Chapter 10 Work, the Economy, and Well-Being: Policy Examples

Well-being has important influences on work life and the economy, which in turn have a large influence on people’s well-being. In this chapter several policy issues on which well-being findings shed light are presented. For example, the debilitating effects of unemployment on well-being are reviewed, and this is important as many economic models assume that people elect unemployment as the best way of maximizing their well-being given their current situation. The fact that unemployment has such a substantial impact on well-being indicates that minimizing it should be a policy imperative, although other considerations such as economic growth will also help shape policies in this area. Other issues that are discussed are the influence of worker satisfaction on job performance, the influence of risk sharing such as insurance on the ill-being resulting from natural disasters, and how graduated income taxes can affect the mean levels of well-being in societies.