Subjective well-being of the informal workers: an empirical study from Hooghly district of West Bengal, India

Abstract

Based on primary data from urban and rural informal workers in Hooghly district of India, the paper attempts to explore the welfare of informal workers using the concept of subjective well-being. Subjective well-being is conceptualised through two broad dimensions-psychological well-being and life satisfaction. An individual-specific composite index is constructed to quantify subjective well-being followed by a series of regression analysis on the constructed indices. The findings suggest income to be a strong positive influencer of overall subjective well-being as well as life satisfaction and psychological well-being of informal workers. But a segregated analysis reveals that factors influencing subjective well-being distinctly differ across rural and urban workers. Rural workers tend to have higher well-being score than their urban counterpart and income does not have significant effect on their subjective well-being. Also, regular wage-earners tend to score higher in overall subjective wellbeing as well as life satisfaction than self-employed and casual labours.