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A well-being approach requires looking beyond COVID-19 deaths to compare the performance of elimination versus mitigation strategies as measured by other important supports for well-being. What do the data show? Our comparison based on 2020 data shows a virus elimination strategy to be more successful than other options, whether measured in terms of COVID-19 deaths, overall excess deaths, income, unemployment, trust, or mental and physical health. Countries that chose and followed a strategy of reducing community transmission to zero and keeping it there saved lives and better protected income and employment, all without obvious costs to either the social fabric or the mental health of their populations.

Starting from the assumption that improving well-being is the central consideration for public policies, we show how subjective well-being research can help, and already is helping, to choose public policies based on their consequences for all aspects of life. The core of the paper lies in examples where the methods we propose, often in systematic experimental contexts, have already been used to guide the evaluation and ranking of alternative policy options in public health, education, workplace training, and social welfare. The arrival of COVID-19 has increased the urgency for a well-being focus, since the policy decisions being faced by governments dealing with the pandemic require an approach much broader than provided by more typical policy evaluations in all disciplines, including especially the social context and the distribution of costs and consequences. A broader approach to policy design and choice is fully consistent with the underlying aims of epidemiology, with similar gains likely in other policy disciplines. A focus on subjective well-being as an umbrella measure of welfare might help to restore to economics the breadth of purpose and methods it had two centuries ago, when happiness was considered the appropriate goal for private actions and public policies.

Author(s): VanderWeele, Tyler J; Trudel-Fitzgerald, Claudia; Allin, Paul; Farrelly, Colin; Fletcher, Guy; Frederick, Donald E; Hall, Jon; Helliwell, John F; Kim, Eric S; Lauinger, William A; Lee, Matthew T; Lyubomirsky, Sonja; Margolis, Seth; McNeely, Eileen; Tay, Louis; Viswanath, Vish; Weziak-Bialowolska, Dorota; Kubzansky, Laura D

Measures of well-being have proliferated over the past decades. Very little guidance has been available as to which measures to use in what contexts. This paper provides a series of recommendations, based on the present state of knowledge and the existing measures available, of what measures might be preferred in which contexts. The recommendations came out of an interdisciplinary workshop on the measurement of well-being. The recommendations are shaped around the number of items that can be included in a survey, and also based on the differing potential contexts and purposes of data collection such as, for example, government surveys, or multi-use cohort studies, or studies specifically about psychological well-being. The recommendations are not intended to be definitive, but to stimulate discussion and refinement, and to provide guidance to those relatively new to the study of well-being.

This paper brings together the largest available sets of national-level data, covering 157 countries over the years 2005–2012, to assess the extent to which governance quality contributes to life evaluations. Our most significant new finding is that changes in governance quality within a policy-relevant time horizon can lead to significant changes in the quality of life. For example, the ten most-improved countries, in terms of changes in government service delivery quality between 2005 and 2012, when compared to the ten most-worsened countries, are estimated to have average life evaluations higher by 0.4 points on a 0 to 10 scale. The results also confirm earlier findings that service delivery quality generally dominates democratic quality in supporting better lives until delivery quality has reached sufficient levels. The situation changes as development proceeds, with democratic quality showing a positive influence among countries that have already achieved higher quality of service delivery.

The paper explains how subjective well-being can be measured, how the resulting data are being used to document human progress and how health care can be changed to take advantage of what has been learned. The evaluations that people make of their own lives document, and permit the explanation of, life satisfaction levels that differ greatly among countries and communities. Research seeking to explain these happiness differences, and their related differences in mortality and morbidity, exposes the importance of the social context. There is an opportunity and need to change health care from the diagnosis and treatment of illness to the fostering of wellness. The importance of the social context in the successful design and delivery of health and happiness is so great as to support a prescription to turn the “I” into “we,” thereby turning illness into wellness by making the production and maintenance of health and happiness a much more collaborative activity, even in the presence of the increasing complexity of medical science.

This Community Essay surveys evidence showing that malleable social norms and the well-being benefits of pro-social acts together provide a powerful new path to sustainability. If people really are happier working together for a shared purpose, this exposes a multitude of win-win solutions to material problems that build community while meeting material needs

Statistics Canada’s General Social Survey (GSS) and Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) offer a valuable opportunity to examine the stability of life satisfaction responses and their correlates from year to year within a consistent analytical framework. Capitalizing on the strengths of these surveys, this paper addresses two questions. First, how much variability is observed from year to year and across surveys in the distribution of life satisfaction responses and what accounts for it? Second, how much variability is observed in the direction and magnitude of the correlation between life satisfaction and a consistent set of socioeconomic characteristics? The study shows that the mean level of life satisfaction reported varies from year to year in the GSS but remains stable in the CCHS. This pattern in variability is associated with survey content preceding the life satisfaction question. In contrast, the direction and magnitude of the relationships between life satisfaction and common socioeconomic characteristics is generally consistent between the two surveys and over time.

Wellbeing research has long found a correlation between the subjective wellbeing of individuals and the quality of their private and public institutions. But which way do the causal arrows point, and what can be done to improve institutions? Only real-life experiments can answer these two questions convincingly. Prisons are frequently considered schools for criminals rather than creators of wellbeing. Thus they provide a tough test for institutional changes intended to improve wellbeing. Since 1998 the Singapore Prison Service has converted its prisons into schools for life, thereby improving the lives of inmates, prison staff and the community at large. In so doing, the Prison Service exemplified five key lessons from subjective wellbeing research: the importance of social context, benevolence, trust, building positive outcomes, and top-to-bottom engagement in a shared purpose. By any measure, the results have been impressive, ranging from a one-third drop in recidivism to improved staff morale and better social connections between prisons and the rest of society.

In this paper we suggest an improved methodology for comparing the intensity of trade across and within national and provincial boundaries. Earlier efforts to assess border effects for provinces or for countries without internal trade statistics made fairly arbitrary assumptions about average distances for internal trade flows. We improve on earlier efforts by taking more complete account of the distribution of population within each province or country. Internal distance is estimated as a population-weighted average of intra-city and intercity distances as well as distances to and within rural areas. We find higher estimates of internal distances, and hence border effects, than found in previous studies.

Humans are social animals, and well-being therefore depends greatly on the quality of their social world. The idea of “social capital” is the claim that societies have a valuable resource in social relationships that are characterized by trust and trustworthiness, by collaboration and cooperation, and by a broad concern about helping the group. On the flip side, social capital is reduced by corruption and crime. The social capital of societies is linked to their health and well-being, and policies that undercut social capital can be disastrous even if they further other types of goals. By tracking both social capital and well-being, policy makers can create better regulations that increase social well-being rather than interfere with it. Well-being measures also provide a method of measuring the value of public services. An example for evaluating the outcomes of a social experiment—a program in Canada to reduce unemployment by assessing well-being before and after the program intervention—has been provided.

Health is now thought of as more than absence of disease, with positive health including feelings of well-being. Thus, subjective well-being is an inherent part of the health of societies. Importantly, research has now shown that high well-being can foster health and longevity, and that low well-being can impair the immune and cardiovascular systems, and have other deleterious effects on physical health. Another intersection between health and well-being is mental illness, which is a major cause of ill-being in industrialized societies. Thus, well-being is integral to disease prevention and health promotion, especially in the economically developed nations where epidemic diseases have been greatly reduced. Specific health policy issues are described, and how well-being can inform debates about policies directed at these issues is discussed. For example, the well-being of people with various diseases can be used to help more fairly allocate money to research on various medical conditions.

This article employs World Values Survey measures of life satisfaction as though they were direct measures of utility, and uses them to evaluate alternative features and forms of government in large international samples. Life satisfaction is found to be more closely linked to several World Bank measures of the quality of government than to real per capita incomes, in simple correlations and more fully specified models explaining international differences in life satisfaction. Differences in the relative importance of different aspects of good government are tested for, and a hierarchy of preferences that depends on the level of development is found. The ability of governments to provide a trustworthy environment, and to deliver services honestly and efficiently, appears to be of paramount importance for countries with worse governance and lower incomes. The balance changes once acceptable levels of efficiency, trust and incomes are achieved, when more value is attached to building and maintaining the institutions of electoral democracy.

There has been much empirical macroeconomic research on the current account and fiscal linkages among the industrial countries (e.g. Bryant, Henderson et Al. [6]), but much less empirical analysis using multicountry general equilibrium models of the linkages between the industrial countries (the north) and the developing countries (the south) (1). In this paper, we make use of two recently developed global models, the IMF’s MULTIMOD (Masson, Symansky, et Al. [33]) and INTERMOD (Helliwell, Meredith, et Al. [23]), to spell out some of main channels (2). We shall assess the extent to which fiscal policies in the industrial countries during the first half of the 1980s contributed to the growth, debt, and debt-servicing experience of the developing countries. The fiscal policies of the major industrial countries have received much attention, but primarily as concerns their effects on industrial countries, e.g. on their current balances, exchange rates, and interest rates (Blanchard and Summers [2], Branson [4], Sachs [35], Masson and Knight [32], Helkie and Hooper [21]) (3). Here, the focus is on their impact on developing countries.

The history of Canadian energy policy is traced and arguments are presented to show that, since there was no basis for the sudden shifts in government and industry opinion, policy initiatives were adopted without adequate assessments of the alternatives. The author also faults recent policy formation for emphasizing adequate energy supplies rather than looking for a least-cost way to balance energy demand with supply. The time lags due to environmental and economic constraints have tended to soften the impact of policy shifts in the face of supply shortages, but the multiplicity of government roles can put Federal and provincial governments in conflict with each other. These questions, when applied to several selected issues, raise the further question of whether energy self-reliance is a valid goal. Although vagueness brought superficial public acceptance, it is difficult to apply the concept of self-reliance to specific policies dealing with efficient energy use and equitable cost/benefit distribution. 82 references.

This paper contrasts with others in electricity economics in that it examines the effect of utility rate structures on the amount of electricity generated as a by-product of industrial heat production, usually referred to as ‘cogeneration’. The example used here is the British Columbia pulp and paper industry. The results are based on process models of the eighteen largest plants in the province. These models permit us to choose the profit-maximizing cogeneration investment options at these mills. While the considerable potential for cogeneration is outlined, the effects of constraints due to the nature of the existing, energy-producing capital stock are also portrayed, permitting the drawing of both long- and short-term supply curves. Similar supply functions are drawn against the price paid for electricity sold by plants to the province's major utility, and for mills located on Vancouver Island, to which the utility is considering the construction of a submerged, high-voltage transmission line.

Energy taxation is more complex and more controversial in Canada than in most or all other countries, for three main reasons. First, under the constitution, most natural resources are owned by the provinces, with important powers of regulation and taxation in the hands of the provincial and federal governments. Second, energy resources are very unevenly distributed among the provinces. Alberta, with less than 10 percent of Canada's population, accounts for 85 percent of Canada's nonfrontier onshore crude oil and natural gas. Finally, the Canadian oil and gas industry is largely foreign-owned and foreign-controlled.

There are a number of theoretical and empirical frameworks available for assessing the economic interdependence of nations. The theoretical models are noted for the variety of their assumptions and a corresponding dispersion of results. Most of the empirical frameworks are based entirely on international transmission through trade flows.1 There have been studies of international capital movements, but usually not in a framework wherein the interaction of trade and capital flows can be assessed. To our knowledge, the linked RDX2 — MPS system is the only mechanism currently available for tracing international repercussions in the full context of trade, capital flows and migration.2 The two component models, and the nature of their linkage, have been described elsewhere, and are summarised briefly in the Appendix (p. 167), so that it is only necessary to note here that the two models are reasonably comparable in terms of aggregation, and that both have well-developed financial sectors, and a variety of channels whereby the financial and real sectors influence one another.

A model for optimally allocating a limited and spatially distributed supply of wood wastes among competing uses combines the results of a model which evaluates the costs and benefits of three technologies in use at British Columbia paper mills and a second model which evaluates the economics of producing methanol by simulating the most important technical and economic variables of different production methods. Fossil fuel replacement, cogeneration of electricity, and production of methanol by the hybrid process were found to be the most profitable uses of wood wastes at most price configurations. The feasible limits to fossil-fuel replacement and cogeneration are set by the energy and wood requirements of the pulp and paper mills. Another factor is the current low price of natural gas that has led to several methanol projects based on natural gas. The authors conclude that all of the energy uses of wood wastes examined are economic in British Columbia, and deserve more serious consideration than they have received so far. 13 references, 6 figures.

policy changes that are intended to reduce the extent of federal price regulation for crude oil and natural gas in Canada. In this paper, we first examine the likely extent and meaning of deregulation for Canadian oil and natural gas, including the impact on Canada of natural gas price deregulation in the United States. Since these policy changes are being made in an environment of considerable uncertainty about the future level of world oil prices, we use the MACE model to assess the effects of lower and higher world oil prices on the aggregate economy, and on the revenues of the petroleum industry, the governments of the producing provinces, and of the federal government. We also compare these effects under deregulation with those under the modified National Energy Program (NEP) regime, wherein some, but not all, domestic oil prices move to match changes in world oil prices. Finally, we shall use our model results to assess the need for, and consequences of, further changes that have been suggested for energy taxation in Canada, including the modification or removal of the Petroleum and Gas Revenue Tax (PGRT), and some 'standby' system for insulating Canadian energy consumers and producers from the effects of very large swings in world oil prices. For Canadian crude oil pricing, the current pivot point is the regulated price for old oil, since all other prices are determined by reference to it. Producers of old oil receive it directly, while producers of synthetic oil or of conventional oil from pools discovered since 1974, or produced from in-fill drilling of fields discovered previously, receive a supplementary payment to bring their price up to the New Oil Reference Price (the NORP) which has a built-in quality differential linked to the posted price for an equivalent quality of international crude oil. Oil importers receive a subsidy based on the difference between the old oil price and an import reference price, and oil exporters pay an export tax which is set so as to approximate the difference between the old oil price and the US market price for comparable crudes, with adjustment for transport costs in both cases. The basis for the price to Canadian oil users is the old oil price plus the Petroleum Compensation Charge (PCC) and the Canadian Ownership Special Charge (COSC). Under the 1981 Energy Agreements, the PCC was supposed to be adjusted so as to cover the sum of the subsidy payments to users of imported oil and the price supplements paid to producers of new oil, synthetic oil, and other categories receiving higher prices. However, during most of 1984 the required increases in the PCC were not made, and even after the increase in November 1984 there remained a

This paper is divided into two parts. The first part deals with the current state of growth and imbalances among the major industrial countries, with special reference to Japan and the United States, and to the likely prospects for, and effects of, future macroeconomic policy changes.1 The second part takes a longer-term focus on the world economy, and deals with some of the implications of globalization for international policy co-ordination.

The following six papers analyse and compare the dynamic government expenditure multipliers of four major macroeconometric models (CANDIDE, QFM, RDX2, and TRACE) of the Canadian economy. Since the objective was to keep the models' structures as close as possible to the form in which they are actually used, the experimental design concentrates on standardizing the presentation of results and the conditions under which the simulations were performed. By developing the methodology for decomposing aggregate multipliers into sectoral contributions, the authors were able to attribute the difference in the multipliers to the different sectoral properties. Les miltiplicateurs dynamiques de quatres modeles macro-conom&triques. Les six memoires qui suivent analysent et comparent les multiplicateurs dymamiques des d6penses gouvernementales de quatre modeles macro-6conom6triques importants de l'economie canadienne (CANDIDE, QFM, RDX2, et TRACE). Puisque l'objectif de cet exercice est de pr6server pour chacun des modeles une forme structurelle qui demeure aussi proche que possible de la forme dans laquelle le modele est utilis6, I'exercice s'est attach6 particulierement a standardiser la pr6sentation des resultats et a expliciter les conditions dans lesquelles on effectue les proc6dures de simulation dans chaque cas. Grace a une m6thodologie qui permet de d6composer les multiplicateurs globaux en une s6rie de composantes sectorielles, les auteurs en arrivent a attribuer les differences entre les multiplicateurs dans les differents modeles a des differences dans leurs propriet6s sectorielles.

In early 1974, the National Energy Board announced hearings 'to Determine the Supply and Deliverability of Canadian Natural Gas in Relation to Reasonably Foreseeable Requirements for Use in Canada and Potential for Export.' Written submissions were requested by September I, 1974, and hearings were later set for Calgary, Toronto, Winnipeg, Vancouver, Ottawa, and Quebec City. The National Energy Board's report on this subject, expected in mid-1975, is likely to play a central role in the formation of Canadian energy policy. Thus the submissions and evidence received by the Board merit careful study. The hearings themselves are the Board's first broad look at natural gas policy, and fit logically between the oil export hearings of 1974 and future hearings of two competing proposals to bring Arctic gas to southern markets. The proponents of both projects were very active in the gas supply hearings. One proposal, that of Canadian Arctic Gas Pipeline Limited, was represented at the gas supply hearings by Canadian Arctic Gas Study Limited (CAGSL). Their plan is to build a 48" line to deliver about 4 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) of Alaskan and Mackenzie Delta gas to United States and Canadian markets. The second proposal, which was unveiled during the gas supply hearings but is not yet the subject of a formal application, is called the Maple Leaf Project because its throughput of about 2 bcfd is to be used to carry Mackenzie Delta gas to Canadian markets. The sponsoring organization is Foothills Pipelines, a subsidiary of Alberta Gas Trunk Line and Westcoast Transmission.

The National Energy Program has become the focal point of the federal-provincial conflict over energy pricing and revenue sharing. The paper uses a regionally-based model of the Canadian energy system to calculate the effects of the NEP on revenue distribution and on net oil imports. The budget plus the Alberta production cutbacks is shown to be inferior to the budget, especially for Albertans, and much inferior to a compromise that raises oil prices by an additional $2 per barrel in 1981, 1982, and 1983.

On September 1, 1981, a memorandum of agreement was signed by the Prime Minister of Canada and the Premier of Alberta, outlining key features of energy pricing and taxation between that date and December 31, 1986. Parallel agreements were signed with British Columbia on September 24th and with Saskatchewan, the third main producing province, on October 26th. Never before has either level of government committed itself to such a detailed energy plan, especially for such an extended period. The fact that the agreements are between governments with diverging interests has meant that many more features of energy pricing and taxation are spelled out and committed than would be the case with a policy document or energy plan issued by one government on its own. The level of commitment is also higher, as the documents will probably be regarded by succeeding governments as binding, subject to change only by agreement. Energy users and energy producers thus face a clearer and more certain set of prices and taxation arrangements than ever before, although the background of world events and future energy costs remains as uncertain as it has ever been. The energy agreements ended ten months of conflict following the introduction of the federal National Energy Program (NEP) on October 28, 1980, and are the first energy agreements between the federal and provincial governments since the world oil price more than doubled in 1979-80.