The Challenge of Affluence: Self-Control and Well-Being in the United States and Britain since 1950

Since the 1940s Americans and Britons have come to enjoy an era of rising material abundance. Yet this has been accompanied by a range of social and personal disorders, including family breakdown, addiction, mental instability, crime, obesity, inequality, economic insecurity, and declining trust. Avner Offer argues that well-being has lagged behind affluence in these societies, because they present an environment in which consistent choices are difficult to achieve over different time ranges and in which the capacity for personal and social commitment is undermined by the flow of novelty. His approach draws on economics and social science, makes use of the latest cognitive research, and provides a detailed and reasoned critique of modern consumer society, especially the assumption that freedom of choice necessarily maximizes individual and social well-being. The book falls into three parts. Part one analyses the ways in which economic resources map on to human welfare, why choice is so intractable, and how commitment to people and institutions is sustained. It argues that choice is constrained by prior obligation and reciprocity. The second section then applies these conceptual arguments to comparative empirical studies of advertising, of eating and obesity, and of the production and acquisition of appliances and automobiles. Finally, in part three, Offer investigates social and personal relations in the USA and Britain, including inter-personal regard, the rewards and reversals of status, the social and psychological costs of inequality, and the challenges posed to heterosexual love and to parenthood by the rise of affluence.

Table of Contents:
Preface 1: Introduction Part One: Evaluating Affluence 2: Economic Welfare Measures and Human Well-Being 3: Passions and Interests: Self-Control and Well-Being 4: Myopic and Rational Choice 5: Between the Gift and the Market: The Economy of Regard Part Two: In the Marketplace 6: The Mask of Intimacy: Advertising and Well-Being 7: Epidemics of Abundance: Body-Weight and Self-Control 8: Household Appliances and the Use of Time 9: The American Automobile Frenzy of the 1950s 10: Driving Prudently: American and European Part Three: Self and Others 11: Affluence and the Pursuit of Status 12: Inequality Hurts 13: All You Need is Love? Mating since the 1950s 14: Women and Children Last: The Ebbing of Commitment 15: Conclusion

About the Author :
Avner Offer is Chichele Professor of Economic History at the University of Oxford and Fellow of All Souls College. Prior to his academic career he spent eight years working as a soldier, farmer, and conservation worker in Israel, where he was born and raised. His other books include In Pursuit of the Quality of Life (1996), also published by Oxford University Press, and he has been researching the question of the quality of life in affluent societies since the early 1990s. He is also a Fellow of the British Academy.

Review :
`Offer makes many compelling and interesting arguments that are backed by a wealth of data and analysis' Charles Kenny, Business History Review `Avner Offer's latest sparkling and intellectually pugnacious contribution to his protean bibliography represents a tour de force of scholarship and provocative argument...this is an enormously rich and highly penetrating and stimulating study, based on vast and perceptive reading and research. It is also novel in its substance and approach.' The English Historical Review `Offer's narrative of a complex and difficult topic is masterful' Barnaby Marsh, Economic and Human Biology `An intriguing book...one of Britain's most subtle thinkers about how we live now' Will Hutton, The Observer `...always fascinating and thought provoking. Offer's range of reference is remarkably broad. He travels confidently across the social-science spectrum.' Howard Davies, THES `In the 1960s and 1970s, economists started worrying about environmental and social limits to growth. Avner Offer has added a weighty new critique to this tradition.' The Economist `The book is an invaluable source of information on changing attitudes and practices in the US and Britain since the end of the second world war.' Samuel Brittan, Financial Times `...an uncompromising work of scholarship' Martin Vander Weyer, The Spectator `...diligently and readably exposes the extent to which the past 25 years have forced people in the English-speaking world to believe that there is no alternative to dual-income workaholic consumerism, the "hedonic treadmill".' Oliver James, The Guardian `...[a] fascinating new tome' Christina Patterson, Independent `Sceptics who want some political muscle behind the diagnosis of our discontents will enjoy Avner Offer's account of why more means worse...' Boyd Tonkin and Christina Patterson, The Independent `Professor Offer presents some fascinating case studies' Economist, `...an essential survival guide both for academics and non-academics who must face the challenges thrown up by economic growth and material plenty, and the material sacrifices needed to further wider goals in the twenty-first century.' Shinobu Majima, Business History