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In recent years, there has been a significant expansion in India's development policy discourse accompanied by rights-based approach, grassroots transformation and socio-economic change. Consequently, impact evaluation has become central to development interventions. However, the evaluation of subjective measures within development policy discourse remains under-studied. The purpose of this article is to examine the impact of development policies on subjective economic wellbeing (SEWB) in India. Utilising household data from India human development survey and applying ordered probit regression, we test medium-term impact of development policies on SEWB. The findings show that while development policy does have significant impact in driving SEWB, interaction among development policies also curates interesting perspectives. Moreover, evidence suggests that relative social and economic considerations are significant in driving SEWB. The article attempts to combine insights from the development discourse and an empirical approach to go beyond a critique and draw emphasis on SEWB in an emerging economy context. JEL Codes: O11, O53, R28

A PDF version of this book is available for free in open access via www.tandfebooks.com as well as the OAPEN Library platform, www.oapen.org. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license and is part of the OAPEN-UK research project. There is growing evidence that rising levels of prosperity in Western economies since 1945 have not been matched by greater incidences of reported well-being and happiness. Indeed, material affluence is often accompanied instead by greater social and individual distress. A growing literature within the humanities and social sciences is increasingly concerned to chart not only the underlying trends in recorded levels of happiness, but to consider what factors, if any, contribute to positive and sustainable experiences of well-being and quality of life. Increasingly, such research is focusing on the importance of values and beliefs in human satisfaction or quality of life; but the specific contribution of religion to these trends is relatively under-examined. This unique collection of essays seeks to rectify that omission, by identifying the nature and role of the religious contribution to wellbeing. A unique collection of nineteen leading scholars from the field of economics, psychology, public theology and social policy have been brought together in this volume to explore the religious contribution to the debate about happiness and well-being. These essays explore the religious dimensions to a number of key features of well-being, including marriage, crime and rehabilitation, work, inequality, mental health, environment, participation, institutional theory, business and trade. They engage particularly closely with current trends in economics in identifying alternative models of economic growth which focus on its qualitative as well as quantitative dimensions. This unique volume brings to public notice the nature and role of religion's contribution to wellbeing, including new ways of measurement and evaluation. As such, it represents a valuable and unprecedented resource for the development of a broad-based religious contribution to the field. It will be of particular relevance for those who are concerned about the continuing debate about personal and societal well-being, as well as those who are interested in the continuing significance of religion for the future of public policy.

This study develops multi-item scales of the financial wellbeing of customers of a major Australian bank using self-reported survey data that are matched with the customers' financial records. Using Item Response Theory (IRT) models, the study develops: First a Reported Financial Wellbeing Scale that is formed from responses to 10 questions about people's experiences and perceptions of financial outcomes, and second an Observed Financial Wellbeing Scale that is formed from five financial-record measures of customers' account balances, net spending, and payment problems. The IRT models show that each scale reliably differentiates between a wide range of outcomes and that the components within each scale have similar power to discriminate. We validate the scales by estimating Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator machine-learning models of how they correlate with other measurable characteristics. Savings habits, spending habits, credit card behavior, household income, education, difficulties with housing payments, and the use of and access to social or government support are each associated with both types of financial wellbeing.

This report is the final outcome of FAMILYPLATFORM and the result of the encounter between more than 170 experts and stakeholders from all over Europe and beyond, creating a lively think tank on family issues. It summarises important policy questions, research gaps and research issues that were highlighted during the 18 months of working together closely within FAMILYPLATFORM. A series of societal challenges for families, family‐related policy and research have been identified through the work of FAMILYPLATFORM. Based on these crucial societal challenges, seven important research areas are outlined in this report: 1. Family Policy, 2. Care, 3. Life Course and Transitions, 4. Doing Family, 5. Migration and Mobility, 6. Inequalities and Insecurities, 7. Media and New Information Technologies. In each research area vital research questions are identified, combined with general remarks on methodological issues and approaches. Altogether, these challenges, research areas and methodological issues are building a research roadmap for the European Union for the years ahead. The realisation of this research roadmap could help policy makers to meet future societal challenges and to improve the wellbeing of families.

"In a world where the safety of women remains a pressing issue, the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and emerging technologies is a motivating force. Despite strides toward gender equality, women continue to face threats, harassment, and violence, necessitating innovative solutions. Traditional approaches fall short of providing comprehensive protection, prompting the exploration of innovative technologies to address these challenges effectively.Wearable Devices, Surveillance Systems, and AI for Women's Wellbeing emerges as a timely and indispensable solution to the persistent safety issues faced by women globally. This persuasive book not only articulates the problems women encounter but also presents groundbreaking solutions that harness the transformative potential of AI. It delves into the intricate ways AI applications, from mobile safety apps to predictive analytics, can be strategically employed to create a safer and more inclusive society for women."--

This article sets out to examine how the use of social spaces, namely hawker centres, has contributed to community wellbeing during the Covid-19 pandemic. Using an extensive thematic analysis of online conversations, we have identified that the use of social spaces can have a positive influence on individual, relational and social wellbeing. Access to social spaces during stressful events contributes to the feeling of normalcy, supports routines and structured activities, encourages responsible behaviours, facilitates social connectedness, and helps maintain community resilience. We present a new framework for urban social space characterisation containing three dimensions: coaction, copresence, and colocation (the three Cs). Here, coaction is associated with better visibility of community practices, copresence enhances the sense of connectedness, and colocation is concerned with the use of spatial design factors for influencing movement and interactions. The framework is central to our understanding of social space and its impact on wellbeing. Underpinning the three Cs is the notion of the integration of policy, community wellbeing, and various urban agendas. The findings were considered in terms of their relevance for social space development in Singapore.

This article investigates the economic and cultural foundations of wellbeing in the Berlin Republic and assesses the role of objective and subjective wellbeing in social and political life. It finds that although Germany enjoys the economic prerequisites for generally high levels of individual and social wellbeing, certain individuals and groups of Germans struggle to realise their life potential, either because of material constraints or because of subjective constraints relating to social tensions and cultural perceptions. These constraints include a deep-seated 'materialist-pessimist' cultural outlook; ongoing tensions relating to the unification of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) with the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1990; and a new public discourse of austerity arising out of government responses to an overloaded welfare system and the European financial crisis.

Mental health is increasingly defined not only by the absence of illness but by the presence of subjective well-being (SWB). Previous cohort studies have consistently shown that indicators of SWB predict favorable life outcomes, including better mental and somatic health, and longevity. The favorable effects associated with SWB have prompted new research aimed at raising happiness and wellbeing through individual interventions and public health initiatives. Standard observational studies of individual-level associations, however, are subject to potential confounding of exposure and outcome by shared genes and environment. The present study explored the association between SWB and increased longevity, using twin pair analyses to determine whether the association is consistent with causality or is due to genetic or environmental confounding. The study sample of 3,966 twins aged 70 or older, followed for a median time period of 9 years, was drawn from the population-based Longitudinal Study of Aging Danish Twins (LSADT). The association between SWB, operationalized as affect and life satisfaction, and all-cause mortality risk was examined using between-individual and within-pair survival analyses. As expected, at the individual level, SWB predicted increased longevity. Exposure effects were also present in unadjusted and adjusted within-pair analyses of 400 dizygotic (DZ) pairs and 274 monozygotic (MZ) pairs, indicating that SWB is associated with increased longevity independent of familial factors of genes and shared environment.

We attempt to specify ideals and principles of common wellbeing: saving economy, political attendance, full employment, education, equitable distribution. As a part of the study we have formulated the concept of so-called "other" society under the social-humanistic paradigm. As it was mentioned earlier, social systems can be described as open-end ones, which implies their constant interaction with environment expressed via matter, energy, and information exchange. Because of that, the functional and developmental regulations are characterized by the presence of constant alteration as well, which stipulates the high complexity of structuring valid prognoses. Subject vs. object feedback determines special peculiarities of social prognosis, namely, the ones that are capable of either self-fulfillment of self-destruction of prognostic model. In other words, the predicted future influences the actual future. In the conditions of the increasing instability and dynamics of social processes especially urgent is the problem of adequacy of innovative model. The specific feature of modern innovative processes is the fact that any information about the features of their occurrence is extremely fast becoming obsolete that, in turn, leads to the increase the gap between reality and model.

The question of what makes people happy still needs to be figured out. We used the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) to collect data from the participants. Our participants are Bangkok citizens and are required to use the LINE application, the most famous chatting application in Thailand, for connecting to our chatbot named AI-oon, developed for sending questionnaires to our participants. AI-oon would send surveys consisting of 2 questions: (1) What are you doing at that moment?, and (2) How will you rate your emotion?. We eventually analysed the data from 79 participants that contributed for 7 consecutive days. Then, we discovered that eating tends to be the activity that shows the highest level of happiness. On the contrary, doing housework and working/studying revealed the lowest level of happiness. Interestingly, we found out that Baby boomers and Generation X are significantly happier than Generation Y and Generation Z. We expect this research could provide some useful information for further studies in order to find the cause of the happiness level in each generation. Hopefully, it could be beneficial for governments and organizations to find appropriate measures and solutions to tackle their peoples stress and enhance their happiness levels.

Openness to experiences is a global personality trait that is used to describe human personality in a Five Factor Model. People who score highly in openness to experiences are considered to be unconventional in their outlook and behavior, have a wider range of interests and tend to have more liberal political views. On the other hand, within the science of psychology, the interest in studying subjective well-being, happiness, quality of life and related phenomena has been gaining more attention in recent years. This research investigates the relationship between the personality factors of openness to experience and subjective well-being. More concretely, the research investigates the relationship between the six sub-factors of the openness to experience (fantasy, aesthetics, emotions, action, ideas and values) along with subjective well-being. The sample consisted of 209 first year university students from six faculties within the Sts. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje. The following instruments were used for this research: NEO-PI-R (The Revised NEO Personality Inventory) and the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire. The results have shown that subjective well-being is positively related only with an openness to emotions. Also, the results have shown that subjective well-being is related to an openness to values, but this correlation is negative. That means that as openness to emotions increases happiness will also increase, and by contrast, as openness to values increases happiness will decrease.

Satisfaction with life correlates with other measures of subjective wellbeing and correlates predictably with individual characteristics and overall health. Social indicators and subjective wellbeing measures are necessary to evaluate a society and can be used to produce national indicators of happiness. This study therefore aims to help close the gap in wellbeing data for Thailand. The specific aims are to: (1) calculate the Thai PWI and domain scores using a large scale sample; (2) examine the level of life satisfaction of Thais when compared to international standards; (3) examine the Thai PWI and domains in relation to demographic, socioeconomic, and geographic characteristics. Our report derives from the findings on the Personal Wellbeing Index (PWI) in a large national cohort of Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University adult students living all over Thailand (n = 87,134). This Thai cohort had an overall PWI of 70.0 on a scale from 0 to 100 which is consistent with Western populations. The 'spirituality and religion' domain had the highest average score. 'Standard of living', 'future security' and 'achievement in life' made the largest contribution to overall 'satisfaction in life as a whole'. These domains also show a positive trend with increasing age, being married, higher income, more education, more household assets, and rural residence. The PWI will be an important tool for policymakers to understand the subjective wellbeing of population groups especially as Thailand is undergoing a political and economic transition.