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Research points to a robust negative relationship between average levels of subjective wellbeing and the distribution of subjective wellbeing. The fact that our wellbeing falls as wellbeing distributions widen suggests we care about inequalities in the lives of others. Central to this relationship is the role of place and human geography. The literature relating wellbeing to inequality in wellbeing is confined almost exclusively to inter-country comparisons. Virtually no attention has been paid to the relationship between wellbeing and inequality within countries - at the level of regions and below. The aim of this thesis is to test the generality of the inter-country evidence in the sub-national context. I present four hypotheses which I test on three separate cross-sectional surveys: the New Zealand Quality of Life Survey, The New Zealand General Social Survey and the survey of Māori wellbeing, Te Kupenga. I follow the literature in using the standard deviation of wellbeing as a measure of wellbeing inequality. In each case the negative relationship between individual wellbeing and wellbeing inequality is clearly identifiable. The wellbeing effect of living in a place one standard deviation higher than another is roughly equivalent to the difference between the wellbeing of someone who is fully employed and someone who is unemployed and looking for work. Clearly we are highly sensitive to disparities in the subjective wellbeing of those around us. I conduct several tests of the psychological drivers that lie behind the wellbeing response to local inequality in wellbeing. The first tests fairness perceptions, and finds sensitivity to wellbeing inequality to be higher among those who do not believe society is intrinsically fair. My test of altruism, while not as convincing empirically, suggests altruistic people may also be less affected by local wellbeing inequality. Both conclusions are consistent with the implied causation running from inequality to wellbeing. While an important addition to the wellbeing literature, the more important implication of my findings is political. As the New Zealand Local Government Act comes up for renewal, the evidence I have assembled strongly supports providing local government with a clear purpose and the necessary funding to address the underlying causes of local inequalities in wellbeing. On empirical grounds alone, reducing wellbeing inequality is likely to make us all much happier.

There is a general presumption that epistemology does not have anything to do with wellbeing. In this paper I challenge these assumption, by examining the aftermath of the Gettier examples, the debate between internalism and externalism and the rise of virtue epistemology. In focusing on the epistemic agent as the locus of normativity, virtue epistemology allows one to ask questions about epistemic goods and their relationship to other kinds of good, including the good of the agent. Specifically it is argued that emotion has a positive role to play in epistemology, an example from Aquinas is used to illustrate this and to illustrate the different kinds of good involved in cognition.

Images, by their nature can captivate and involve us in a way that is very fast. Usually, this takes much longer through conversation or in writing. As humanity finds itself on the threshold of a new global reality we are only glimpsing what will become an utterly different ecological, economic and political system in the near future. The ramifications of navigating and surviving this new post climate change environment on earth is only beginning to take tangible shape. The effects in terms of anxiety, and stress across huge swaths of humanity are however already manifesting. How photography can help address this dynamic and engage it is what we will be exploring in this presentation.

One of the strengths of a capability account of wellbeing is that it allows us to theoretically and empirically analyze at a quite practical level why certain things matter to people - such as their housing, their jobs, and their friendships. A capability account of wellbeing is also very well suited to understand the importance of place for wellbeing. Some dimensions of wellbeing are constitutively place-related, such as "feeling at home". Other dimensions of wellbeing are affected by what the places and locations in which we live mean to us. Taken together, we call them "place-based capabilities". Using a capability account of wellbeing allows us to use social scientific research to investigate the role of social, economic, demographic, political, ecological and technological processes on wellbeing. This paper illustrates this by investigating the role of recent technologies in enabling and expanding capabilities. On the one hand, technological change has dramatically expanded those capabilities. On the other hand, the use of those technologies has unintended consequences for other capabilities. The conceptual as well as empirical relationships between (place-based) capabilities and technology is therefore a complex one.

Cover -- Half Title -- Series -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Preface -- 1 Introduction: defining wellbeing, psychology, and the self -- 2 Questions of trust: the truth about wellbeing -- 3 Storytelling and sense-making: 50 shades of wellbeing -- 4 Stress and coping: on being well in yourself -- 5 Self-help and wellbeing: ifs, nots, myths, and knots -- 6 Happiness, meaning, and the good life: the structure of wellbeing -- 7 Some concluding thoughts . . .: stories, questions, and reflections on being well and getting better -- Further reading -- Notes.

If children are struggling socially and emotionally they cannot take full advantage of educational opportunities, so it is vitally important for all schools to have a mental health and wellbeing strategy

The article proves that it is possible to achieve wellbeing if there is an improvement of both the pension system and change in the citizen's attitude towards retirement income. The calculations (dynamics of the percentage of the working retirees, both in Russia and TPU, and the average salary) show that the increase in the ratio of the number of retirees and working people can't lead to the deficit of the budget of the Russian Pension Fund. It is proved that the key way to overcome the deficit is to remove payments, which are not or little connected with earned income (disability and loss of a breadwinner pension, long service pension, and early retirement pension) and save only one function – compensation for loss of earnings. Refusal of the territorial rent (pension's peg to the minimum of subsistence of a retiree in the region) will also balance the financial state of the Pension Fund. It is mathematically proved that the wellbeing of retirees can be reached if they participate in the compulsory and voluntary pension insurance programs, which are not necessary governmental.

The "allostatic load" on children caused by chronic stress is a major health problem that needs addressing