The capabilities framework (Sen, 2001) has been introduced as a criticism of welfarist approaches that use utility, i.e. satisfaction, as the main benchmark for social outcomes. However, research on subjective well-being (SWB), i.e. a subjective assessment of the concept of “utility” or “satisfaction”, has seen a swift development in recent years. This literature is sometimes referred to as “happiness economics”. Despite this recent popularity, SWB fails to account for situations of adaptive preferences, an issue widely discussed by Sen (1992).