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Quality education can build a sustainable, happier world, but what experiences support student well-being? Numerous laboratory studies suggest that prosocial behavior predicts greater psychological well-being. However, relatively little work has examined whether real-world prosociality programs are associated with greater well-being in primary school-aged children (aged 5–12). In Study 1, we surveyed 24/25 students who completed their 6th Grade curriculum in a long-term care home alongside residents called “Elders,” which offered numerous opportunities for planned and spontaneous helping. We found that the meaning that students derived from their prosocial interactions with the Elders was strongly associated with greater psychological well-being. In Study 2, we conducted a pre-registered field experiment with 238 primary school-aged children randomly assigned to package essential items for children who experience homelessness and/or poverty who were either demographically similar or dissimilar in age and/or gender to them as part of a classroom outing. Children self-reported their happiness both pre- and post-intervention. While happiness increased from pre- to post-intervention, this change did not differ for children who helped a similar or dissimilar recipient. These studies offer real-world evidence consistent with the possibility that engaging in prosocial classroom activities—over an afternoon or year—is associated with greater psychological well-being in primary school-aged children.

Since the first confirmed case in Wuhan, China on December 31, 2019, the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) has spread quickly, infecting 165 million people as of May 2021. Since this first detection, research has indicated that people contracting the virus may suffer neurological and mental disorders and deficits, in addition to the respiratory and other organ challenges caused by COVID-19. Specifically, early evidence suggests that COVID-19 has both mild (e.g., loss of smell (anosmia), loss of taste (ageusia), latent blinks (heterophila), headaches, dizziness, confusion) and more severe outcomes (e.g., cognitive impairments, seizures, delirium, psychosis, strokes). Longer-term neurological challenges or damage may also occur. This knowledge should inform clinical guidelines, assessment, and public health planning while more systematic research using biological, clinical, and longitudinal methods provides further insights.

COVID-19 has infected millions of people and upended the lives of most humans on the planet. Researchers from across the psychological sciences have sought to document and investigate the impact of COVID-19 in myriad ways, causing an explosion of research that is broad in scope, varied in methods, and challenging to consolidate. Because policy and practice aimed at helping people live healthier and happier lives requires insight from robust patterns of evidence, this article provides a rapid and thorough summary of high-quality studies available through early 2021 examining the mental-health consequences of living through the COVID-19 pandemic. Our review of the evidence indicates that anxiety, depression, and distress increased in the early months of the pandemic. Meanwhile, suicide rates, life satisfaction, and loneliness remained largely stable throughout the first year of the pandemic. In response to these insights, we present seven recommendations (one urgent, two short-term, and four ongoing) to support mental health during the pandemic and beyond.

Strong versions of the set‐point hypothesis argue that subjective well‐being measures reflect primarily each individual's own personality and that deviations are temporary. International migration provides an excellent test, since life circumstances and subjective well‐being differ greatly among countries. With or without adjustments for selection effects, the levels and distributions of immigrant life‐satisfaction scores for immigrants to the United Kingdom and Canada from up to 100 source countries mimic those in their destination countries, and even the destination regions within those countries, rather than those in their source countries, showing that subjective life evaluations are substantially driven by life circumstances and respond when those circumstances change. L’immigration comme test de la theorie des seuils de bonheur : l’exemple du Canada et du Royaume‐Uni. Les principaux tenants de la theorie des seuils de bonheur " font valoir que les evaluations subjectives du bien‐etre refletent essentiellement la personnalite de chaque individu, et que les derogations a ces seuils ne sont que temporaires. L’immigration internationale offre un excellent moyen de mettre cette theorie a l’epreuve etant donne que les circonstances de vie ainsi que le bien‐etre subjectif varient considerablement d’un pays a l’autre. Avec ou sans ajustements relatifs a l’effet de selection, les niveaux et la distribution des taux de satisfaction face a la vie des immigrants originaires de 100 pays au Royaume‐Uni et au Canada sont davantage semblables a ceux de ces deux pays, voire a ceux des regions de destination a l’interieur meme de ces deux pays, qu’a ceux de leur pays d’origine. Cela montre que les evaluations subjectives de la vie sont en grande partie liees aux circonstances de la vie, et s’adaptent lorsque ces circonstances changent.

This chapter uses happiness data to assess the quality of government. Our happiness data are drawn from the Gallup World Poll, starting in 2005 and extending to 2017 or 2018. In our analysis of the panel of more than 150 countries and generally over 1,500 national-level observations, we show that government delivery quality is significantly correlated with national happiness, but democratic quality is not. We also analyze other quality of government indicators. Confidence in government is correlated with happiness, however forms of democracy and government spending seem not. We further discuss three channels (including peace and conflict, trust, and inequality) whereby quality of government and happiness are linked. We finally summarize what has been learned about how government policies could be formed to improve citizens’ happiness.

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.

The paper by Frijters, Clark, Krekel and Layard makes a strong historical case for treating happiness as a primary measure of human welfare. They argue that it is now time to revamp the science of policy-making to re-establish this central tradition, building on recent progress in measuring and understanding subjective wellbeing. I agree with them. There are three key questions raised in or by their presentation that need further evidence. I shall try to address these in turn. The questions relate to how to measure happiness, how to measure and deal with inequality and how to take due account of the social context of wellbeing, including the need to achieve consistency between individual and societal happiness.

This chapter summarizes the philosophical and empirical grounds for giving a primary role to the evaluations that people make of the quality of their lives. These evaluations permit comparisons among communities, regions, nations, and population subgroups; enable the estimation of the relative importance of various sources of happiness; and provide a well-being lens to aid the choice of public policies to support well-being. Available results expose the primacy of social determinants of happiness and especially the power of generosity and other positive social connections to improve the levels, distribution, and sustainability of well-being.

Measures of well-being have proliferated over the past decades. Very little guidance has been available about which measures to use in particular contexts. This chapter provides a series of recommendations, based on the present state of knowledge and the existing measures available, of which measures might be preferred in which contexts. The recommendations came out of an interdisciplinary workshop on the measurement of well-being and 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, multiuse cohort studies, or studies specifically about psychological well-being. The recommendations are not intended to be definitive but instead to stimulate discussion and refinement and provide guidance to those relatively new to the study of well-being.

Background Health interventions aimed at facilitating connectedness among seniors have recently gained traction, seeing as social connectedness is increasingly being recognized as an important determinant of health. However, research examining the association between connectedness and health across all age groups is limited, and few studies have focused on community belonging as a tangible aspect of social connectedness. Using a population-based Canadian cohort, this study aims to investigate (1) the associations between community belonging with self-rated general health and self-rated mental health, and (2) how these associations differ across life stages. Methods Data from six cycles of a national population health survey (Canadian Community Health Survey) from 2003 to 2014 were combined. Multinomial logistic regressions were run for both outcomes on the overall study sample, as well as within three age strata: (1) 18–39, (2) 40–59, and (3) ≥ 60 years old. Results Weaker community belonging exhibited an association with both poorer general and mental health, though a stronger association was observed with mental health. These associations were observed across all three age strata. In the fully adjusted model, among those reporting a very weak sense of community belonging, the odds of reporting the poorest versus best level of health were 3.21 (95% CI: 3.11, 3.31) times higher for general health, and 4.95 (95% CI: 4.75, 5.16) times higher for mental health, compared to those reporting a very strong sense of community belonging. The largest effects among those reporting very weak community belonging were observed among those aged between 40 and 59 years old. Conclusion This study contributed to the evidence base supporting life stage differences in the relationship between community belonging and self-perceived health. This is a starting point to identifying how age-graded differences in unmet social needs relate to population health interventions., Highlights • Community belonging is associated with self-rated health at all ages. • Community belonging is more strongly associated with mental versus general health. • Weak community belonging is most strongly associated with self-rated health in middle-age. • Social connectedness interventions should be aimed at all age groups.

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

This chapter uses happiness data to assess the quality of government. Our happiness data are drawn from the Gallup World Poll, starting in 2005 and extending to 2017 or 2018. In our analysis of the panel of more than 150 countries and generally over 1,500 national-level observations, we show that government delivery quality is significantly correlated with national happiness, but democratic quality is not. We also analyze other quality of government indicators. Confidence in government is correlated with happiness, however forms of democracy and government spending seem not. We further discuss three channels (including peace and conflict, trust, and inequality) whereby quality of government and happiness are linked. We finally summarize what has been learned about how government policies could be formed to improve citizens’ happiness.

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 link between happiness and overall inequality is best studied using an index that incorporates different aspects of inequality, and is measured consistently in different countries. One such index is the degree to which happiness itself varies among individuals. Its correlation with both happiness levels and social trust is substantially stronger than the corresponding correlation for income inequality. This remains so after allowing for bounded scale reporting, including a purely ordinal measure of dispersion. Moreover, the correlation is stronger for individuals who profess to care most about inequality. The link between happiness and inequality may thus be stronger than previously appreciated.

Subjective well-being research has often found that marriage is positively correlated with well-being. Some have argued that this correlation may be result of happier people being more likely to marry. Others have presented evidence suggesting that the well-being benefits of marriage are short-lasting. Using data from the British Household Panel Survey, we control individual pre-marital well-being levels and find that the married are still more satisfied, suggesting a causal effect at all stages of the marriage, from pre-nuptual bliss to marriages of long-duration. Using new data from the United Kingdom’s Annual Population Survey, we find that the married have a less deep U-shape in life satisfaction across age groups than do the unmarried, indicating that marriage may help ease the causes of the mid-life dip in life satisfaction and that the benefits of marriage are unlikely to be short-lived. We explore friendship as a mechanism which could help explain a causal relationship between marriage and life satisfaction, and find that well-being effects of marriage are about twice as large for those whose spouse is also their best friend.

Measures of subjective well-being, and especially life evaluations, or judgments about how happy people are with their lives as a whole, enrich and empower social indicators research. They do this by requiring other social indicators as explanatory variables and providing a coherent encompassing framework within which the relative importance of other social indicators can be established.

This paper summarizes the philosophical and empirical grounds for giving a primary role to the evaluations that people make of the quality of their lives. These evaluations permit comparisons among communities, regions, nations and population subgroups, enable the estimation of the relative importance of various sources of happiness, and provide a well-being lens to aid the choice of public policies to support well-being. Available results expose the primacy of social determinants of happiness, and especially the power of generosity and other positive social connections to improve the levels, distribution and sustainability of well-being.

Many people report disliking taxes despite the fact that tax funds are used to provide essential services for the taxpayer and fellow citizens. In light of past research demonstrating that people are more likely to engage in prosocial action when they recognize how their assistance positively impacts the recipient, we examine whether recognition of how one’s tax contributions help other citizens–perceived prosocial taxation–predicts more supportive views of taxation and greater engagement. We conducted three correlational studies using North American samples (N= 902, including a nationally representative sample of over 500 US residents) in which we find that perceived prosocial taxation is associated with greater enjoyment paying taxes, willingness to continue paying taxes, and larger financial contributions in a tax-like payment. Findings hold when controlling for several demographic variables, participants’ general prosocial orientation, and the perception that tax dollars are being put to good use. In addition, we examined data from six waves of the World Values Survey (N> 474,000 across 107 countries). We find that people expressing trust in their government and civil service–thereby indicating some confidence that their taxes will be used in prosocial ways–are significantly more likely to state that it is never justifiable to cheat on taxes. Together, these studies offer a new and optimistic perspective on taxation; people may hold more positive views and be more willing to contribute if they believe their contribution benefits others.

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.

In the version of this Perspective originally published, both authors were incorrectly indicated as being at both affiliations 1 and 2. However, John F. Helliwell is only affiliated with the 1University of British Columbia and Lara B. Aknin is only affiliated with 2Simon Fraser University. This has now been corrected.

This paper presents a new public-use dataset for community-level life satisfaction in Canada, based on more than 500,000 observations from the Canadian Community Health Surveys and the General Social Surveys. The country is divided into 1216 similarly sampled geographic regions, using natural, built, and administrative boundaries. A cross-validation exercise suggests that our choice of minimum sampling thresholds approximately maximizes the predictive power of our estimates. The resulting dataset reveals robust differences in life satisfaction between and across urban and rural communities. We compare aggregated life satisfaction data with a range of key census variables to illustrate some of the ways in which lives differ in the most and least happy communities.

Charities often circulate widespread donation appeals, but who is most likely to donate and how do appeals impact the well-being of individual donors and non-donors, as well as the entire group exposed to the campaign? Here, we investigate three factors that may influence donations (recent winnings, the presence of another person, and matched earnings) in addition to the changes in affect reported by individuals who donate in response to a charitable opportunity and those who do not. Critically, we also investigate the change in affect reported by the entire sample to measure the net impact of the donation opportunity. Results reveal that people winning more money donate a smaller percentage to charity, and the presence of another person does not influence giving. In addition, large donors experience hedonic boosts from giving, and the substantial fraction of large donors translates to a net positive influence on well-being for the entire sample.

This paper uses a variety of individual-level survey data from several countries to test for interactions between subjective well-being at different ages and variables measuring the nature and quality of the social context at work, at home, and in the community. While earlier studies have found important age patterns (often U-shaped) and social context effects, these two sets of variables have generally been treated as mutually independent. We test for and find several large and highly significant interactions. Results are presented for life evaluations and (in some surveys) for happiness yesterday, in models with and without other control variables. The U-shape in age is found to be significantly flatter, and well-being in the middle of the age range higher, for those who are in workplaces with partner-like superiors, for those living as couples, and for those who have lived for longer in their communities. A strong sense of community belonging is associated with greater life satisfaction at all ages, but especially so at ages 60 and above, in some samples deepening the U-shape in age by increasing the size of the life satisfaction gains following the mid-life low.

This paper uses a variety of individual-level survey data from several countries to test for interactions between subjective well-being at different ages and variables measuring the nature and quality of the social context at work, at home, and in the community. While earlier studies have found important age patterns (often U-shaped) and social context effects, these two sets of variables have generally been treated as mutually independent. We test for and find several large and highly significant interactions. Results are presented for life evaluations and (in some surveys) for happiness yesterday, in models with and without other control variables. The U-shape in age is found to be significantly flatter, and well-being in the middle of the age range higher, for those who are in workplaces with partner-like superiors, for those living as couples, and for those who have lived for longer in their communities. A strong sense of community belonging is associated with greater life satisfaction at all ages, but especially so at ages 60 and above, in some samples deepening the U-shape in age by increasing the size of the life satisfaction gains following the mid-life low.

This paper estimates the global prevalence of social trust and generosity among immigrants. We combine individual and national level data from immigrants and nativeborn respondents in more than 130 countries, using seven waves of the Gallup World Poll (2005–2012). We find that migrants tend to make social trust assessments that mainly reflect conditions in the country where they now live, but they also reveal a significant influence from their countries of origin. The latter effect is one-third as important as the effect of local conditions. We also find that the altruistic behavior of migrants, as measured by the frequency of their donations in their new countries, is strongly determined by social norms in their new countries, while also retaining some effect of the levels of generosity found in their birth countries. To show that the durability of social norms is not simply due to a failure to recognize new circumstances, we demonstrate that there are no footprint effects for immigrants’ confidence in political institutions. Taken together, these findings support the notion that social norms are deeply rooted in long-standing cultures, yet are nonetheless subject to adaptation when there are major changes in the surrounding circumstances and environment.

Valid and reliable self-report happiness scales have prompted a wellspring of research into the causes and consequences of human happiness, allowing researchers from across the social sciences to empirically address questions that were previously treated more theoretically in the social sciences, religion and philosophy. As this body of knowledge accumulates, we see a need for the study of happiness to be more social in both content and methodology. Specifically, we argue for a social science of happiness that further recognizes the importance of social connection and prosocial action for human well-being, and invests in greater collaboration across all disciplinary boundaries, especially among social scientists and policymakers. As a larger and stronger social science of happiness emerges, it both requires and is supported by a corresponding shift in policy from identifying and fixing problems to finding positive ways to promote well-being. The social science of happiness needs to recognize the importance of social connection and prosocial action for human well-being and become more interdisciplinary with greater collaboration, especially among social scientists and policymakers.

This paper surveys evidence documenting positive linkages among social capital, prosocial behaviour, and subjective well-being. Whether in the workplace, at home, in the community, or among nations, better and deeper social connections, and especially higher levels of trust are linked to higher subjective well-being, even beyond the effects flowing through higher incomes and better health. Prosocial behaviour is also shown to be a robust predictor of well-being in both correlational and experimental contexts. These two lines of research are connected, as prosocial acts are most likely to increase well-being when they are delivered in ways that improve social capital, and reflect intentional generosity free of either compulsion or personal gain. We infer that these deep links between prosocial acts and well-being have an evolutionary benefit in maintaining the quality of social capital and thereby delivering cooperative human responses in times of crisis.

The paper first attempts to demonstrate the fundamental importance of the social context. The related evidence is drawn from recent theoretical and empirical advances in the study of subjective well-being. Treating people's self-assessments of the quality of their lives as valid measures of well-being exposes the importance of the social context and suggests new ways to design better policies.The paper starts with demonstrations of the unexpectedly great well-being consequences of social and pro-social behavior. In addition, evidence is advanced to show an evolutionary fitness for social and pro-social behaviors above and beyond those flowing through their direct consequences for subjective well-being. This is followed by discussion of specific measures of the social context, of the fundamental importance of trust as social glue, and of several experiments designed to improve subjective well-being.

I. INTRODUCTION A growing literature uses data on subjective well-being (SWB) to study macroeconomic determinants of life quality and relate them to policy discussions. Di Telia, MacCulloch, and Oswald (2001) use self-reported life satisfaction from the Euro-barometer surveys to estimate the unemployment-inflation tradeoff. Wolfers (2003) uses the same source of data to evaluate the cost of business cycle volatility. Di Telia, MacCulloch, and Oswald (2003) focus on European style welfare state policies. There is also an active literature on the social-norm effects of unemployment (Chadi 2014; Clark 2003; Clark, Knabe, and Ratzel 2010; Powdthavee 2007; Shields and Price 2005; Shields, Price, and Wooden 2009). In this study, we focus on the indirect or spillover effects of unemployment on the SWB of U.S. residents, especially those who are still employed. Using two recent large surveys, we estimate the well-being costs of unemployment separately for different segments of the population, and decompose the total cost into monetary and nonmonetary costs of job losses, and the population-wide indirect effects. The indirect effects in the aggregate are found to be much larger than the direct effects. This suggests that more precise estimation and understanding of the indirect effects of unemployment are essential for any cost-benefit analysis of policies designed to mitigate the economic and social effects of unemployment. The two recent surveys we use are the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index from 2008 to 2011 and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) from 2005, or in cases from the early 1990s to 2010. Both are large daily surveys, giving us a combined sample of more than 3 million U.S. respondents since 2005. The surveys include measures of SWB that cover both life evaluations and emotional reports. The surveys' fine-grained geographic identifiers allow us to relate variations in well-being to local labor-market conditions. These two surveys will add question variety and much sample size and richness to a literature in which U.S. studies were based mostly on the happiness question in the General Social Survey (GSS). In addition to bringing in new survey data and finer-grain unemployment statistics, we experiment with a variety of identification strategies in order to provide more conclusive evidence and a better understanding on the spillover effects of unemployment. In the literature, Di Telia, MacCulloch, and Oswald (2001) and Wolfers (2003) find significantly population-wide negative effects using European and U.S. survey data. Clark (2003) and Mavridis (2010), focusing on the labor force, uncover no statistically significant effects from the British Household Panel Study surveys. In this study, we examine both the sample of employed workers and the wider population. More importantly, our analysis adopts a wide range of model specifications to make use of different sources of variations including those in official unemployment statistics, external industrial trends, unemployment by occupation, and workplace downsizing. These experiments not only help check robustness, but also shed light on the structure and dynamics of the spillover effects of unemployment. In particular, we find evidence that the anticipation of future increases in local unemployment has a negative impact on the population's well-being, and that job security is an important channel underneath the indirect effects. The structure of the study is as follows. Section II reviews the literature. Section III describes the data and the estimation method. Section IV presents empirical findings. Section V concludes. II. LITERATURE REVIEW The literature on the macroeconomics of well-being can be traced back to the seminal paper by Easterlin (1974) showing that the rise of income in the United States since 1946 was not accompanied by an increase in its population's happiness. …

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.

This paper attempts to show how the quality of the social fabric of a com- munity or nation affects its capacity to deal with crises and to develop human and natural resources in ways that maintain and sustainably improve subjective well-being. Three types of crisis will be used as examples. These include economic crises; transition and other institutional crises; and conflicts over sustainable resource use. The bulk of the new results in this paper relate to economic crises and institutional transitions, and shows that communities and nations with better social capital and trust respond to crises and transi- tions more happily and effectively.

This paper exploits the richness and large sample size of the Gallup/Healthways US daily poll to illustrate significant differences in the dynamics of two key measures of subjective well-being: emotions and life evaluations. We find that there is no day-of-week effect for life evaluations, represented here by the Cantril Ladder, but significantly more happiness, enjoyment, and laughter, and significantly less worry, sadness, and anger on weekends (including public holidays) than on weekdays. We then find strong evidence of the importance of the social context, both at work and at home, in explaining the size and likely determinants of the weekend effects for emotions. Weekend effects are twice as large for full-time paid workers as for the rest of the population, and are much smaller for those whose work supervisor is considered a partner rather than a boss and who report trustable and open work environments. A large portion of the weekend effects is explained by differences in the amount of time spent with friends or family between weekends and weekdays (7.1 vs. 5.4 hours). The extra daily social time of 1.7 hours in weekends raises average happiness by about 2%.

Strong versions of the set point hypothesis argue that subjective well-being measures reflect each individual’s own personality and that deviations from that set point will tend to be short-lived, rendering them poor measures of the quality of life. International migration provides an excellent test of this hypothesis, since life circumstances and average subjective well-being differ greatly among countries. Life satisfaction scores for immigrants to Canada from up to 100 source countries are compared to those in the countries where they were born. With or without various adjustments for selection effects, the average levels and distributions of life satisfaction scores among immigrants mimic those of other Canadians rather than those in their source countries and regions. This supports other evidence that subjective life evaluations, especially when averaged across individuals, are primarily driven by life circumstances, and respond correspondingly when those circumstances change.

This chapter combines theory with data from different domains to provide an empirical analysis of the scale and variability of social capital as wealth. This is used to argue, given the existing literature on social capital, that the welfare returns to investing in trust could be substantial. Social trust data from 132 nations covered by the Gallup World Poll are used to present a range of estimates of social trust’s wealth-equivalent values. These estimates are very large, with a structure and distribution quite different from those for physical capital. They reflect values above and beyond what social trust contributes to supporting incomes and health. Although social trust is an important component of total wealth in all regions and country groupings, there are nonetheless big variations within and among regions, ranging from as low as 12 per cent of total wealth in Latin America to 28 per cent in the OECD.

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.