National Well-being Policy and a Weighted Approach to Human Feelings

Gus O'Donnell and Andrew Oswald
Additional contact information
Gus O'Donnell: House of Lords

No 9401, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Governments are becoming interested in the concept of human well-being and how truly to assess it. As an alternative to traditional economic measures, some nations have begun to collect information on citizens' happiness, life satisfaction, and other psychological scores. Yet how could such data actually be used? This paper is a cautious attempt to contribute to thinking on that question. It suggests a possible weighting method to calculate first-order changes in society's well-being, discusses some of the potential principles of democratic 'well-being policy', and (as an illustrative example) reports data on how sub-samples of citizens believe feelings might be weighted.

Keywords: national well-being; happiness; anxiety; life satisfaction; mental health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I31 I38 Z18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 43 pages
Date: 2015-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap, nep-hpe and nep-ltv
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Published - published in: Ecological Economics, 2015,120, 59 - 70

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Journal Article: National well-being policy and a weighted approach to human feelings (2015)
Working Paper: National Well-being Policy and a Weighted Approach to Human Feelings (2015)
Working Paper: National Well-being Policy and a Weighted Approach to Human Feelings (2015)
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