Well-being for Public Policy

Book excerpt: In this volume, the authors explain the reasons why subjective indicators of well-being are needed. They describe how these indicators can offer useful input and provide examples of policy uses of well-being measures. They describe the validity of the subjective well-being measures as well as potential problems. The authors then delve into objections to the use of subjective well-being indicators for policy purposes and discuss why these objections are not warranted. Finally, they describe the measures that are currently in use and the types of measures that are most likely to be valuable in the policy domain. The volume will be of interest to researchers in psychology and economics.