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  7.

  Understanding Subjective Well-Being

  Arthur A. Stone and Alan B. Krueger

  This chapter evaluates progress in measuring subjective well-being since the 2009 Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Report. It summarizes approaches based on evaluative measures, experiential well-being, and eudaemonia (the extent to which a person believes that his or her life has meaning and purpose). It notes a tremendous uptake of subjective well-being measures by National Statistical Offices since 2009, and the growth in research on subjective well-being in the scientific literature. The chapter takes stock of what we have learned from global analyses of social and economic progress “beyond GDP” since 2009, including through the UN World Happiness Report, the US National Academy of Science Report on Measuring Subjective Well-Being, the OECD “How’s Life?” series and its Better Life Initiative. It also describes progress in acquiring new knowledge about subjective well-being and progress in applying this to policy. The chapter identifies some of the key issues that will need to be addressed to gain a more complete understanding of subjective well-being, including causality and data collection.

  Arthur A. Stone is Professor of Psychology, Economics, and Public Policy at the University of Southern California and Alan B. Krueger is Bendheim Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University. The authors wish to thank all members of the HLEG, many of whom contributed sections to this chapter. They especially thank Professor Sir Angus Deaton for his contributions. At the OECD, Carrie Exton also provided sections for the chapter and did extensive editing. Finally, the authors thank the participants in the HLEG workshop on “Multi-dimensional Subjective Well-Being” held in Turin, Italy, on October 30–31, 2014, organized in collaboration with the OECD, the International Herbert A. Simon Society, and Collegio Carlo Alberto, and with the financial support of the Compagnia di San Paolo. The opinions expressed and arguments employed in the contributions below are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official views of the OECD or of the governments of its member countries.

  Introduction

  Extensive progress has been made in collecting, analyzing, and improving subjective well-being data since the report of the Stiglitz, Sen, and Fitoussi Commission (SSF) was published in 2009. Many National Statistical Offices (NSOs) have already invested in ambitious measurement programs, and these are yielding important insights into the relationship between subjective well-being and a wide variety of characteristics and experiences.

  Measures of subjective well-being (see sidebar, “What Are Subjective Well-Being Measures?”) ask individuals to self-report ratings of aspects of their lives, including satisfaction with their life as a whole, their feelings at a particular moment, or the extent to which they feel that their lives have meaning or purpose. These measures focus on what people believe and report feeling, not their objective conditions, although they can be related to objective conditions. Thanks to large investments on the part of NSOs and governmental research agencies such as the US National Institute on Aging, there is today growing evidence to support the idea that these measures can be the basis of useful indicators of individual and societal welfare, and that they provide relevant information that is not reflected in more conventional economic statistics such as GDP. Of course, these more conventional statistics also capture information that subjective well-being measures do not.

  On an individual level, subjective well-being data give insight into the way that people learn, work, and live, and what makes their lives satisfactory and happy, or what causes them pain and stress. There is now an increasing consensus that broader measures of societal progress should take into account how people feel about and experience their own lives, alongside information about their objective conditions. At a social level, subjective well-being measures are potentially powerful indicators that can signal wider problems in people’s lives, capture prevailing sentiment, and predict behavior. For example, one recent study (Ward, 2015) shows that subjective well-being measures can predict voting behavior—even more effectively, in fact, than macro-economic variables. Subjective well-being measures can also be significant predictors of future health outcomes (Steptoe, Deaton, and Stone, 2015) and yield new insights that challenge our intuitive understanding of the world. For example, many studies have shown that in advanced, English-speaking Western countries, evaluative subjective well-being improves after middle age when we might have expected a decline due to higher rates of disease at older ages (Stone et al., 2010). Another surprising finding is that the impact of income differentially impacts evaluative and experiential well-being. At lower levels of income, there is a positive association between money income and subjective well-being, while at higher levels, only evaluative well-being is associated with income, whereas experiential well-being is not (Kahneman and Deaton, 2010).

  Advances in research are facilitating the use of subjective well-being data in the public and private sectors. For example, businesses routinely access the satisfaction of their employees and customers; and “big data” on consumers’ ratings and choices are used to recommend products to purchase, movies to watch, and music to listen to.

  The rapid progress achieved in the use of subjective well-being data since SSF in 2009 suggests that there is much more to learn and that this work should continue. Larger databases of harmonized subjective well-being data, and panel data that connect subjective well-being indicators to observed outcomes are needed to reach conclusions about how these measures can most effectively be used—so collection of subjective well-being data requires continued support and commitment. Such support will also depend on demonstrating the usefulness of these measures, which is already being done by several promising initiatives, policy applications, and societal indicators.

  Progress in Measuring Subjective Well-Being Since the 2009 Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Report

  There has been dramatic progress in terms of both methodology and availability of subjective well-being data today relative to 5 years ago, and the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi report was a catalyst for much of this progress.

  WHAT ARE SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING MEASURES?

  “Subjective well-being” is subjective—that is, it is based on a person’s self-reports of their beliefs and feelings. In this respect, it differs from objective well-being measures that may include observable health or material outcomes. A subjective well-being measure is one for which there is no obvious reference point that an external observer can use to evaluate a person’s self-report.

  Broadly speaking, there are three types of subjective well-being measures:

  • Evaluative measures require a person to reflect upon and evaluate his or her life (or some aspect of it, such as health). This is often measured using questions such as: “The following question asks how satisfied you feel, on a scale from 0 to 10. Zero means you feel ‘not at all satisfied’ and 10 means you feel ‘completely satisfied.’ Overall, how satisfied are yo
u with life as a whole these days?” (OECD, 2013). There are other evaluative measures including the Cantril ladder and Diener’s multi-item scale (Diener, 1984).

  • Experiential well-being is the measure of someone’s feelings, states, and emotions, e.g., happiness, stress, pain, or sadness. These measures are optimally assessed at a given moment or over the course of a day, though longer recall periods are sometimes used (which may yield a more evaluative than experiential measure). This is often called “hedonic” well-being or “affect,” though this chapter uses the broader term “experiential” well-being, which goes beyond purely affective states and includes pain and other miseries (Stone and Mackie, 2015). The rationale for this extension of hedonic well-being is that misery and pain are an important part of our momentary experience of life and concepts that fit into the broader experiential well-being construct. These concepts are often measured using questions (in daily assessment) such as: “On a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 means you did not experience the emotion at all, and 10 means that you experienced the emotion all the time, how much [enjoyment/stress/anger …] did you feel yesterday?” (Stone and Mackie, 2015). An advantage of collecting experiential data in real-time is that the reports can be linked to objective data on time-use as well as activities and resources. For example, feelings can be related to the type of activity individuals engaged in at the time (e.g., TV watching) and resources available (e.g., the size of the TV).

  • Eudaemonia is the extent to which a person believes that his or her life has meaning and purpose (Ryff, 2014), but can also refer to other psychological states such as the idea of flourishing or thriving. Although scales of eudaemonia are available, recent national data collections have included questions such as: “Overall, to what extent do you feel that the things you do in your life are worthwhile?” (OECD, 2013), with responses given on a 0 to 10 scale where zero denotes “not at all worthwhile” and 10 denotes “completely worthwhile.” There are also multi-item scales available.

  Life evaluation (or life satisfaction) and experiential or hedonic well-being (both positive and negative) were described in Diener (1984). Eudaemonia is a term that has come into common use since the publication of the first Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi report to describe aspects of people’s psychological functioning not falling under Diener’s definition. See OECD (2013) for further information.

  We must be clear when speaking of “subjective well-being” to specify exactly which type of subjective well-being we mean, because the determinants and correlates differ among the measures. It is also apparent that confusion ensues when authors or policy-makers use the term “happiness” without saying which aspect of subjective well-being they have measured—sometimes they mean evaluative well-being, other times experiential well-being, and occasionally a mixture of the two.

  There has been a tremendous uptick of subjective well-being measures by NSOs, but there has also been growth in research on subjective well-being in the scientific literature. The sidebar below provides a sampling of the breadth of scientific questions where subjective well-being was a major predictor or outcome in articles published in 2015 from the Web of Science platform. There has also been much progress in the theoretical understanding of the use of subjective well-being as a national indicator (e.g., Benjamin et al., 2014; Fleurbaey and Blanchet, 2013).

  ARTICLES RELEASED IN 2015 UTILIZING SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING AS EITHER A PREDICTOR OF OTHER OUTCOMES OR AS AN OUTCOME IN ITS OWN RIGHT

  • Subjective well-being as a predictor of childbearing behavior and fertility decisions (Aassve, Arpino, and Balbo, 2016)

  • How subjective well-being is linked to the “dark triad” of narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism (Aghababaei and Błachnio, 2015)

  • Reasons for the decline of subjective well-being in China (Graham, Zhou, and Zhang, 2015)

  • The link between subjective well-being and access to a cash margin among adult Swedes (Berlin and Kaunitz, 2015)

  • Subjective well-being as a measure to assess suffering in cancer patients (Anglim et al., 2015)

  • The subjective well-being of rural Anglican clergy (Brewster, 2015)

  • Subjective well-being as a proxy for valuing health status (Brown, 2015)

  • How subjective well-being is linked to trust and social cohesion (Cramm and Nieboer, 2015)

  • The prediction of later life subjective well-being from early life experiential well-being (Coffey, Warren, and Gottfried, 2015)

  • How different types of subjective well-being vary by age and their association with survival at older ages (Steptoe, Deaton, and Stone, 2015)

  • How homeostatic processes may produce stable levels of subjective well-being (Cummins et al., 2015)

  • Subjective well-being as a predictor of self-esteem in head and neck cancer patients (Devins et al., 2015)

  • Subjective well-being as a moderator in the association of emotion and stress (Extremera and Rey, 2015)

  • The impact of taking care of a family member on the subjective well-being of Japanese adults (Niimi, 2015)

  • The impact of a comprehensive treatment on the subjective well-being of autistic young adults (Gal et al., 2015)

  • Subjective well-being as a correlate of workplace air and noise pollution (García-Mainar, Montuenga, and Navarro-Paniagua, 2015)

  • Teacher connectedness as a predictor for students’ subjective well-being (García-Moya et al., 2015)

  • Subjective well-being as a means for evaluating efforts to cope with unemployment (Hahn et al., 2015)

  • Subjective well-being data as a tool for assessing workplace conditions in Spain (García-Mainar et al., 2015)

  • Comparing the subjective well-being of Mexican immigrants with native-born Mexican Americans (Cuellar, Bastida, and Braccio, 2015)

  • The impact of employment on the subjective well-being of older Korean immigrants living in the United States (Kim et al., 2015)

  • The impact of daily energy management by employees on their subjective well-being (Kinnunen et al., 2015)

  • Using subjective well-being data to explore social networks among older Japanese people (Saito et al., 2015)

  • The association between health and subjective well-being among Europeans (Read, Grundy, and Foverskov, 2016)

  • The relationship between locus of control and cell phone use to subjective well-being (Li, Lepp, and Barkley, 2015)

  • Attitudes of older caregivers and their impact on their subjective well-being (Loi et al. 2015)

  • Grand-parenting and its effects on subjective well-being (Muller and Litwin, 2011)

  • Gender differences and subjective well-being (Meisenberg and Woodley, 2015)

  • The correlation of immunological markers and subjective well-being in HIV patients in Uganda (Mwesigire et al., 2015)

  • The correlation between academic performance and subjective well-being in adolescents (Steinmayr et al., 2015)

  • How living with parents affects the subjective well-being of young adults (Nikolaev, 2015)

  • The impact of smoking laws on subjective well-being (Odermatt and Stutzer, 2015)

  • Self-control and emotion regulation as predictors of subjective well-being (Ouyang et al., 2015)

  • Female infertility and self-compassion as predictors of subjective well-being (Raque-Bogdan and Hoffman, 2015)

  • The association between body mass index and subjective well-being (Linna et al., 2013)

  • The effects of labor market policies on the subjective well-being of the unemployed (Sage, 2015)

  • The effects of indoor cleaning on subjective well-being in Japan (Shiue, 2015)

  • Evaluating the impact of public parks on subjective well-being (Woodhouse et al., 2015)

  • The impact of bright lights on subjective well-being (Stemer et al., 2015)

  • The impact of plant closures on the subjective well-being of workers in Sweden (Stengård et al., 2015)

  • The association between crime rate
s and subjective well-being in former Soviet countries (Stickley et al., 2015)

  • The link between natural disasters and subjective well-being (Tiefenbach and Kohlbacker, 2015)

  • The link between time spent exercising and subjective well-being (Wicker, Coates, and Breuer, 2015)

  • The impact of technological improvements on subjective well-being (Zagonari, 2015)

  • Subjective well-being as a moderator of cortisol secretion (Zilioli, Imami, and Slatcher, 2015)

  National Statistical Office Data Collection

  The availability of survey data on subjective well-being, including panel data, has increased at a rapid pace. NSOs are increasingly including subjective well-being questions in their surveys, and a majority of OECD countries now collect at least some subjective well-being data (Table 7.1). For example, NSOs in all but one OECD country have collected life evaluation data in recent years, and more than three-quarters of NSOs have collected some data on aspects of eudaemonia and experiential well-being.1 This represents very significant progress since 2009. The OECD Guidelines on Measuring Subjective Well-Being (OECD, 2013), which provide clear directions and proposed modules for including subjective well-being questions in surveys, have galvanized this movement. Nevertheless, in some cases different measurement approaches continue to be adopted, particularly with regard to eudaemonia and experiential well-being, where broad consensus on best practice is still lacking. To ensure greater comparability and take-up of the data, further work is needed to coordinate and harmonize measurement efforts across countries, and to increase the frequency with which data are collected (see Exton, Siegerink, and Smith [2018], for a review of recent progress).

  In 2013, the EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions, or EU-SILC (Eurostat, 2013), included an ad hoc module on subjective well-being, which included a question for each of its three main elements. This has produced comparable subjective well-being data for all 28 European member states, as well as Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, and Turkey. In 2015, Eurostat (the statistical office of the European Union) also launched a publication on Quality of Life – Facts and Views (Eurostat, 2015), with explanatory pages and an interactive tool to make the data more easily accessible to a wide variety of users. This was complemented by a Eurostat analytical report on subjective well-being published in 2016. All quality-of-life indicators, including subjective well-being, have been evaluated by the Eurostat Expert Group.