of Life, and in 2017 co-authored a similarly themed chapter in The Pursuit of Human Well-Being: The untold history, edited by R.J. Estes and M.J. Sirgy. Most recently, he was one of the authors of the Africa-focused chapter appearing in the World Happiness Report 2017 Update

Recent publications include Roberts, B., Gordon, S., Møller, V. & Struwig, J. (2015) Shadow of the Sun: The distribution of wellbeing in sub-Saharan Africa. In Glatzer, W. et al (Eds.) The Global Handbook of Quality of Life. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer; and Roberts, B. (2014) Beliefs About Inequality and Redress Preferences in South Africa, Social Indicators Research, 118, 1167-90.

 

Valerie Møller is currently Professor Emeritus of Quality of Life Studies in the Institute of Social and Economic Research at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa. A sociologist by training, she earned her PhD from the University of Zürich and has lived and worked in South and Southern Africa since 1972. While employed as a social researcher at the former University of Rhodesia (1972-5), University of KwaZulu-Natal (1976-1997) and Rhodes University (since 1998), she has studied and written on many aspects of quality of life in Africa over the past 40 years. She is a long-standing member of the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies; has served as its President (2007-8) and received its lifetime achievement award in 2016. She has published some 200 research articles and chapters in books on a range of quality-of-life topics based mainly on her own empirical quantitative and qualitative research in South Africa. Edited or co-edited volumes published in Springer’s Social Indicators Research and International Handbook on Quality-of-Life series include Quality of Life in South Africa (1997), Barometers of Quality of Life Around the Globe (2008), Quality of Life and the Millennium Challenge (2009), and The Global Handbook of Quality of Life (2015). In 2017, she co-authored a chapter on sub-Saharan African quality of life for the Springer volume on The Pursuit of Human Well-Being: The untold history, edited by R.J. Estes and M.J. Sirgy. She was the lead author of the regional chapter on Africa (Waiting for Happiness in Africa) that appeared in the World Happiness Report 2017 Update


Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Quality of Life and Human Well-Being in Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Book Subtitle: Prospects for Future Happiness

  • Authors: Valerie Møller, Benjamin J. Roberts

  • Series Title: Human Well-Being Research and Policy Making

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65788-8

  • Publisher: Springer Cham

  • eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-65787-1Published: 08 February 2021

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-65790-1Published: 08 February 2022

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-65788-8Published: 07 February 2021

  • Series ISSN: 2522-5367

  • Series E-ISSN: 2522-5375

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XVII, 190

  • Number of Illustrations: 4 b/w illustrations, 32 illustrations in colour

  • Topics: Quality of Life Research, History of Sub-Saharan Africa, Development Economics

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