-
Completely agree This text reflects 2 statements to both of which I agree completely: a) The existence of interest in a measure of collective well-being. I agree completely with that statement. Such interest is advocated by colleagues from collectivist cultures. Though it is not mainstream, the interest exists certainly. b) That, from the perspective of overall human welfare, collective well-being can best be seen as a determinant of life-satisfaction rather than as a distinct dimension of well-being. I agree completely, since a single dimension of well-being is clearly not overall well-being.
Professor Ruut Veenhoven
Professor of Sociology, Erasmus University Rotterdam -
Agree There may be as many conceptualizations of well-being as there are scholars thinking about it. There are no clear criteria to choose among conceptualizations, and it does not make sense for scholars to choose that conceptualization that ranks their region better. My approximation to the conceptualization issue is that wellbeing refers to the experience of being well people have. It is in human condition -as a consequence of evolutionary processes- to experience being well. The essential experiences of being well people have are affective experiences (associated to joy and suffering), sensory experiences (associated to pleasure and pain), and evaluative experiences (associated to achievement and failure). These experiences are ‘essential’ in the sense that they are part of human condition, and, in consequence, they are common to all human beings. Thus, wellbeing as the experience of being well people have can be considered as a universal conceptualization; which applies to everybody in the world. A completely different issue is about the question used to approximate the experience of being well a person has. We tend to rely on life satisfaction, but other questions could also portray relevant information about the experience. In addition, we should not confuse the experience of being well (which is universal across human beings) with the drivers that trigger these experiences. Drivers may differ across cultures, and even across people in the same region. For example, family life may trigger important affective experiences in some regions but not in others. Similarly, material wealth may trigger important evaluative experiences in some people but not in others. Thus, family life and income must be understood as potential drivers of wellbeing, but not as wellbeing itself.
Professor Mariano Rojas
Professor of Economics, Universidad Popular Autónoma del Estado de Puebla -
Completely disagree Studies on the determinants of life satisfaction across all cultures establish the vital importance of friends and family for individual SWB. This ubiquitous finding is well documented by Easterlin (2020). Other determinants of individual wellbeing that have been well documented in successive World Happiness Reports relate to the importance of community including through having deep social capital. As such, there is no need to consider family or community wellbeing as distinct dimensions of wellbeing: they are instead determinants of individual wellbeing in the same way that income, health and human rights are determinants of individual life satisfaction. Easterlin RA (2020) 'An Economist's Lessons on Happiness: Farewell Dismal Science!' Springer.
Professor Arthur Grimes
Chair of Wellbeing and Public Policy, School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington -
Completely agree I am increasingly of the view that we should not simply assume a that illbeing is the flip of illbeing. We have clearly seen a big rise in the illbeing of the young in data files like come-here and global minds. It is much harder to see in life satisfaction and happiness data. Cantril seems ill suited to pick up short term shocks and we need variables like phew MAGA gad and ghq scores to pick up what is happening at the tails Doctors ask how unhappy and depressed you are they don’t ask how happy you are
Professor David Blanchflower
Professor of Economics at Dartmouth -
Completely disagree I think that extending the measurement of wellbeing is essential, but I do not think that individual life satisfaction represents a fair assessment of overall human welfare, or that family and community wellbeing are best thought of simply as its determinants. First, life satisfaction has been shown to emphasize an evaluation based on power and wealth (see Nilsson et al., 2024). This is problematic when comparing across countries, as some countries who do well on life satisfaction do not experience much laughter and joy throughout their days (see Boyce, 2024). Second, life satisfaction is insensitive to both climate change and inequality, which are ongoing major human welfare concerns. It is important to question high performance on life satisfaction when it does not meet sustainability requirements (see Abdallah & Marks, 2023). Further, a large number of quality of life indicators have been shown to relate strongly to inequality, of which life satisfactionis not one of them (see Wilkinson & Pickett, 2010). Third, life satisfaction does not capture the extent to which life has meaning and feels purposeful, being largely a hedonic measure based on external life factors. Eudaimonic conceptions of wellbeing ought to be similarly considered. Finally, more stock should be put on individual country assessments of wellbeing. Wellbeing has different meanings across the world and it is not for western academics to pronounce what it is for cultures they don't properly understand. References Abdallah, S., & Marks, N. (2023). Happy Planet Index. In Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research (pp. 1-5). Cham: Springer International Publishing. Boyce, C. Is Finland really the happiest country? And if so, at what cost to our planet? Hot or Cool Institute (https://hotorcool.org/hc-posts/is-finland-really-the-happiest-country-and-if-so-at-what-cost-to-our-planet/) Nilsson, A. H., Eichstaedt, J. C., Lomas, T., Schwartz, A., & Kjell, O. (2024). The Cantril Ladder elicits thoughts about power and wealth. Scientific Reports, 14(1), 2642. Wilkinson, R., & Pickett, K. (2010). The spirit level. Why equality is better for everyone.
Doctor Christopher Boyce
Honorary Research Fellow, University of Stirling -
Disagree Although in some cultures and for some people, individual life satisfaction could certainly be partly determined by family and community wellbeing, this may not be the case for everyone. Some societies and cultures are more collectivist while others may be more individualistic in nature.
Professor Stephen Wu
Professor of Economics, Hamilton College -
Agree I agree with the comment that there are many well-being scholars that are interested in ensuring that well-being measures reflect the diversity of values around the globe. The second part of the comment relates to a different issue altogether. If the question is whether we should measure constructs like family well-being, community well-being, and/or perceived happiness of others -- I would say yes. If the question is whether these are best thought of as determinants of well-being rather than distinct dimensions of well-being -- we have to be open to possibility that this question depends on how the self is construed in different cultures. Some WEIRD cultures emphasize a sense of self that is independent and distinct from others -- and in these cultures it may make sense to conceptualize family and community well-being as determinants of individual LS (i.e., one of the many things that make ME satisfied with life). In cultures that emphasize a sense of self that is more intertwined with close others and collective identity, it is conceivable that family well-being or community well-being are an integral part of one's life satisfaction -- such that they might be viewed as distinct dimensions of well-being.
Professor William Tov
Associate Professor of Psychology at Singapore Management University -
Completely agree In WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic) countries, subjective well-being often centres on individualistic values, emphasising personal achievements, autonomy, and self-fulfilment. This focus is rooted in cultural norms prioritising individual rights and personal success as key indicators of a good life. Conversely, well-being is deeply intertwined with family, community, and societal welfare in many non-Western cultures. These cultures emphasise collectivist values where interdependence, social harmony, and fulfilling roles within a group are paramount. Satisfaction with life in these contexts is derived from the strength of social bonds, communal support, and contributing to the greater good, reflecting a holistic approach to well-being that values interconnectedness and mutual responsibility. I am reminded of the research published by Mohsen Joshanloo in 2014 (Eastern Conceptualizations of Happiness: Fundamental Differences with Western Views, Journal of Happiness Studies, 15: 475-493), which is definitely worth taking note of.
Professor Stephanié Rossouw
Associate Professor, School for Social Science and Public Policy, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand -
Agree The problems with augmenting an individual-level assessment of human wellbeing with a separate assessment at any higher level (community, region, nation, etc.) are at least twofold. First, when one has multiple measures, inevitably trade-offs will emerge between them, and there is no obvious answer as to how to resolve those trade-offs. If a community "as a whole" is happier when one single person in that community is made extremely unhappy, is the optimal policy to actively make that one individual extremely unhappy? Would "we" be OK with this, ethically? Who makes that call on the optimal tradeoffs between the individual and the group? Second, assessing the welfare of a group as a separate quantity to the collective welfare of its inhabitants is fraught, because someone then must be the one to make that assessment, and who is to say that that person will achieve an unbiased answer? The beauty of individual wellbeing assessments is that they simply reflect the self-perceptions of each person: one man, one wellbeing measure, like one man one vote. "The country as a whole" does not get a vote, and if it did, that vote would quickly be corrupted by people wanting to turn policy in their own favour or that of their subgroup. With individual wellbeing assessments in hand, one can generate all manner of statistics at the group level (e.g., the average or the variance), simply aggregating those individual responses, that deliver various candidate "community-level" assessments of wellbeing, without needing to create some separate measurement and reporting task that will inevitably become captured.
Professor Gigi Foster
Associate Professor and Undergraduate Coordinator, School of Economics, UNSW Business School -
Agree I find it helpful to separate the "nature" of wellbeing (being satisfied with one's life) with its sources and indicators. Family and community are sources of wellbeing in that view. I wonder whether thinking about different "dimensions" of wellbeing does not just confuse this distinction between what is wellbeing and what are its sources.
Professor Martin Binder
Professor of Socio-Economics at Bundeswehr University Munich -
Completely agree Family and community values and norms shape individual cognitive and noncognitive skills, and therefore contribute to individual subjective well-being. But family and community values and norms vary across countries, driven by different formal and informal institutional settings. This implies that public policy can contribute to improving both cognitive and noncognitive skills of individuals as soon as possible in their life. However, policy interventions are country-specific and designed in the context of the country and its constitution, which might not be in line with the values and norms of the increasing group of foreign-born and their children born in their new home country.* Therefore, the big problem with existing measurements is perhaps driven by the fact that samples are not representative of the foreign-born population of the country. *Due to globalization and all negative events, the percentage of foreign-born and their children born in another country was progressively increasing during the last 20 years, but usually, the samples are representative for the adult population with respect to gender, age, and region.
Professor Daniela Andrén
Senior Lecturer, Örebro University School of Business -
Agree I agree with the first part of the statement that there is interest among well-being researchers in extending the measurement of well-being to reflect a better diversity of global values beyond traditional Western measures, which include concepts of collective well-being. However, I have reservations about the second part of the statement, which suggests that family and community well-being are only determinants (predictors) of individual life satisfaction rather than collective measures of well-being. First statement: Traditional life satisfaction measures most likely do not fully capture collective well-being, encapsulating social relationships, community well-being and the non-observable benefits of these relationships. In many non-western cultures, also in African cultures, community and social cohesion are essential aspects of well-being and are often more significant contributors to life satisfaction than income. Therefore, well-being measures should be extended to include measures of collective well-being. Second statement: I do not fully agree with the second statement. Although it has been shown numerous times that family and community well-being are significant predictors of individual life satisfaction, such simplistic measures cannot capture the intrinsic value of collective community well-being. The measures included in regression analyses are often based on single-item questions, such as, “How often do you meet up with your friends? (social relationships) and “How often do you participate in community activities or events?” (community well-being). However, collective well-being cannot fully be represented by these simplistic measures. It has intrinsic value, such as the social support from family and strong friendships, the benefits from collective societal health, resilience, and a sense of belonging to a community. Therefore, well-being frameworks should incorporate individual and collective well-being measures, providing a more comprehensive view of societal well-being.
Professor Talita Greyling
Professor, School of Economics, University of Johannesburg -
Completely agree We need, urgently, to improve the measurement of wellbeing to better reflect the true nature of the construct. For example, some researchers focus only on the life satisfaction block of well-being. Fortunately, human well-being is much more complex. In fact, well-being has been characterized by two traditions (Delle fave et al., 2011). First, the hedonic component of well-being, which focus on feeling pleasure and avoiding pain. Diener (1984) developed the construct of subjective well-being (SWB) to capture hedonic well-being through three main blocks: life satisfaction, positive emotions and negative emotions. Yet, well-being is not only pleasure. There are a second tradition, named eudaimonic well-being, which is strongly related to optimal human functioning. To measure the construct, Carol Ryff and colleagues (See Ryff, 2013) developed the Psychological Well-being Model (PWB). The PWB Model includes six blocks/dimensions (autonomy, competence, relationships, self-acceptance, purpose/meaning and personal growth). Thus, to summarize, we DO need to add to the LS block, several other blocks (e.g. meaning, relatedness, etc.) that will allow us to better measure well-being. Now, regarding the second part of the question, it could be perfectly possible that both family and community wellbeing are best thought of as determinants of individual LS rather than a distinct block of well-being. However, it is also possible too, that when people are cognitively evaluating their life satisfaction, they think in how well their families and communities are. In addition, the Bhutan Model of Gross National Happiness (GNH; see Ura et al., 2017) considers community vitality as part of the GNN Model instead of a determinant of it. The former shows the complexity of deciding whether a specific dimension is a predictor, a part of, or a determinant of well-being. It depends on the theory you are based on. Note: References are listed at the bottom of question # 2.
Professor Wenceslao Unanue
Assistant Professor, Business School, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez -
Completely agree If the life satisfaction question doesn't capture all the important dimensions in a good life, then the question wording would need to be adjusted. It's not intended to ask about one element (satisfaction) of a good life, but rather to be phrased to elicit an overall assessment of the quality of the experience of life, overall. Therefore, the important contributions from characteristics of family and community are certainly expected to be prominent factors in accounting for this overall summation. Some might object that finding wording for such a question is impossible, i.e., that life quality is fundamentally multidimensional. But that is precisely why we rely on a subjective question. Indeed, appealing to a subjective aggregation seems to render such non-existence claims untenable. That is, if there are multiple dimensions, as opposed to determinants, of life satisfaction, then we can (only) rely on subjective weights in order to aggregate across those dimensions into a single dimension. Whose weights? Certainly we don't want experts' normative guesses. Instead, we rely on each respondent's own weights to aggregate the dimensions to a scalar. Interpretation and comparability across cultures aside, this is surely always a reasonable objective, if the intent can be properly communicated to respondents.
Professor Chris Barrington-Leigh
Associate Professor, McGill University -
Neither agree nor disagree I think we need to defer to the views of individuals to make this judgment. Those judgments may vary across cultures.
Professor Daniel Benjamin
Associate Professor of Economics, University of Southern California -
Completely disagree This is partly a philosophical question, as the idea that wellbeing just is life satisfaction is a claim in philosophical ethics, so researchers would be wise to attend to that literature. Among the experts in this field there is a robust consensus that life satisfaction is *not* the whole of wellbeing. It isn't even clear life satisfaction is important for wellbeing (if you want to be satisfied, think of Tiny Tim, and voila!). And there is good reason to think emotional wellbeing metrics better track the most important stuff like relationships than life satisfaction (eg, Diener and Ng 2010). I do think life satisfaction is a useful and efficient if crude indicator of well-being in many circumstances, and far better than the traditional method: counting money. But it isn't the goal, on any theory of wellbeing that's taken seriously. But measures of wellbeing for policy don't have to take sides in ancient philosophical debates about wellbeing, which even philosophers struggle with: policy should measure the things people care about, along with things (like money) that correlate with things people value. Family and community are around the top of that list, and should receive attention along with other common values (rewarding work, a sense of security, health...). When these things seem not to make much difference to life satisfaction, there's a good chance life satisfaction measures are missing something (for instance, a pandemic resets the scale everyone uses to evaluate their lives--just be glad you're alive--so that life satisfaction reports mask major declines in quality of life.
Professor Dan Haybron
Professor of Philosophy, Saint Louis University -
Neither agree nor disagree This question seems to be asking about life satisfaction between societies or social groups. Does the global life satisfaction question capture overall satisfaction with life of an individual within a social group who compares her/himself relative to others in their group? The evidence seems to indicate this is the case, so we need to stick with the question that is validated in the literature, when we conduct within group life satisfaction studies. Between groups is another matter. Different groups have different values expectations etc, all affecting life satisfaction. This is why I have never been a fan of comparing life satisfaction numbers across societies; a German 7 is not necessarily a British 7, let alone a Somali 7, on the 0-10 global life satisfaction scale. Certainly, family and community have been shown to have an effect on life satisfaction, Yet the last sentence switched from life satisfaction to wellbeing. We need to be clear what theory-based factor or construct we are referring to. The wellbeing construct has many dimensions, including subjective and psychological. We need to be clear about what we are measuring, life satisfaction, subjective wellbeing, psychological wellbeing, or something else. Until we have validity in cross-population life satisfaction studies, we need to stick to within group studies. And in our papers and reports, we need to be consistent in how we refer to our chosen & measured factor/construct. An example we could perhaps follow is the trust literature. Not the trust literature in economics, which tends to use a single trust in strangers question. The multi-discipline, multi-item trust scale recognises that trust is domain specific: e.g. we may trust our partner, but not our bank. Why would life satisfaction, which contains a trust component, not be likewise?
Doctor Tony Beatton
Visiting Fellow, Queensland University of Technology (QUT) -
Neither agree nor disagree There is increasing interest in better measuring well-being among non-WEIRD countries. Indeed the OECD Guidelines on Measuring Subjective Well-being will reflect indigenous and non-WEIRD perspectives in the next update. From both WEIRD and non-WEIRD perspectives, family and community well-being are simply dimensions of life satisfaction; however the question is not just about life satisfaction, but about overall human welfare. From a collectivist societal perspective, interdependent well-being may be more important to people than life satisfaction. As family and community well-being correspond strongly with interdependent well-being, for the collectivist, they may come closer to distinct dimensions of well-being than to domains/determinants of overall human welfare.
Doctor Kelsey J O'Connor
Researcher in the Economics of Well-being
World Wellbeing Panel
In July 2024, members of the World Wellbeing Panel were asked for their views on two statements relating to measuring collective wellbeing.
The two statements were as follows:
Statement 1: There is interest among some wellbeing researchers in extending the measurement of wellbeing to better reflect a diversity of global values beyond western, educated, rich, industrialised democracies including a greater emphasis on concepts of collective wellbeing. From the perspective of assessing overall human welfare, family and community wellbeing are best thought of as determinants of individual life satisfaction rather than as distinct dimensions of wellbeing.
Statement 2: Measures of collective wellbeing typically ask respondents “how is your family doing?” or “how is your community doing?” on a subjective, numeric scale. If public policy targets measures of individual life satisfaction, it will also necessarily capture all the important drivers of collective wellbeing.
Response options for each statement were: “completely agree”, “agree”, “neither agree nor disagree”, “disagree”, “completely disagree”.
Below are the distributions of these categorical responses, followed by a discussion. You can click where indicated to see respondents' detailed written comments.
There is interest among some wellbeing researchers in extending the measurement of wellbeing to better reflect a diversity of global values beyond western, educated, rich, industrialised democracies including a greater emphasis on concepts of collective wellbeing. From the perspective of assessing overall human welfare, family and community wellbeing are best thought of as determinants of individual life satisfaction rather than as distinct dimensions of wellbeing.
Measures of collective wellbeing typically ask respondents “how is your family doing?” or “how is your community doing?” on a subjective, numeric scale. If public policy targets measures of individual life satisfaction, it will also necessarily capture all the important drivers of collective wellbeing.
-
Agree Ratings of satisfaction with one's life as-a-whole reflect indeed all drivers of life-satisfaction, among which social conditions. For policy makers it is worth knowing what the relative share of these determinants is in the overall evaluation of life.
Professor Ruut Veenhoven
Professor of Sociology, Erasmus University Rotterdam -
Neither agree nor disagree Wellbeing as the experience of being well implies for wellbeing to be a personal experience; since it is people -out of their human condition- who experience it in evaluative, affective, and sensory ways. Thus, it is difficult to think about a collectivity ‘experiencing’ wellbeing; rather, we should think about persons in that community who are experiencing wellbeing. Hence, the well-being question should be asked to each person, rather than to a particular member of the collectivity. There seems to be room here for an empirical study to investigate how particular members of the collectivity approximate aggregate measures of the collectivity; for example, who is able to accurately approximate the mean value or the median value, and so on. In addition, we have to be careful about overstating the individualistic perspective up to the point of neglecting the key role that relationships play in shaping persons and their wellbeing. Persons cannot be understood out of their relationships. Thus, we must recognize that by taking into consideration a person’s relational context (her family, community) we get better understanding of her wellbeing and we may end up designing better policies.
Professor Mariano Rojas
Professor of Economics, Universidad Popular Autónoma del Estado de Puebla -
Completely agree Collective wellbeing needs to be defined for this statement to make sense. (All too often, 'collective wellbeing' is left as an undefined, vague concept.) I define it through a Bergson-Samuelson social welfare function as being a weighted sum of individual utility; life satisfaction serves as a reasonable first approximation of the latter concept. Given this definition of collective wellbeing, the drivers of individual life satisfaction (across all individuals) necessarily captures the drivers of 'collective wellbeing'.
Professor Arthur Grimes
Chair of Wellbeing and Public Policy, School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington -
Neither agree nor disagree It is unclear why public policy should actually target individual life satisfaction in part because it seems insensitive to economic shocks. So if we look back at the Great Recession and public policy tracked say Cantril in Europe it shouldn’t have done anything as Cantril didn’t fall Makes no sense to me sorry
Professor David Blanchflower
Professor of Economics at Dartmouth -
Completely disagree Community wellbeing is not simply the aggregated life satisfaction scores of individuals living within a community. Community wellbeing brings in concepts of social capital, democracy, and the quality of the local environment, with these needing careful direct assessment (see Boyce et al., 2020). None of this is to say that life satisfaction doesn't capture something important for our societies, only it doesn't capture all that matters, including enjoyment that people feel day to day, inequality, and sustainability, as well as meaning and purpose, among other thing (see my response to the previous question). Reference Boyce, C., Coscieme, L., Sommer, C., Wallace, J. 2020. Understanding Wellbeing. WEAll Briefing Papers: Little Summaries of Big Issues
Doctor Christopher Boyce
Honorary Research Fellow, University of Stirling -
Disagree Depending on how people conceptualize their individual life satisfaction, this may or may not incorporate their family and/or community well-being.
Professor Stephen Wu
Professor of Economics, Hamilton College -
Disagree Again, this hinges on how individuals conceptualise their sense of self and how much of it is tied in with their family or a larger collective. In cultures that socialize people to believe they are unique individuals distinct from others, people may be able to separate how they feel about their own lives from how others in their community are doing – and maybe even how their own family is doing. In this type of environment, responses to individual life satisfaction question may not necessarily reflect feelings about family or community well-being – at least not to the extent that it does in other cultures where one’s identity is very closely integrated with important social groups.
Professor William Tov
Associate Professor of Psychology at Singapore Management University -
Disagree The assertion that targeting individual life satisfaction in public policy will necessarily capture all important drivers of collective well-being is fundamentally flawed for several reasons. While individual life satisfaction is a critical aspect of overall well-being, it does not encompass the full spectrum of collective well-being, which includes family, community, and societal dimensions. Firstly, measures of individual life satisfaction often focus on personal achievements, economic status, and individual health. These measures do not necessarily account for the quality of social relationships, community cohesion, or the effectiveness of social institutions, which are crucial components of collective well-being. For example, an individual might report high personal satisfaction due to career success, but this does not reflect potential issues like community inequality, social fragmentation, or family stress, all of which are vital for understanding collective well-being. Secondly, collective well-being is inherently more complex and multidimensional. It involves assessing how individuals perceive the well-being of their families and communities, which includes factors such as social support, communal trust, and shared resources. Individual life satisfaction metrics do not always capture these elements. A community might experience high levels of collective well-being due to strong social bonds and mutual support systems, even if individual members report moderate personal satisfaction. Conversely, high individual satisfaction does not guarantee that the community is thriving as a whole. Moreover, public policies that solely target individual life satisfaction may neglect structural and systemic issues that impact collective well-being. Policies focusing only on individual metrics might overlook the need for community development, social justice, and environmental sustainability.
Professor Stephanié Rossouw
Associate Professor, School for Social Science and Public Policy, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand -
Agree People, being group animals, are naturally affected by the perceived welfare of their groups rather than just the perceived welfare of themselves personally. If a whole collective is happier, say, with a clean environment than with a dirty one, then this will be picked up indirectly in the implicit weighting that "the health of the community" has in individual wellbeing responses. What can one imagine that would impact the wellbeing of the community but not the wellbeing of the individuals in that community, either directly or indirectly? I cannot think of anything that satisfies this criterion, and suspect that most people's proposals for phenomena that would satisfy it are driven not by a true concern for capturing human wellbeing as accurately and comprehensively as possible, but by personal ideologies, vendettas, ego-promotion or other less noble motivations. This goes for things like "a clean environment" or "presence of democracy" or "women's rights".
Professor Gigi Foster
Associate Professor and Undergraduate Coordinator, School of Economics, UNSW Business School -
Agree I find it hard to think about the wellbeing of a community other than as the aggregate of the wellbeing of its members
Professor Martin Binder
Professor of Socio-Economics at Bundeswehr University Munich -
Completely agree Extending wellbeing measurement methods to better reflect diverse family and community values and norms will 1) increase the equity of the measurement approach and indicators and 2) provide a framework for more accurately understanding and enhancing individual wellbeing and identifying mechanisms which are linked to group values and formal and/or informal norms that new public policy should consider. In a global economy, where both the number of foreign-born, the number of mixed couples, and the number of natives born in these type of couples/families is increasing, some existing formal and informal norms could exclude the individual from their family and/or community.
Professor Daniela Andrén
Senior Lecturer, Örebro University School of Business -
Disagree A set of policy instruments that only target individual well-being will unlikely also stimulate collective well-being. For example, policies implemented to promote economic growth (income), higher levels of education, and better health can lead to higher levels of individual life satisfaction but do not necessarily address the intrinsic values of social and community well-being. As Powdthavee (2007) shows in his paper titled “Putting a Price Tag on Friends, Relatives, and Neighbours: Using Surveys of Life Satisfaction to Value Social Relationships “, the satisfaction derived from deep interpersonal relationships with family and friends is essential to well-being even more so than income. This notion holds at a community level, as a sense of belonging and supportive communities increase well-being. Policy instruments that are more equipped to address collective well-being should be introduced, such as policies targeting work-life balance.
Professor Talita Greyling
Professor, School of Economics, University of Johannesburg -
Completely agree I completely agree. Unfortunately, there is much less research on the drivers than in the consequences of life satisfaction. In addition, as I mentioned in the previous question, is of key importance to decide which theory we will use. For example, the Self-determination theory (SDT; Ryan & Deci, 2007), which is a theory of eudaimonic well-being, argues that the three basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness are drivers/predictors of life satisfaction. Nonetheless, Diener et al. (2016) used to state that higher levels of life satisfaction tend to predict higher levels of relations, competence and autonomy. Who is right? Who is wrong? To me, both theories are right. The differences in their claims are due to the use of different conceptual framework. So, when trying to capture all the important drivers of LS, we need to be very clear in which theory (or theories) are we going to use. References: Delle Fave, A., Brdar, I., Freire, T., Vella-Brodrick, D., & Wissing, M. P. (2011). The eudaimonic and hedonic components of happiness: Qualitative and quantitative findings. Social indicators research, 100, 185-207. Diener, E. (1984). Subjective well-being. Psychological bulletin, 95(3), 542. Diener, E., Heintzelman, S. J., Kushlev, K., Tay, L., Wirtz, D., Lutes, L. D., & Oishi, S. (2017). Findings all psychologists should know from the new science on subjective well-being. Canadian Psychology/psychologie canadienne, 58(2), 87. Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2017). Self-determination theory: Basic psychological needs in motivation, development, and wellness. Guilford publications. Ryff, C. D. (2013). Psychological well-being revisited: Advances in the science and practice of eudaimonia. Psychotherapy and psychosomatics, 83(1), 10-28. Ura, K. (2017). Happiness: Transforming the development landscape. The Centre for Bhutanese Studies: Thimphu, Bhutan.
Professor Wenceslao Unanue
Assistant Professor, Business School, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez -
Completely agree Experienced wellbeing is something that happens in the brain. Communities and families do not have brains or feelings, so any useful definition of collective wellbeing (as opposed to its determinants) must ultimately be some aggregation of the wellbeing of the individuals comprising the group.
Professor Chris Barrington-Leigh
Associate Professor, McGill University -
Disagree While individual life satisfaction captures family wellbeing and community wellbeing to some extent, there is no reason to expect that it will capture them to the same extent that individuals value them when evaluating collective wellbeing.
Professor Daniel Benjamin
Associate Professor of Economics, University of Southern California -
Completely disagree On their face life satisfaction measures should capture how people are doing in terms of whatever they care about. But there is now a substantial literature by philosophers and others documenting the many ways in which this assumption is false, except as a very crude approximation with important exceptions (eg, recently Mark Fabian; see also Flanagan et al 2023). For a taste of the complexities: you can reasonably be satisfied with a bad life (thank Heaven I at least have that!) and dissatisfied with a good life (I wanted more out of life!). And life satisfaction judgments hinge on what information is salient: if you succeeded in having children, or didn't, you might well end up just as satisfied either way, even though you think your life is much better in the first case than the second. You just don't sit around thinking about how you avoided childlessness so that doesn't figure. These are not problems with the measures as scientific instruments; they are built into the very idea, and point, of life satisfaction. More generally, no single wellbeing metric will capture all the information we care about, even roughly; it's just not possible, any more than raising children well according a "good parenting index" posted on the fridge is. The proposed collective items are very nearly domain satisfaction questions, with some of the same problems as life satisfaction measures. I would also consider including more objective indicators (even if self-report). For instance, Bhutan has asked citizens how many people they could count on for help in a health emergency--plausibly a terrific indicator of community wellbeing. (They scored very well, incidentally.) There are also excellent batteries of relationship quality indicators that could inform policy. I fear that the urgently needed efforts to give wellbeing a prominent space in policymaking (see: mental health crisis) are falling victim to the same "crank-turning" approach to policy that turned the welcome development of GDP and related metrics into something of a curse, trying to squeeze far more out of a convenient number than it can bear.
Professor Dan Haybron
Professor of Philosophy, Saint Louis University -
Neither agree nor disagree A bigger kitchen sink of covariates??? So, what are the drivers, or the covariates we need? In engaging in the above exercise over the past ten years we have added little to life satisfaction explanation. Perhaps the issue is not what we measure but how we measure it. Granular yearly life satisfaction questionnaires suffer from memory and other biases; who can remember whether it was last quarter or the previous quarter when we had a financial shock? A very recent paper by David Johnstone (1) and colleagues showed that more regular measurement is better. A paper (2) using real-time primary source heart rate variability data showed that such a measurement method explains positive affect in individuals. Perhaps it is not what we measure to explain life satisfaction, but how we measure it? (1) Hoskins, S., Johnston, D. W., Kunz, J. S., Shields, M. A., & Staub, K. E. (2024). The importance of sampling frequency for estimates of well-being dynamics (IZA No. 2024-05). (2) Beatton, T., Chan, H.F., Dulleck, U., Ristl, A., Schaffner, M. & Torgler, T. (2024). Positive Affect and Heart Rate Variability: A Dynamic Analysis. Scientific Reports.
Doctor Tony Beatton
Visiting Fellow, Queensland University of Technology (QUT) -
Disagree Life satisfaction does capture family and community drivers, but not neccessarily to the degree that people would prefer. Indeed, some people, typically in more collectivist cultures, prefer to maximize collective well-being over individual life satisfaction. It would be a mistake to target life satisfaction alone for all people, as this could lead to incorrect tradeoffs with collective well-being and leave some people feeling worse off. Current cost-benefit or cost-effectiveness analysis is based on impact estimates across numerous life domains, and experts have discussed estimating separate impacts for different population groups, especially the economically vulnerable. I believe they should consider extending this procedure to account for different priorities across groups. I don’t think my recommendation is very feasible within one country, but it certainly is across countries. Clearly, non-WEIRD countries should not necessarily implement WEIRD impact estimates or even WEIRD strategies more broadly.
Doctor Kelsey J O'Connor
Researcher in the Economics of Well-being
The first statement with which panellists were asked to agree or disagree focused on whether family and community wellbeing are best thought of as the determinants of individual life satisfaction as opposed to distinct dimensions of wellbeing. This was prefaced by a statement noting that there is interest among some wellbeing researchers in extending the measurement of wellbeing to better reflect concepts of collective wellbeing that are argued to be important in a global context.
Responses to the question were largely in agreement with the view that aspects of collective wellbeing – such as family or community wellbeing – are best thought of as determinants of individual life satisfaction. Out of 18 responses, 12 agreed or completely agreed with the first statement, while only 3 disagreed or completely disagreed.
In agreeing with the statement, a number of panellists emphasised that it is individuals who experience wellbeing and that the relationship between family, community, and wellbeing needs to be interpreted in this light. Mariano Rojas notes that wellbeing refers to the experience that people have and similar points are made by Christopher Barrington-Leigh, Gigi Foster and Martin Binder. Arthur Grimes makes the point that the importance of friends and family for subjective wellbeing is well documented (Easterlin, 2020) and is found across all cultures and for this reason treating these factors as determinants of wellbeing is consistent with their vital importance.
Within this range of opinion, however, was considerable nuance with a number of panellists sympathetic to the view that there is value in extending the measurement of wellbeing to better reflect concepts of collective wellbeing but nonetheless agreeing with the statement that family and community wellbeing are ultimately best thought of as determinants of life satisfaction. Ruut Veenhoven, argued that it is clear that there is interest in measures of collective wellbeing but nonetheless, from the perspective of overall human welfare it was best to regard collective wellbeing as a determinant of life satisfaction. William Tov and Wenceslao Unanue also made similar points.
Of those who disagreed with statement 1, Stephen Wu argued that some cultures may be more individualistic while others may be more collectivistic, influencing the best approach to measuring wellbeing. Interestingly, a number of those who agreed with statement 1 only agreed with part of it. Stephanie Rossouw and Talita Greyling both supported statement 1 overall, but nonetheless argued that a single measure such as life satisfaction may not fully reflect the wholistic nature of family and community wellbeing and that there is value in collecting a wider range of measures.
Several panellists – including some of those who disagreed with the statement such as Christopher Boyce and Dan Haybron as well as some who agreed with it such as Daniela Andren – chose to focus on issues of measurement more generally. Christopher Boyce noted that life satisfaction tends to emphasise power and wealth (Nilson et al, 2024) and that countries with high life satisfaction are not necessarily those where people experience the most joy and laughter. There may therefore be a case for focusing on a wider range of measures than life satisfaction.
Statement two asked panellists whether making life satisfaction a target for public policy would necessarily capture all of the important determinants of collective wellbeing too.
Views on this were more divided than was the case for the first statement, with 7 panellists agreeing or completely agreeing and 8 panellists disagreeing or completely disagreeing.
The majority of those who agreed with statement 2 argued that satisfaction with one’s life reflects all the drivers of wellbeing including social conditions. Arthur Grimes suggests that collective wellbeing can be thought of as reflecting a Bergson-Samuelson social welfare function and that life satisfaction can serve as a “reasonable first approximation” of this. Martin Binder and Christopher Barrington-Leigh suggest that it is hard to think about the wellbeing of a community except as the aggregate of the wellbeing of its members.
Among those panellists who disagreed with statement 2 there were two broad lines of argument. Some panellists – including William Tov and Stephen Wu – explicitly made the case that community and family wellbeing are not simply the aggregate of individual wellbeing. Christopher Boyce notes that community wellbeing brings in concepts of social capital, democracy, and the quality of the environment and that these may need direct assessment (Boyce et al, 2020).
Other panellists, including Stephanie Rossouw, Talita Greyling, and Daniel Benjamin focused more on the empirical point of whether the determinants of life satisfaction are empirically likely to be the same as the determinants of family or community wellbeing and if so, whether different drivers have the same weight in collective and individual contexts. A similar point is raised by Kelsey O’Conner who also notes that the weights of different features of the community might be different not only between measures of family or community wellbeing and life satisfaction, but also across cultures.
Both David Blanchflower and Douglas Beaton took a neutral position on statement 2 neither agreeing nor disagreeing. Instead, both argued that the focus of the statement on life satisfaction as opposed to family or community wellbeing omitted the more important issue of whether life satisfaction itself is a good measure of individual wellbeing (Hoskins et al, 2024).
Overall, there was essentially no disagreement among any of the panellists that social factors such as family and community relationships are vitally important to wellbeing. However, there were significant differences in whether collective wellbeing could be reduced to the aggregate of individual wellbeing or whether collective wellbeing was, in some way, distinct.
References
Easterlin RA (2020) 'An Economist's Lessons on Happiness: Farewell Dismal Science!' Springer.
Hoskins, S., Johnston, D. W., Kunz, J. S., Shields, M. A., & Staub, K. E. (2024). The importance of sampling frequency for estimates of well-being dynamics (IZA No. 2024-05).
Nilsson, A. H., Eichstaedt, J. C., Lomas, T., Schwartz, A., & Kjell, O. (2024). The Cantril Ladder elicits thoughts about power and wealth. Scientific Reports, 14(1), 2642.