Analysis of adaptive preferences through the voices of the poor in Ecuador

The neoclassical paradigm postulates that increasing personal income and consumption leads to an individual increase in well-being. In effect, welfare is the product of a chain of sense in which satisfaction depends on choices that come from the revelation of preferences reflected in the purchasing power of rational, well-informed individuals who seek to maxim-ize their utility. This theory has been criticized mainly by Amartya Sen, Martha Nussbaum and Elster from different perspectives. However, the three scholars agree mainly that well-being does not come only from the amount of resources a person has and that the revealed preferences may be modified by the environment in which the individual lives. Through the Survey of Living Conditions of Ecuador (ECV), for the years 2006 and 2014, three objectives are developed in this paper. First, identify those who, being poor, feel satisfied or happy in their lives. Second, determine whether that satisfaction or happiness is a product of adapta-tion of preferences to the limited circumstances generated by structural processes. And, third, establish whether the vicious circle occurs in which the happiness of poverty, as a result of self-limitation, generates some kind of social immobility that perpetuates the deprived con-ditions in which poor people live. The ordinary least squares and (multinomial) probability models allow us to conclude that satisfied poor people are mainly indigenous and that the satisfaction comes from adaptive preferences that prevent the present and future generations from leaving the condition of deprivation in which they are and limit their freedoms and capabilities.