Using wellbeing for public policy: Theory, measurement, and recommendations

By A. Adler, Martin E. P. Seligman. 2016

234 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Indicators of social progress are the primary drivers of public policy.  If existing economic measures of prosperity are complemented with wellbeing metrics that better capture changes in individuals’ quality of life, decision makers will be better informed to assess and design policy.  The science of wellbeing has yielded extensive knowledge and measurement instruments during more than three decades.  We review the existing wellbeing literature and answer three questions: (1) What is wellbeing? (2) How do we measure wellbeing? And, importantly, distinguishing this review from previous ones, (3) How do we use wellbeing metrics to assess and design policy? We suggest that the science of wellbeing is empirically mature enough to complement economic assessments of national progress.  We build on existing work to provide recommendations on metrics and new, specific policies for societal wellbeing.

Subfields: Health, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bb8e4c13b84dc45419128b4490252eb4d143305d

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Health

  1. John M. Zelenski
  2. Yukiko Uchida
  3. C. Capaldi
  4. M. Bond

In Social Psychology

  1. John M. Zelenski
  2. Joonha Park
  3. Yukiko Uchida
  4. C. Capaldi
  5. M. Bond
  6. K. Leung
  7. Peter B. Smith

In Sociology and Political Science

  1. C. Capaldi
  2. John M. Zelenski
  3. Joonha Park
  4. Yukiko Uchida
  5. M. Bond
  6. K. Leung
  7. Holli-Anne Passmore
  8. Peter B. Smith

Citations in the corpus