Well-being for Public Policy

Well-being for Public Policy
Author: Ed Diener
Publisher: Oxford Positive Psychology
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2009
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0195334078

The authors explain why subjective indicators of well-being are needed, showing how these can offer useful input and giving examples of policy uses of well-being measures. They also describe the validity of the subjective well-being measures as well as potential problems, then delve into objections to their use for policy purposes.

The Oxford Handbook of Well-Being and Public Policy

The Oxford Handbook of Well-Being and Public Policy
Author: Matthew D. Adler
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 985
Release: 2016-04-21
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0199325839

What are the methodologies for assessing and improving governmental policy in light of well-being? The Oxford Handbook of Well-Being and Public Policy provides a comprehensive, interdisciplinary treatment of this topic. The contributors draw from welfare economics, moral philosophy, and psychology and are leading scholars in these fields. The Handbook includes thirty chapters divided into four Parts. Part I covers the full range of methodologies for evaluating governmental policy and assessing societal condition-including both the leading approaches in current use by policymakers and academics (such as GDP, cost-benefit analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis, inequality and poverty metrics, and the concept of the "social welfare function"), and emerging techniques. Part II focuses on the nature of well-being. What, most fundamentally, determines whether an individual life is better or worse for the person living it? Her happiness? Her preference-satisfaction? Her attainment of various "objective goods"? Part III addresses the measurement of well-being and the thorny topic of interpersonal comparisons. How can we construct a meaningful scale of individual welfare, which allows for comparisons of well-being levels and differences, both within one individual's life, and across lives? Finally, Part IV reviews the major challenges to designing governmental policy around individual well-being.

The Politics and Policy of Wellbeing

The Politics and Policy of Wellbeing
Author: Ian Bache
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 197
Release: 2016-08-26
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1783479337

Government interest in wellbeing as an explicit goal of public policy has increased significantly in recent years, leading to new developments in measuring wellbeing and initiatives aimed specifically at enhancing wellbeing. This book provides the first theoretically informed account of the rise and significance of this agenda, drawing on the multiple streams approach, to consider whether wellbeing can be described as ‘an idea whose time has come’. It reflects on developments across the globe and provides a detailed comparative analysis of two political arenas: the UK and the EU.

The Politics of Wellbeing

The Politics of Wellbeing
Author: Ian Bache
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2018-07-04
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3319583948

This volume is the first collection in the field of wellbeing studies that places politics centre stage. Through a combination of intellectual inquiry, empirically-grounded research, and investigation across different settings, this book aims to provide fresh insights and develop new lenses through which to understand the rise and significance of the wellbeing agenda. Divided into three parts, it considers how to define wellbeing for public policy; the prospects for wellbeing as a force for political change; and the link between policy agendas and the everyday lives of people. The book explores the key political issues of power, democracy, and the legitimacy of wellbeing evidence in a range of settings – international, national and subnational/substate. The volume will appeal to wellbeing and politics scholars, as well as students and general readers with an interest in these new political agendas.

Welfare and Well-being

Welfare and Well-being
Author: Bill Jordan
Publisher: Policy Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2008-09-10
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9781847420800

In this original book Bill Jordan presents a new analysis of well-being in terms of its social value, and outlines ways in which this could be incorporated into public policy decisions.

Subjective Well-Being

Subjective Well-Being
Author: Panel on Measuring Subjective Well-Being in a Policy-Relevant Framework
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 148
Release: 2014-01-01
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 0309294479

Subjective well-being refers to how people experience and evaluate their lives and specific domains and activities in their lives. This information has already proven valuable to researchers, who have produced insights about the emotional states and experiences of people belonging to different groups, engaged in different activities, at different points in the life course, and involved in different family and community structures. Research has also revealed relationships between people's self-reported, subjectively assessed states and their behavior and decisions. Research on subjective well-being has been ongoing for decades, providing new information about the human condition. During the past decade, interest in the topic among policy makers, national statistical offices, academic researchers, the media, and the public has increased markedly because of its potential for shedding light on the economic, social, and health conditions of populations and for informing policy decisions across these domains. Subjective Well-Being: Measuring Happiness, Suffering, and Other Dimensions of Experience explores the use of this measure in population surveys. This report reviews the current state of research and evaluates methods for the measurement. In this report, a range of potential experienced well-being data applications are cited, from cost-benefit studies of health care delivery to commuting and transportation planning, environmental valuation, and outdoor recreation resource monitoring, and even to assessment of end-of-life treatment options. Subjective Well-Being finds that, whether used to assess the consequence of people's situations and policies that might affect them or to explore determinants of outcomes, contextual and covariate data are needed alongside the subjective well-being measures. This report offers guidance about adopting subjective well-being measures in official government surveys to inform social and economic policies and considers whether research has advanced to a point which warrants the federal government collecting data that allow aspects of the population's subjective well-being to be tracked and associated with changing conditions.

Handbook of Research on Stress and Well-Being in the Public Sector

Handbook of Research on Stress and Well-Being in the Public Sector
Author: Ronald J. Burke
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2020-03-28
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1788970357

This timely Handbook addresses the concepts of stress and well-being among workers in various public sector roles and occupations across the globe. Emphasizing the importance of well-being and stress prevention initiatives in ever-changing workplace environments, this Handbook highlights successful organizational initiatives and provides insight into best practice for promoting healthy employees and workplaces. Containing contributions from leading international experts in their respective fields, the contributors hope that this multi-disciplinary Handbook will help to enhance the health and well-being of public sector employees.

OECD Guidelines on Measuring Subjective Well-being

OECD Guidelines on Measuring Subjective Well-being
Author: OECD
Publisher: OECD Publishing
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2013-03-20
Genre:
ISBN: 9264191658

These Guidelines represent the first attempt to provide international recommendations on collecting, publishing, and analysing subjective well-being data.

Handbook of Social Indicators and Quality of Life Research

Handbook of Social Indicators and Quality of Life Research
Author: Kenneth C. Land
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 594
Release: 2011-11-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9400724217

The aim of the Handbook of Social Indicators and Quality of Life Research is to create an overview of the field of Quality of Life (QOL) studies in the early years of the 21st century that can be updated and improved upon as the field evolves and the century unfolds. Social indicators are statistical time series “...used to monitor the social system, helping to identify changes and to guide intervention to alter the course of social change”. Examples include unemployment rates, crime rates, estimates of life expectancy, health status indices, school enrollment rates, average achievement scores, election voting rates, and measures of subjective well-being such as satisfaction with life-as-a-whole and with specific domains or aspects of life. This book provides a review of the historical development of the field including the history of QOL in medicine and mental health as well as the research related to quality-of-work-life (QWL) programs. It discusses several of QOL main concepts: happiness, positive psychology, and subjective wellbeing. Relations between spirituality and religiousness and QOL are examined as are the effects of educational attainment on QOL and marketing, and the associations with economic growth. The book goes on to investigate methodological approaches and issues that should be considered in measuring and analysing quality of life from a quantitative perspective. The final chapters are dedicated to research on elements of QOL in a broad range of countries and populations.

Behavioural Public Policy

Behavioural Public Policy
Author: Adam Oliver
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2013-10-24
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1107042631

In this accessible collection, leading academic economists, psychologists and philosophers apply behavioural economic findings to practical policy concerns.