Wellbeing Measurement and Policy Design—Measures, Key Findings, and Wellbeing Frameworks

The second chapter is targeted at readers who wish to know what matters for subjective wellbeing, and in particular for those who wish to design policies in order to improve it. It begins with an extensive discussion on the direct measurement of wellbeing, covering both prevalent current measures and promising future measures, after which it presents some key findings and rules of thumb on what influences wellbeing. It then organizes the wellbeing lessons for governments by discussing the relation between wellbeing and four areas where government is very active: the provision of basic comforts, the regulation and production of experience goods and skills, the importance of status concerns, and social identities. This come with rules of thumb on how to recognize possible improvements and some indication as to what would be good value for money in terms of interventions. This chapter also discusses frameworks of wellbeing to aid appraisals, evaluations, and overall policy thinking in different areas. It presents a mental framework that embeds wellbeing into the whole economy (a capital framework) and then apply the theories and general framework to mental health and relationship-type interventions. The chapter ends with a taxonomy of thinking about wellbeing in government departments, including departments directly oriented towards some aspect of wellbeing (like health) and others that are oriented towards enabling the government to function (like tax authorities) or towards identity (like culture).