Professor Chris Barrington-Leigh
Professor, McGill University

Material effects have been enormous. General bad news about people, conflict, and erosion of world order are fundamental threats to trust in others, a strong support of SWB.

Professor Stefano Bartolini
Professor of Economics, University of Sienna

We still do not have data on the evolution of wellbeing in European countries after the beginning of the Ukraine/Russia conflict. However, wars are a major source of insecurity and wellbeing studies point to a substantial negative impact of insecurity on wellbeing. Sources of personal insecurity and instability in people’s lives, such as job loss and precariousness or divorce, heavily hamper their wellbeing. Collective insecurity has a similar effect, as suggested by medical studies showing that individuals with hypertension show a significant increase in blood pressure and viscosity lasting 4-6 months, after experiencing an earthquake. The experience of Covid-19, with its enormous burden of uncertainty and its huge destructive effect on the mental health of large portions of the population is evidence of the negative impact of collective insecurity on wellbeing. Furthermore, inflation (resulting from the increase in energy prices) negatively impacts well-being, as shown by various studies. All in all, it is reasonable to expect substantial losses of wellbeing in countries not directly involved in the conflict and that these losses will be stronger in the countries geographically closer to the war.

Professor Martin Binder
Professor of Socio-Economics at Bundeswehr University Munich

Massively and through many channels

Doctor Tony Beatton
Visiting Fellow, Queensland University of Technology (QUT)

This is difficult to gauge. With COVID impacts persisting, inflation pressures, among others, it is difficult to tease out the cause of any change in wellbeing. Also depends upon where one lives on this planet. Europe certainly appears to have issues with gas supply, a problem not experienced in Asia, although Asia is feeling the upward trend in international gas prices; but many suppliers like Australia are guaranteeing domestic supply. When the 2022/23 wellbeing survey data is available, we may have a clearer picture of the impact of the Ukraine/Russia conflict. With a gdp a little over 15% higher than Australia, one wonders how Russia can fund such a war? I expect a collapse of the Russian economy in the future, if not a major cut in the provision of social services to the Russian population over the coming decades; the Russian people are about to go through a miserable period.

Professor Richard Easterlin
Professor of Economics, University of Southern California

It depends on whether life circumstances in a country have been significantly adversely affected.

Professor Ada Ferrer-i-Carbonell
Professor of Economics, IAE-CSIC

The wellbeing in western countries has been steadily deteriorated over the last years (including mental health deterioration). The Ukraine world has negatively impact wellbeing both directly and indirectly through the negative economic effects. Nevertheless, social, economic, and cultural tensions have been evolved over a longer time. The russian invansion in Ukraine or the Covid19 global crisis are only two examples of the global crisis.

Professor Gigi Foster
Professor, School of Economics, UNSW School of Economics

The deterioration in wellbeing that people in countries other than Russia and Ukraine have experienced as a result of the conflict has arisen from various sources, including most importantly economic stress resulting from trade disruptions, and anxiety resulting from news reports about the threat that the conflict will spill over into their lives, e.g., via clear escalation. Those in European countries most proximate to the conflict will likely have been most affected.

Professor Paul Frijters
Professorial Research Fellow, CEP Wellbeing Programme, London School of Economics

The big effects on countries close by has been millions of distressed Ukrainian refugees, putting pressure on local resources and thus creating additional hardship and resentment. The wider implications of the conflict have come from greater pressure on international gas prices, food prices, and reduced availability of fertilisers in agriculture. That all translates into a significant increase in poverty which is bad for wellbeing. Longer-term the conflict is now leading to a more open Big Power confrontation internationally, with huge consequences that are hard to call.

Professor Arthur Grimes
Chair of Wellbeing and Public Policy, School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington

"Veenhoven (2017) argued that happiness must have improved by more than two points [on an 11 point scale] over the past two centuries as a result of the enlightenment. Unfortunately, not all countries or all leaders (including those in Russia) have accepted the insights of the enlightenment. Consequently, we are seeing horrific abuses perpetrated in the name of what is good for a nation, rather than what is good for people. The wellbeing of most people who live their life in the spirit of the enlightenment will have deteriorated as a result of the current conflict. However, there will also be some (many?) who adhere to pre-enlightenment modes of thought and who are not concerned about the conflict or whose wellbeing may even be lifted at the thought that a nation is acting to assert its power.

Reference:
Veenhoven R. 2017. Greater happiness for a greater number: Did the promise of the enlightenment come true? Social Indicators Research, 130, 9-25. "

Professor Arie Kapteyn
Professor of Economics, University of Southern California

The most obvious reason is the effect on prices, particularly of fuel; A second effect is on the fear of further escalation.

Professor Maurizio Pugno
Full Professor of Economics, University of Cassino

The Ukraine/Russia conflict has deteriorated the wellbeing of people of other countries because they receive a dramatic shock to their security, to the extent that they live close to the conflict, and because they experience higher inflation and consequent economic problems, even if only indirectly induced by the conflict. Furthermore, the protraction of the war can cause, in populations not directly involved, a desensitization to violence, which, through social interaction, leads to malaise.

Professor Mariano Rojas
Professor of Economics, Universidad Popular Autónoma del Estado de Puebla

This is a broad statement; it is not clear which countries not directly involved we are referring to. Furthermore, the impact of the Ukraine/Russia conflict may depend not only on country of residence but on some personal-level factors such as age, economic activity, and so on. Thus, I think we need greater specificity in order to elaborate on the wellbeing consequences of the conflict.

Doctor Conal Smith
Principal, Kōtātā Insight

"The war in the Ukraine has clearly impacted on wellbeing elsewhere in the world via its impact on food prices and energy prices. High prices in these areas result in a reduction of real incomes and there is extensive evidence that low incomes is correlated with low wellbeing (e.g. Deaton and Kahneman, 2010). More importantly, a fall in income from a higher level is likely to have a disproportionately negative impact on wellbeing compared to the impact of simply living at a particular level of income (de Neve et al, 2018; Arampatzi, Burger, Ianchovichina, Rohricht and Veenhoven, 2018).
"

Professor Wenceslao Unanue
Associate Professor, Business School, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez

"Do you agree with the statement:¨
The wellbeing of people in countries not directly involved in the Ukraine/Russia conflict has deteriorated as a result of that conflict. 

I completely agree. As noted by Pereira et al. (2022), The Russian-Ukrainian armed conflict is a dramatic world event” (p. 277). The negative consequences of the conflict will affect both countries directly and not directly involved (Ozili et al., 2022; Rawtani et al., 2022). For example, we are facing tremendous negative impacts on the environment (e.g. energy, foods supply, biodiversity, water), the economy (e.g. GDP, inflation), individual well-being (e.g., life insecurity, mental health problems, fear of death) and the society as a whole (e.g., terrorism). Moreover, specially for developing and more vulnerable countries, “this conflict is imposing severe threats to achieving the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)” (Pereira et al., 2022, p. 277).

References

Pereira, P., Zhao, W., Symochko, L., Inacio, M., Bogunovic, I., & Barcelo, D. (2022). The Russian-Ukrainian armed conflict impact will push back the sustainable development goals. Geography and Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geosus.2022.09.003

Ozili, P. K. (2022). Global economic consequence of Russian invasion of Ukraine. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4064770 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4064770

Rawtani, D., Gupta, G., Khatri, N., Rao, P. K., & Hussain, C. M. (2022). Environmental damages due to war in Ukraine: A perspective. Science of The Total Environment, 850, 157932. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.157932
"

Professor Ruut Veenhoven
Professor of Sociology, Erasmus University Rotterdam

Earlier research after the Cuba crisis in 1962 did not show an effect on the happiness of Americans, even though these were aware of the danger of an atomic war

Professor Heinz Welsch
Professor of Economics, University of Oldenburg

"It is well known that disasters affect the wellbeing of people not directly affected,. For example, Kimball et al. (2006) found that after Hurricane Katrina wellbeing dropped in US regions not directly affected and that the welbeing of US citizens dropped after a strong earthquake in Pakistan. On the other hand, Coupe and Obrizan (2016) found that the wellbeing of Ukrainians living in regions not directly affected by the war in the east of Ukraine was not much affected. Given the much larger scale of the present war and the threat it may pose to peace in Europe more generally (in addition to the economic consequences) , I think that the wellbeing of European citizens deteriorated considerably.
References: Kimball, Miles S. and Levy, Helen and Ohtake, Fumio and Tsutsui, Yoshiro, Unhappiness after Hurricane Katrina (March 2006). NBER Working Paper No. w12062, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=888264. Tom Coupe, Maksym Obrizan(2016), The Impact of War on Happiness: The Case of Ukraine, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 132, 228-242. "

Professor Chris Barrington-Leigh
Professor, McGill University

"Opportunities are enormous when a group faces a common threat. Sense of purpose and sense of community are powerful supports of SWB. If we get on the right side of some of our challenges, we will feel united in purpose. It's also important to realize how many things can be expected to be vastly better, if we look more than a few decades ahead. Transcending the energy transition to clean distributed power, and transcending the population peak, mean that a beautiful, clean, prosperous world await -- albeit with a few fewer species.
That said, I expect and have for a decade that this will be a century of ongoing conflict as well as a heady level of loss. However, the stories we tell about the future have a self-fulfilling element, since people are more likely to come together with creative and pro-social solutions when they see have a positive story of the future, and when they belong to something meaningful that links past and future. Therefore, the actual outcome in a region or country of the world is still highly unpredictable -- up to leadership and the vagaries of future surprises."

Professor Stefano Bartolini
Professor of Economics, University of Sienna

"We may have entered a period of frequent global emergencies that heavily hamper wellbeing ( 5 in the past 20 years: 9/11, the 2008 financial crisis, global warming, Covid-19, Russia-Ukraine war). Their future frequency and severity (and therefore their impact on well-being) depends on our ability to remove or mitigate the causes of such crises. To what extent we will be able to do this is currently impossible to say.

"

Professor Martin Binder
Professor of Socio-Economics at Bundeswehr University Munich

Predictions 20 years into the future fraught with uncertainty but the optimist in me hopes that we will have adapted to the new realities by then. Whatever else happens in the next 20 years, who knows...

Doctor Tony Beatton
Visiting Fellow, Queensland University of Technology (QUT)

Depends upon the country. Perhaps other than China, because of its zero COVID policy which has closed industry, Asia appears to be immune from the madness of Europe; other than a small downward shift in real estate prices we are yet to feel the impact from inflation. The wellbeing of all Australians has steadily increased between 2017 and 2020 from 7.92 to 7.997; it is higher for females 7.945 to 8.00, as well as males 7.892 to 7.986. This in a period where we have had major climate change effects with the largest bushfires ever recorded (2019/2020) then years of floods (2020/2021/2022). Will be interesting to see the wellbeing numbers in the next wave (2021) of the HILDA socio-economic panel data. But, then there are Putin's Nukes!

Professor Richard Easterlin
Professor of Economics, University of Southern California

Twenty years is a long time. Who can say with confidence what will happen?

Professor Ada Ferrer-i-Carbonell
Professor of Economics, IAE-CSIC

The social and economic polarization, together with the environmental crisis and geopolitical tensions, are bound to last for more than 20 years. Nevertheless, it is hard to make such long term predictions. If however I had to bet, I would expect my country entering a long term social and economic crisis.

Professor Gigi Foster
Professor, School of Economics, UNSW School of Economics

I would like to say that 20 years will be enough, if we acquired the vision and political will over the next couple of years to build towards this, but i am doubtful that will happen and even more doubtful that it would be capable of returning us to 2019 levels of wellbeing. Even with the best possible political re-orientations to repair the damage to adult wellbeing done during covid, the children who suffered through the covid era will still be around in 20 years, enjoying worse outcomes because of all the debt we accumulated and all the services we deprived them of during covid - so their wellbeing levels will likely not fully recover.

Professor Paul Frijters
Professorial Research Fellow, CEP Wellbeing Programme, London School of Economics

My country, the Netherlands, now has a locked-in generation of children with reduced schooling and emotional intelligence due to the forced school closures of the last 30 months, which will reduce wellbeing for a generation. Also, the impoverishment and social strife that has come with the lockdowns (vaccine apartheid, business closures, increased autocracy, reduced voice of citizens) is leading to a long-run increase in poverty and reduced quality of social relations. Apart from the long-run shadow of the lockdown period (which has reduced life satisfaction in 2022 by at least 5% relative to 2019), the general trend before 2019 was already an increase in social strife due to the simmering conflict between globalism and nationalism, a conflict I expect to worsen the coming years. Social media has also on balance become a bad long-term trend, probably responsible for loss of critical skills and ability to focus. Even though one should expect some upturn in the next 20 years, the high point reached in 2019 seems hard to replicate.

Professor Arthur Grimes
Chair of Wellbeing and Public Policy, School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington

There are so many factors that influence individuals' wellbeing that it is impossible to predict the long-term future path of wellbeing for citizens of a country.

Professor Arie Kapteyn
Professor of Economics, University of Southern California

People adapt and 20 years is a long time

Professor Maurizio Pugno
Full Professor of Economics, University of Cassino

Well-being in Italy has already begun its long-run decline: in 2021 the share of Italians who declare that they are "very" or "fairly" satisfied with their lives is 11% lower than the 2002 peak, while the economic growth trend is around zero. Italy has joined the case of the US, in which happiness is declining since early 1970s, and in 2021 the share of Americans declaring themselves very happy is 12% lower than in 2019 despite the recent recovery. My guess for the next 20 years is that wellbeing in Italy and the US will not improve because the reasons for the wellbeing decline of the past are structural, and now further aggravated by the war in Ukraine. As I discussed in my book "Well-being and Growth in Advanced Economies: the Need to Prioritise Human Development" (2022, Routledge), the structural reasons arise from priority given to markets and large companies in order to solve (unsuccessfully) the problem of the slowdown in the economic growth. The result is that recessions, inequalities, environmental deterioration, and then pandemics have caused social divides, weak governments, and people unable to build their own future, and then unsatisfied with themselves.

Professor Mariano Rojas
Professor of Economics, Universidad Popular Autónoma del Estado de Puebla

Prospective analyses do require addressing major social, demographic, economic, and technological trends. There may be reasons to be pesimistic about future wellbeing; just to mention some trends: very low fertility rates in many countries, climate change, and global warming, hunger-induced migration, economic stagnation, deterioration of family values, potential geopolitical crashes, and so on) However, there is also greater awareness about these problems and there is raising interest to change our development paradigm.

Doctor Conal Smith
Principal, Kōtātā Insight

Official measures of life satisfaction for New Zealand show a mean value (0-10) of 7.7 in 2018. This increased to 7.9 in 2020 before falling back to 7.7 in 2021. Data from the Gallup World Poll shows New Zealand with a ladder of life score of 7.2 in 2019 rising to 7.3 in 2020 and then falling to 7.1 in 2021. Put simply, New Zealand shows a fairly consistent picture of the Covid-19 inducing a positive wellbeing blip - likely due to a sense of social solidarity and possibly more time with family - followed by a return to long term trends afterwards.

Professor Wenceslao Unanue
Associate Professor, Business School, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez

"I disagree completely. I am from Chile. My country is facing a strong and deep process of change. For example, most people have agreed that Chile need a multiplicity of economic, environmental and social changes. Just an example, we will replace the current constitution (which was written during the dictatorship period of Pinochet), for a new one. I hope this new one will include social rights (e.g. health, education, pensions), environmental protection, more autonomy and less inequalities for women, etc. I am pretty sure that if we make the necessary changes, our individual and societal well-being will be much higher than in 2019 where we have the so-called "estallido social" (massive protests along the whole country) asking social justice (see Pons et al., 2020 "Unrest in Chile").

References

Pons, V., Mullins, W., Masko, J., Lobb, A., Di Tella, R. (2022). Unrest in Chile. https://store.hbr.org/product/unrest-in-chile/720033
"

Professor Ruut Veenhoven
Professor of Sociology, Erasmus University Rotterdam

Average happiness has risen in Western nations over the past 50 years, in spite of economic recessions and similar political threads. Happiness depends on many more things than thread of war and we can apparently live with some thread. The human species did not evolve in Paradise.

Professor Heinz Welsch
Professor of Economics, University of Oldenburg

"The war in Ukraine may become a frozen conflict, but will not continue at the present scale for several years. Even if violent conflict continues, happiness adaptation to it was found even in countries directly affected (Welsch 2008). This is likely to apply a fortiori to countries not directly affected.
Reference: Welsch, H. The social costs of civil conflict: evidence from surveys of happiness. 2008 Kyklos. 61 320-340 "