Work intensity and individual well-being: Evidence from Thailand

This research examines the measurement of individual well-being based not only on money income, but also those aspects of individual capabilities and functioning that are not acquired through the market nor solely the result of market participation. This research focuses especially on the incidence of work intensity aspect (based on time use information), which is believed to convey an important qualitative dimension of individual well-being that the conventional measures do not. Specifically, individual well-being is determined by three main components---personal income, educational attainment, and work intensity. An individual-level survey of urban poor home-based workers in Bangkok, Thailand collected in 2002 is used to develop the well-being index. The survey shows that there are significant differences in well-being between men and women workers. Women respondents are worse off in all respects of quality of life---money, education, and time. The empirical tests of the well-being component index and subjective well-being show that the inverse work intensity index is a good predictor of individuals, subjective well-being. It also solves the puzzle that income alone cannot significantly explain individuals' perspective of their well-being. Income only brought happiness to individuals if they did not have to work incredibly long hours to earn it. The empirical study of subjective well-being and well-being index components also suggests that economic policies and development strategies that tend to increase low-wage jobs, e.g., low-wage export oriented development, will not raise the well-being of individuals, specifically poor workers Finally, the empirical results indicate that the traditional methods of measuring well-being that do not take into account time use information tend to omit crucial well-being information, and are likely to give an incomplete picture.