Where is Happy City?

This blog, written by Happy City's Sam Wren-Lewis, explains the Happy City Index and how it will help better measure and understand individual's wellbeing. The post is a part of Wikiprogress' current online discussion on "Engaging citizens in well-being and progress statistics". Feel free to join and leave a comment!

We all want to be happy – we care about how well our lives are going for us. For this reason, the evaluation of our wellbeing has the power to engage and enthuse us. The measurement of wellbeing need not merely be the collection of data, but can inspire people to focus on what really matters to them.

Happy City is a social enterprise that aims for happiness to be taken seriously by individuals, communities and local policy makers. We design and deliver a range of training, projects and communications to help make this shift – drawing attention to, and connecting up, the things in a city that enable individuals and communities to flourish.

At the heart of this change is a new measure of prosperity in cities, namely the Happy City Index, which we are currently co-creating with NEF and other local and national partners. There have recently been many “beyond GDP” initiatives, introducing new measures of prosperity on national and international levels. However, nothing has been developed which fits what is required for individuals and their neighbourhoods, communities, towns, or cities across the UK and beyond. The Happy City Index aims to bridge this divide. It is an accessible, practical, meaningful and helpful tool for individual citizens, community organisations and policymakers to assess and influence wellbeing.

We have gathered together an exceptional partnership of world leaders in the field of wellbeing measurement. The Index will combine pre-existing big data on the drivers of wellbeing (such as the economy, health, education) with primary data about how individuals and communities across the city are doing in terms of their sense of belonging, purpose, engagement, and other aspects of their wellbeing.

The important point for this discussion is that the Happy City Index aims not merely to change WHAT we measure, but WHY and HOW. It aims to engage and enthuse individuals and policymakers in the process of understanding and improving their happiness.

For individual users, the process will be educational, engaging and productive. For example, as I answer the simple survey questions online, I start to understand more about what influences my happiness. As I see my results in fun, visual and easy to understand ways, I start to see which aspects of my life could give the greatest boost to my wellbeing. In addition, when those results link up with the ‘Community Happiness Bank’ – a city-wide database of local groups, events and activities, I can discover the things within streets of my house that could enable me to improve my wellbeing. Users can revisit the website and app over time to monitor their progress, compare how they are doing with others, and find continual inspiration for ways in which they can improve their lives.

We have received a great deal of interest from individuals, community organisations and policymakers, who all believe that this process can enable people to better assess and take control of how well their lives are going.

The community engagement phase of the project will consist in a variety of on- and off-line tools, activities and events. On-line, users can assess and improve their wellbeing over time in the ways discussed above. This, in addition to a city-wide representative sample survey, can enable people to take ownership of a city measure of wellbeing. Off-line, community organisations can begin to involve their users in assessing the benefits that they aim to provide. Workshops and events across the city will bring the Index to life, enabling users to fully explore the survey questions using a range of methods, from sharing stories to interacting with (Health Robinson style) wellbeing measurement machines.

We believe the act of engaging communities in the measurement of their wellbeing in this way will provide them with the knowledge and capacity to build their own happiness and resilience. In addition, it puts the promotion of wellbeing on the local policy agenda, thereby providing policymakers with the power to make decisions that more directly improve people’s lives.


See Also: 

Action for Happiness

Subjective Well-being

Happiness

Job Quality - It's not just about having a job

This blog by Anne Saint-Martin, Economist at the OECD, is part of the Wikiprogress focus on the “Well-being in the workplace: Measuring job quality” chapter of the How's Life? 2013.

Workers in high-strain jobs, who lack the support they need to cope with difficult work demands, are more likely to suffer from job burnout, to develop musculoskeletal disorders, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease. The list is long, and worrying. For instance a recent study published by Harvard researchers suggests that women in demanding and stressful jobs have a 38% increased risk of heart disease. Compared with those in low-strain jobs, they have a 67% raised risk of a heart attack, the study shows.

This is worrying as high-strain jobs are relatively widespread. A recent OECD study shows that in Europe, 20% of employees report difficult work situations, facing multiple job 'stressors' without adequate support and resources to cope with. And half of those in high-strain jobs report that work impairs their health, compared to only 15% for those in low-strain jobs.

People spend most of their day and a significant part of their life at work. Employment is not only a major driver of material living standards but also powerful determinants of one’s quality of life.

It is not just a question of having a job, it’s also about of job quality.

So what are the elements that make up a quality job?

The features of a job that contribute to the well-being of workers include interactions with colleagues, support from managers, work content, autonomy in decision-making, earnings and job security. Job quality has multiple facets.

In the current economic climate, insecure employment and in-work poverty are at the heart of policy debates in many OECD countries. But looking beyond these economic aspects and opening the Pandora box of job quality remains a key challenge for economists and policymakers. As a matter of fact, measuring well-being at the workplace, its determinants and its consequences on life quality, is not an easy task. 

People may face a variety of stress factors at work, such as dealing with heavy workload and time pressures, coping with conflicting demands, or performing physically demanding tasks. What matters for their well-being is both the accumulation of such 'stressors' and whether they are given a fair chance to meet these multiple requirements. Without well-defined work goals, sufficient work autonomy, support from colleagues and managers, demanding jobs can impair people’s health. But with adequate resources and support, they can be conductive to personal achievement.

In part due to an increasing awareness of work-related health problems among the public at large, well-being at the workplace has gained momentum in the public debate. This change has emerged alongside a wealth of research in occupational health, epidemiology, management and sociology, indicating that there is a strong relationship between job quality and peoples’ physical and mental health.

But the difficulties of defining and measuring the quality of work organisation and that of workplace relationships in ways that are amenable to comparisons over time and across countries remain a major obstacle to giving more prominence to these aspects of job quality in the policy debate, despite their importance for people’s well-being. Further work is needed to develop cross-country comparable indicators so as to identify best practices. This is in the agenda of the OCDE, as part of a major project on job quality: “Defining, Measuring and Assessing Job Quality and its Links to Labour Market Performance and Well-Being”.

References:

Slopen N., Glynn R., Buring J., Lewis T., Williams D. and M. Albert (2012), “Job Strain, Job Insecurity, and Incident Cardiovascular Disease in the Women’s Health Study: Results from a 10-Year Prospective Study”, PloS ONE, Vol.7, No.7.

OECD (2013), “Well-being in the workplace: Measuring job quality” in How’s life? Measuring Well-Being.

How’s Life? 2013 – Focusing on people

This blog by Martine Durand, Chief Statistician and Director of the Statistics Directorate at the OECD, is part of the Wikiprogress  focus on the How's Life? 2013 report for the month of November 2013. 

Measuring better lives has become even more important today, as many of our economies and societies have been stricken by the global financial crisis. Understanding how the lives of people have been affected and designing the best strategies to help those who have suffered the most requires looking well beyond the impact of the crisis on economic production and financial markets.

The global financial crisis has seriously affected economic well-being

Many workers have lost their jobs since the start of the crisis in 2007 and many households have registered stagnating or declining levels of income and wealth.Today, there are nearly 15 million more unemployed people in the OECD area than before the crisis, and the number of people out of job for more than a year has reached 16 million. Meanwhile, between 2007 and 2010, relative income poverty rose in most OECD countries, especially among children and young people. Rising economic insecurity and financial strain have particularly hit low-income and low-educated households.

Trust in institutions has weakened

Other aspects of people’s well-being have also evolved in a negative way during the crisis. Life satisfaction fell considerably in the countries most severely hit by the crisis, such as Greece, Italy, and Spain, and in these countries more people reported experiencing high levels of stress and worry. Countries’ political capital has been severely undermined, as today only 40% of citizens in the OECD trust their national governments – the lowest level since 2006. And in countries most affected by the crisis, only between one and three citizens out of ten trust their governments, a ratio that has more than halved since the start of the crisis.

New forms of solidarity and engagement have emerged

In some countries, responses to the crisis went beyond public policy and also came from local communities, in the forms of higher interpersonal solidarity and different forms of civic participation. While people have found it more difficult to provide financial help, an increasing number report having provided other types of support to others, and having volunteered their time to help those in need in their community. Families have also been a source of support, both financial and in-kind, and have provided an important safety net, for instance to young people who had difficulty finding a job.

Well-being indicators offer new insights for policy making

Well-being metrics can provide a new and wider perspective to policy-makers in the areas that matter to people. Some of these areas have long been on their radar screen, such as jobs, health or education, but the more comprehensive set of outcome indicators at the individual or household levels contained in How’s Life? and their joint distribution across population groups can offer new insights on people’s conditions. This edition of How’s Life? explores in some detail two measurement issues in well-being that may offer new food for thought for policy making: gender gaps in well-being and well-being in the workplace.

Can women and men have it all?

The question of how well-being varies across population groups and why is fundamental to design better targeted and more effective policies. While much progress on gender equality has been achieved over the past decades, in a number of countries, gender remains an important determinant of well-being inequalities in the population. But contrary to the usual picture that captures economic conditions only, the gender gap is not always just a women’s issue. For instance, women live longer than men on average in the OECD and they are often more educated. However, women report a lower health status, have worse job prospects and fewer networks to rely on when looking for a job. Women also experience more often negative feelings than men.

Well-being in the workplace: The importance of quality jobs

For many years, the focus of policy has mainly been on providing job opportunities and ensuring that people who wanted to work could find a job. However, most people spend a large part of their lives working and what happens in the workplace is an essential determinant of overall well-being. Having a good or quality job does not just mean receiving good salaries or having dynamic careers; it also means working in an environment that is conducive to personal accomplishment and where people are committed. People’s engagement and high sense of well-being at work depend a lot on whether they have autonomy in their job andare given well-defined work objectives. Respectful and supportive management practices and support from colleagues are also important.When jobs and workplaces combine these factors, people are more apt to manage work pressure and emotionally demanding jobs, and they also tend to be healthier and more productive.

Focusing on what matters to people, and improving existing metrics or developing new ones to measure well-being and progress, is the way ahead to achieve better lives, today and tomorrow.

Martine Durand

OECD Chief Statistician

Director of the Statistics Directorate

How’s Life? 2013 is available from 5 November. Read free on-line @ www.oecd.org/howslife, and directly on OECD iLibrary: http://oe.cd/mr

How to boost well-being - and prove it!

This blog, written by Saamah Abdallah of the new economics foundation (nef), is part of the Wikiprogress series on Human Well-Being and Subjective Well-Being.

 

Photo credit:   mikebaird

The Big Lottery Fund has published the final results from their Well-Being Programme evaluation which nef, alongside colleagues at the Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES), have been carrying out on their behalf since 2006.

The final report is available online. The headline findings are:

• Proportions of people eating five portions of fruit and vegetables daily increased from 48% at the beginning of the project to 57% at the end. Proportions of primary school children saying they helped their parents with cooking almost doubled from 12% to 24%.
• Proportions of people having high levels of physical activity rose from 23% to 32%. This increase went further at follow-up, three to six months after the end of the project.
• Proportions of people reporting substantial depressive symptoms fell from 33% to 22%.
• Average life satisfaction (on a scale of 0-10) rose from 6.5 at the start, to 7.1 at the end of projects. This coincided with significant increases in people feeling good about themselves, relaxed, close to other people, and all other aspects of personal well-being measured.
• The different aspects were all interlinked. Most striking was that projects which involved physical activity lead to big improvements in terms of mental health and healthy eating.
• Keys to successful projects included having a holistic approach, engaging the target group from the start and incorporating co-production, integrating activities into daily life, and ensuring that they are fun and involve social interaction.

For us, the findings are exciting news. They a) show that people’s experienced well-being can be improved and that these improvements can be sustained (something which some theorists have doubted), b) show that well-being can be used to evaluate a wide range of projects from cookery courses, to therapy sessions, and c) begin to provide evidence on the kinds of activities which work best, and about the inter-linkages between different aspects of people’s behaviour and well-being.

The Well-Being Programme was a £160 million programme funding a broad range of community projects improving mental health and increasing healthy eating and physical activity, delivered by partnerships lead by organisations such as the Soil Association,  MIND, Sustrans and the Greater London Authority.

The evaluation involved the administration of a questionnaire for project beneficiaries which they completed when they started being involved in a project, when they finished, and (where possible), three to six months after they left a project. Our colleagues at CLES also carried out extensive qualitative research, including focus groups and interviews with beneficiaries and project staff. 
The Well-Being Programme recently received a boost of another £40 million,   so some of the projects funded are set to continue. We look forward to seeing further increases in well-being as a result. The findings have also attracted particular attention from the Cabinet Office, who will be looking to see what lessons can be learnt from the evaluation to help realise the Prime Minister’s stated goal of focusing policy on improving well-being 

- Saamah Abdallah
Senior Researcher at the Centre for Well-being  at the nef

 This blog first appeared on 3 September 2013 on the nef blog.

Improving Wellbeing Should Be Our Global Priority

This post is written by Mark Williamson, Director of Action for Happiness*. This blog is  part of the Wikiprogress Series on Subjective Well-being. 

People's daily experiences and concerns differ enormously around the world. While a farmer in Angola prays for a good harvest, a manager in Greece worries about losing her job. And while a mother in Egypt comes to terms with life in a conflict zone, a doctor in Denmark struggles with work-related stress.

But there is one thing that unites people's experiences in every country: they all involve human beings who want their experience of life to be good rather than bad. We share a universal desire for wellbeing. This is more than just a survival instinct; we want to be happy and have the best possible lives for ourselves and those we love.

Whether we're aiming to alleviate poverty in Africa, end conflict in Syria or reduce stress in US workplaces, the fundamental reason we care about these things is that they are bad for human wellbeing. They cause suffering and pain. Similarly, if we're aiming to boost economic activity, reform our education system or cut public sector spending, we should only do so if we believe this will ultimately be good for people's wellbeing. Wellbeing provides a common lens through which we can look at the many challenges and opportunities in our world and decide on our collective priorities.

This is the central idea behind a groundbreaking report published today - the World Happiness Report. Launched in the midst of a major debate about what the world's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) should be for 2015-2030, the report argues that people's 'subjective wellbeing' - their self-reported sense of happiness with life - should be a central measure of progress for every nation. It is a substantial piece of work edited by, among others, the influential development economist Jeff Sachs.

Recent years have seen a huge growth in wellbeing research and we now have valuable data from all around the world about people's levels of life satisfaction. Not only can wellbeing be measured in a reliable and meaningful way, the findings have great relevance for public policy and global priorities. What was once seen as a sideshow is now a mainstream movement, with support from influential figures such as UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon and former head of the UK civil service, Lord Gus O'Donnell.

To illustrate how relevant the wellbeing data is for global issues, let's return to those four examples in my introduction, as they all relate to countries with interesting findings. Firstly, the farmer in Angola. Although Sub-Saharan Africa is the region with the lowest wellbeing (it is home to 9 of the bottom 10 countries, the other being Syria), there are a few green shoots. Over the last five years, Angola has actually seen the largest improvement in wellbeing globally, as it continues to regain stability after its terrible 27 year civil war.

However, for the manager in Greece and mother in Egypt, the trends are less encouraging. Unsurprisingly, these are the two countries that have seen the largest falls in wellbeing over the last five years. Of all the countries affected by the Eurozone crisis, Greece has been the hardest hit. Its drop in wellbeing is greater than would be predicted simply from falls in income, reflecting wider problems from loss of trust and social cohesion. And in Egypt, the significantly lower wellbeing surely reflects the Egyptian people's suffering under the Mubarak regime and the ongoing struggles since the 2011 uprising.

Finally, what about the Danish doctor? Well, she's at least fortunate to live in Denmark, the country which once again tops the world wellbeing league, closely followed by Norway. With Sweden also in the top 5, we might well ask how these Northern European nations always seem to deliver world-beating levels of wellbeing. Yes they have fairly high GDP per capita, but they're far from the top of that league. More tellingly, they have some of the highest levels of interpersonal trust and lowest levels of inequality.

The World Happiness Report also provides another extremely compelling reason to prioritise wellbeing, and the research here is really quite startling. It shows that happier people tend to be healthier, recover from illness more quickly and live longer. At work, they perform better, exhibit more creativity, are absent less often and are better at cooperation and collaboration. And in wider society, they have better relationships, exhibit more pro-social behaviour, have greater self-control, engage in less risk-taking behaviour and are more likely to have a positive impact on others. So happier people are not lazy, naïve, inward-looking or selfish, as some sceptics suggest; they are actually more economically productive, healthy, socially-minded and generous.

So what practical changes might we make if we adopted wellbeing as a global priority? Of all the suggestions in the report, the most notable is the call for a fundamental shift in our approach to mental health. Worldwide, depression and anxiety disorders account for up to a fifth of the entire burden of illness. This causes huge misery and involves massive costs due to lost output and worse physical health. Yet even in rich countries, less than a third of people who are mentally ill receive the treatment they need - and in poorer countries the proportion is lower still. This is really shocking, especially considering we now have cost-effective therapies that have been proven to help. Do politicians focus more on physical health, employment or income because they feel uncomfortable talking about mental health? If so, this has to change. Making treatment for mental illness more widely available may well be the single most reliable and cost effective way to improve national wellbeing.

What then should be the world's development goals for the coming years? Making wellbeing our global priority would surely underpin, rather than undermine, existing sustainable development aims. It would also provide a consistent means to track how successful countries are in delivering improvements in people's quality of life. The reason that existing goals like universal education, gender equality, maternal health and sustainability matter so much is because they are all fundamental to human wellbeing. 

Wellbeing isn't some luxury for the privileged few, it's the thing all of us want most for ourselves and the people we care about - whether in a field in Angola or an office in London. It should be at the heart of every discussion of local, national or global priorities.

Mark Williamson is Director of Action for Happiness.

This article was first posted 9 September on the Huffington Post website, here. 

*Action for Happiness is a movement of people taking action in their personal lives, homes, workplaces and communities - to help create a happier society. The movement has tens of thousands of members from a wide range of backgrounds including community leaders, parents, teachers, business leaders, students, policy makers, researchers, health experts and more. Action for Happiness provides information, inspiration and resources to help its members make a difference, all based on the latest empirical scientific evidence relating to happiness, wellbeing and resilience.

Unmet aspirations explain U-shape in well-being

This blog, written by Hannes Schandt, is part of the Wikiprogress series on Subjective Well-being. It provides a summary of  the CEP Discussion Paper, entitled “Unmet aspirations as an explanation for the age U-shape in wellbeing", and explains that unmet expectations drive the age U-shape inlife satisfaction.

Background:
A large literature in behavioural and social sciences has found that human wellbeing follows a U-shape over age. Some theories have assumed that the U-shape is caused by unmet expectations that are felt painfully in midlife but beneficially abandoned and experienced with less regret during old age. In a unique panel of 132,609 life satisfaction expectations matched to subsequent realizations, Hannes Schwandt finds people to err systematically in predicting their life satisfaction over the life cycle. They expect – incorrectly –  increases in young adulthood and decreases during old age. These errors are large, ranging from 9.8% at age 21 to -4.5% at age 68, they are stable over time and observed across socio-economic groups. These findings support theories that unmet expectations drive the age U-shape in wellbeing.

Behavioural and social scientists have shown increasing interest in self-reported life satisfaction and other subjective indicators as measures of human wellbeing. Using these measures a large and emerging literature has established that wellbeing follows a U-shape over age. Even though some controversy remains over the existence of this U-shape, it has been observed in over 50 nations, across socio-economic groups and recently also for great apes. Little is known about its origins. One theory is that the U-shape is driven by unmet aspirations which are painfully felt in midlife but beneficially abandoned later in life. A complementary theory builds on the neuroscientific finding that the emotional reaction to missed chances decreases with age so that the elderly might feel less regret about unmet aspirations.

Assuming that regret about unmet aspirations drives the U-shape implies that people err dramatically in predicting their wellbeing over the life-cycle. When young, people expect a bright future though actual wellbeing decreases. In old age expectations are adjusted downwards though actual wellbeing is rising. Human belief formation is known to exhibit systematic biases such as optimism and the underestimation of hedonic adaptation to changes in life circumstances. However, existing literatures typically analyze specific forecast settings with less emphasis on overall wellbeing measures or the role of age. The extent to which people err in predicting changes in their wellbeing over the life-cycle is unknown.


This study uses a unique panel data set from Germany that reports both, people’s current life satisfaction as well as their expectations about life satisfaction in five years time. The panel structure of the SOEP allows an individual’s expectation in a given year to be matched to the same individual’s realization five years ahead to form individual specific forecast errors. In total I analyze 23,161 individuals that are followed up to 10 years. This results in 132,609 individual specific life satisfaction forecast errors.

Figure 1 (A) below plots the averages of people’s current and expected life satisfaction by single years of age. In line with the existing literature current life satisfaction is U-shaped between ages 20 and 70, with peaks around ages 23 and 69, a local minimum in the mid-50s and a further decline after age 75. As the plot of life satisfaction expectations shows, this U-shape is not anticipated. During young adulthood people expect their life satisfaction to increase strongly. With age, expectations decrease but remain above current life satisfaction until the late 50s when the two graphs coincide. Thereafter expectations remain stable while actual life satisfaction increases, indicating that people do not anticipate the increase in old age wellbeing. After age 75 expectations decrease, simultaneously with current life satisfaction.

Figure 1: Expected life satisfaction, current life satisfaction and life satisfaction forecast errors over age.

These different patterns in current and expected life satisfaction imply systematic forecast errors that change with age (Fig. 1B). Young adults in their 20s overestimate on average their future life satisfaction by about 0.7, or by about 10% (e.g. 0.685 ± 0.047 or 9.8% at age 21). After age 30 forecast errors decrease steadily, turning negative at age 55 and decreasing further until age 68 (-0.308 ± 0.057; or -4.52%) where after they remain at around -0.25.

Figure 2 shows that the age pattern in life satisfaction forecast errors is remarkably stable over time, regions, and socio-economic subgroups.

Figure 2: Life satisfaction forecast errors over age, by time periods, regions, gender and education.

These findings show a striking age-associated bias in life satisfaction forecasts. The young strongly overestimate their future life satisfaction while the elderly tend to underestimate it. The similarity of the observed patterns across regions and their stability over time indicate that the findings might be generalisable to other developed countries in other decades.

What are the causes underlying this age bias? One well known source of systematic forecast errors is that people underestimate how quickly they adapt to socio-economic changes such as changes in income. Thus the observed age bias could be generated by the young expecting too much from anticipated income increases with the elderly, who face decreasing incomes, committing the opposite error. In the data, forecast errors indeed roughly match with the average income profile which is increasing during young adulthood and decreasing after age 50. Further, the age bias is slightly more pronounced for the highly educated who have steeper income profiles than those with less education.

However, the remarkable similarity across economically and culturally distinct regions and across gender suggests that some of the causes of the age bias go beyond age-related socio-economic characteristics. It is well established finding in psychological research that people tend to overestimate the likelihood of positive events and underestimate the likelihood of negative events. For example, people expect to enjoy healthier lives than average or underestimate the probability of being divorced. Optimism bias has also been demonstrated in non-human animals. Neuroscientific research has accumulated broad evidence that this bias is generated by selective processing of negative and positive information in the frontal brain which allows people to maintain biased expectations when confronted with discomforting evidence. This might provide a biological explanation for why life satisfaction expectations are overoptimistic during much of adulthood and adjust only slowly over time. It does not explain, though, why expectations remain stable after midlife while actual life satisfaction increases, implying negative forecast errors during old age. However, little is known about optimism in old age and existing evidence is conflicting.

How do the age associated errors in expected life satisfaction documented here relate to the age U-shape in wellbeing? Some theories have assumed that the U-shape is driven by unmet expectations that negatively affect people’s wellbeing in midlife but are abandoned and experienced with less regret during old age. The data reported here support this notion. Young adults have high aspirations that are subsequently unmet. And their life satisfaction decreases with age as long as expectations remain high and unmet. Aspirations are abandoned and expectations align with current wellbeing in the late 50s. This is the age when wellbeing starts to rise again. Further, given the disappointed expectations accumulated until that age, it is possible that wellbeing increases if the elderly learn to feel less regret (10). Following this interpretation of the U-shape in wellbeing, the observed negative forecast errors during old age might indicate that people do not anticipate the wellbeing enhancing effects of abandoning high aspirations and experiencing less regret.

Disseminating the knowledge of age associated forecast errors in life satisfaction could help people adjust their expectations, optimize important decisions in their life and suffer less when aspirations are not met. This might weaken the midlife drop in life satisfaction.

Hannes Schwandt is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Center for Health and Wellbeing at Princeton University. He is also a visiting researcher at the Center for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics and a research affiliate at IZA. His primary research fields are Health Economics and Labor Economics. His secondary research interests include Applied Microeconometrics and Behavioural Economics.

*This blog first appeared in LSE's Politics and Policy blog on 7 August, 2013.

Good news, we're slightly happier.But why?

This post was written by Mark Williamson, Director of Action for Happiness* . This blog is  part of the Wikiprogress Series on Subjective Well-being. 

How satisfied are you with your life? It's a question we've probably all pondered at times. But for the last two years it's also been one of a handful of new "subjective wellbeing" questions which the Office for National Statistics has been asking people all over the UK.

You may be surprised to learn that the UK is now leading the way in terms of officially measuring the wellbeing of its citizens. We're at the forefront of a growing global movement where people are recognising that there's more to a good society than just economic growth - and that we need measures of progress which reflect the quality of life as people actually experience it.

On the 30th of July we saw something rather remarkable on two counts. Firstly, the publication of the very first official year-on-year comparisons of UK wellbeing, a landmark moment in this new era of measuring what matters. And secondly, we had the unexpected news that, as a nation, we've actually become happier and less anxious over the last 12 months. Not hugely happier, but a statistically significant step in the right direction nonetheless.

The proportion of people giving a high life satisfaction score (7 or more out of 10) rose from 75.9% in 2012 to 77% in 2013. And the proportion of people giving a low (i.e. positive) score for "feeling anxious" (3 or less out of 10) rose from 60.1% to 61.5%. That sounds promising, but how has this improvement in average wellbeing been distributed across the population? Well, the ONS hasn't yet provided a regional breakdown, but it does appear that the people with the lowest wellbeing have seen some of the benefit. For example, the proportion of people with a very low life satisfaction score has fallen from 6.6% to 5.8% and the proportion with a very high (i.e. negative) score for "feeling anxious" has fallen from 21.8% to 20.9%. Encouragingly, it's not just a case of the fairly happy folks getting even happier.

So what's going on here? Is this an "Olympics bounce", a reflection of a slightly improving economic outlook or something else? In a separate recent analysis, the ONS explored the factors that most affect our personal wellbeing and identified three that appear to make the biggest difference. The first is whether we perceive our health to be good. The second is our employment status, with unemployment clearly being very detrimental to wellbeing. And the third is our marital status, with people who are married or in civil partnerships being happier than those who aren't. Of these, the most likely contributor to recent improvements in national wellbeing is the slight reduction in unemployment over the last year, which is clearly welcome, although levels remain worryingly high.

But I believe the ONS analysis is missing some vitally important contributors to wellbeing. Research suggests that the external circumstances of our lives generally have a smaller impact on our happiness than our attitudes and actions. And at Action for Happiness, our review of the latest evidence has identified ten areas where actions we take as individuals tend to increase our wellbeing. We call these the Ten Keys to Happier Living. They include having positive relationships and strong social connections, giving to others, being mindful, staying physically active, taking a resilient approach to adversity, pursuing life goals and being part of something bigger than ourselves. These are the real drivers of wellbeing just as much as having a job, good health or being married.

The ONS identified the Jubilee celebrations and Olympics as factors that may have contributed to our boost in wellbeing since last year. I suspect this may indeed be true. But if so, this is not thanks to our love of the Royal Family or our outstanding sporting success. It's because these events encouraged actions which helped us to connect in our communities, to share enjoyable times together and to feel part of something bigger. Although these once-in-a-lifetime events won't be repeated any time soon, there's still so much more we can do to create and maintain those community connections and that positive and outward-looking spirit.

Finally, the ONS has also uncovered some rather startling findings regarding people's levels of anxiety. Some of the most anxious people are those who, you might imagine, have least to worry about. For example, people in higher professional occupations report more anxiety than those in lower supervisory and technical occupations. People with the highest levels of education are more anxious than people with lower educational attainment. And most surprisingly, people who live in the least deprived areas actually report higher levels of anxiety than those who live in the most deprived areas. This is a timely reminder that anxiety, and indeed depression, are classless and affect people from all walks of life. Many of those we hold up as role models and paragons of success are actually trapped in busy and stressful lives where they feel under constant pressure and unhappy. As Arianna Huffington says, it's time for us to redefine what we mean by success.

So this move towards measuring wellbeing should be warmly welcomed. It's a call for governments to place a greater focus on the things that affect people's quality of life - and nothing could be more important. But it's also a reminder for each of us that real success and happiness come from a balanced life, with time to connect with the people around us and to focus on the things that matter.

Mark Williamson is Director of Action for Happiness.

This article was first posted on the Action for Happiness website, here. 

*Action for Happiness is a movement of people taking action in their personal lives, homes, workplaces and communities - to help create a happier society. The movement has tens of thousands of members from a wide range of backgrounds including community leaders, parents, teachers, business leaders, students, policy makers, researchers, health experts and more. Action for Happiness provides information, inspiration and resources to help its members make a difference, all based on the latest empirical scientific evidence relating to happiness, wellbeing and resilience. 

Five ways to a happy childhood?

This blog is written by Saamah Abdallah, a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Well-being, and is part of the Wikiprogress Series on child well-being. It explains how the Children's Society used nef's Five Ways to Well-being to children in its Good Childhood Report 2013, as well as highlights some of the key findings.

Five years ago, nef launched the Five Ways to Well-being – five easy evidence-based things individuals can build into their daily lives to improve their well-being – as part of the Foresight Review of Mental Capital and Well-being produced by the Government Office for Science. They are Connect, Be Active, Take notice, Keep Learning and Give. The five ways have had a phenomenal success across the globe from Norway to New Zealand, and can be found on billboards in South London, and on the NHS Choices website.

But the Five Ways evidence was mostly based on studies on adults. So, the Children’s Society, who have set the standard for the well-being agenda for children, asked nef to help them explore the relevance of the Five Ways for those under 16. They used a combination of survey data, asking around 1,500 children about their behaviour (to see whether they engage in the five ways) and their well-being, and focus groups, directly asking children to explore how the Five Ways might improve their lives.

Last week, the Children’s Society launched the Good Childhood Report 2013, which presents this data for the first time (take a look at chapter 4). Overall, the evidence showed the Five Ways to Well-being to be important to children – those carrying them out reporting high levels of well-being. In regression analyses, certain activities seemed to be particularly important: noticing one’s surroundings (Take Notice), talking to family members about things that matter (Connect), playing sports (Be Active) and teaching yourself new things (Keep Learning). For example, children who reported noticing and enjoying their surroundings all of the time were on average in the top 25% of well-being scores, whereas those that reported never doing so were on average in the bottom 20%.

As telling as the relationships we found to be strong, are those that weren’t so strong. For example, whilst seeing friends was very important to well-being, chatting to friends on the phone or through social websites, had no effect whatsoever on well-being. Might Facebook’s intention to allow children under 12 to use the website encourage more to carry out this well-being neutral activity? Meanwhile, the evidence on Give was mixed – helping around the house was associated with higher well-being, but volunteering (which few kids did) wasn’t.

In a more detailed report which the Children’s Society and nef will publish later this summer, we will also present findings on the relationship between the Five Ways and socio-economic status. Preliminary evidence suggests that children in the bottom income quartile carry out fewer five ways activities than those in the top income quartile, despite the fact that most of the activities can be free or very cheap (e.g. reading books or playing sports).

 

The evidence from the focus groups suggested, however, that the biggest barrier to children carrying out Five Ways activities was lack of permission from parents or guardians. The Children’s Society have already highlighted the importance of autonomy and independence for children, and these data show how a society of over-protectiveness may be preventing children from doing things which could improve their well-being, such as seeing their friends, cycling to school, or simply kicking around a football in the park.

This blog first appeared on the nef blog 22 July, 2013.

Click here to view the full Good Childhood Report 2013.

How to Measure Happiness and Why it Matters

On the International Day of Happiness, 20 March 2013 the OECD released a detailed set of Guidelines on Measuring Subjective Well-being. This is essentially a handbook for statisticians involved in collecting and publishing information on subjective well-being (measures of life satisfaction, happiness, and similar concepts). All of this, one might think, sounds very worthy, but extremely dull. Why does the release of the Guidelines matter, and why should anyone not professionally obliged to wade through statistical manuals care?

There are two reasons. The first relates to what the Guidelines signal in terms of the wider agenda on measuring progress. One of the main reasons that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) retains such a high profile as an indicator of progress is that it is collected in the same way across countries. The international standards that are embodied in the System of National Accounts, or SNA provides a common framework to ensure that when we compare the GDP of two different countries, such as Iceland and Chile, we are – so to speak – comparing apples with apples.

Most measures of the non-economic aspects of well-being lack such a common measurement framework. In 2009 the Sen/Stiglitz/Fitoussi Commission highlighted that it was important that measures of quality of life “move from research to standard statistical practice”. Similarly, the OECD’s How’s Life report in 2011 argued that the statistical agenda ahead for measuring well-being must involve standardising the measurement of quality of life. The OECD Guidelines represent a crucial first step towards indicators of quality of life that are as robust and comparable as GDP.

The second reason why the Guidelines matter is that, if national statistical agencies respond to them by starting to collect comparable data, it has the potential to revolutionise our understanding of subjective well-being. Currently most of what we know about measures of subjective well-being derives from academic research and public opinion surveys with small samples (often as low as 1000 people). By way of contrast, official statistics tend to involve survey samples in the thousands, tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands. For example, the UK Office for National Statistics collected information on subjective well-being from over 165,000 respondents in the annual population survey in 2011/12.

The last ten years has seen the measurement of subjective well-being take a central role (having been a niche academic interest) in work to better measure the progress of societies. With high quality official statistics on subjective well-being coming on stream over the next few years, the next decade promises to be even more interesting.

Conal Smith

Further reading:

Subjective Well-being

How’s Life? Measuring Well-Being

OECD Better Life Initiative