Suchergebnisse

Self-reported life satisfaction is increasingly measured in government and private surveys around the world. In Canada, life satisfaction questions have not been asked in a consistent manner over time, but the accumulated set of data since 1985, along with recent surveys with repeated structure, now facilitates an analysis of regional changes. Those two and a half decades reveal a significant increase in life satisfaction in the province of Quebec as compared with the rest of Canada. The scale of this increase in well-being is comparable to the imputed effect of more than a trebling of mean household income.

Subjective measures of overall quality of life are built in to numerous surveys in Canada and around the world, and are increasingly analyzed and used as indicators of human well-being and social progress. Yet, even in Canada, federal surveys exclude Aboriginal peoples on-reserve and, in general, there are very few data sources on life satisfaction among Aboriginal respondents. We report on two exceptional surveys that do solicit life satisfaction assessments from Aboriginal respondents, and compare inferences from these data to the general Canadian population. We generally find comparable effects of objective life circumstances for the two groups, and use these to explain some of the advantages and disadvantages affecting life satisfaction in each sample. On the other hand, we find an unusual coefficient on the survey income measure for on-reserve Aboriginal respondents, likely indicating that total income is not appropriately measured by the standard income question. We propose that policy interest in life satisfaction measures for gauging effective avenues for improving lives is appropriate in the case of Aboriginal groups in Canada, just as for other populations in Canada and around the world.

Abstract Increasing attention is being paid in academic, policy, and public arenas to subjective measures of well‐being. This promising trend represents a shift towards measuring positive outcomes in psychology and greater realism in the study of economic behaviour. We describe the main measures of subjective well‐being (SWB) and provide examples of policy‐relevant research findings, including new accountings of the differences in individual‐level SWB assessments around the world and across Canada. These suggest a consistent pattern of life circumstances linked to SWB and highlight the importance of social factors whose role has otherwise been hard to quantify in income‐equivalent terms.

Towards Sustainable Well-Being examines existing efforts and emerging possibilities to improve upon gross domestic product as the dominant indicator of economic and social performance. Contributions from leading international and Canadian researchers in the field of beyond-GDP measurement offer a rich range of perspectives on alternative ways to measure well-being and sustainability, along with lessons from around the world on how to bring those metrics into the policy process. Key topics include the policy and political impacts of major beyond-GDP measurement initiatives; the most promising possibilities and policy applications for beyond-GDP measurement; key barriers to introducing beyond-GDP metrics; and complementary measures to ensure new measurements are not merely calculated but taken into account in policymaking. The book highlights a distinction between a reformist beyond-GDP vision, which seeks to improve policymaking and quality of life within existing political and economic institutions, and a transformative vision aiming for more fundamental change including a move beyond economic growth. Illustrating the many advances that have occurred in Canada and internationally, Towards Sustainable Well-Being proposes next steps for both the reformist and transformative visions, as well as possible common ground between them in the pursuit of sustainable well-being