A multidimensional understanding of prosperity and well-being at country level: Data-driven explorations
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TLDR
The results underline the need for a broadly-based approach to the measurement of societal quality of life, and provide an empirically-derived multidimensional framework for conceptualizing and measuringquality of life and well-being at country level.Abstract:
Social scientists have been interested in measuring the prosperity, well-being, and quality of life of nations, which has resulted in a multiplicity of country-level indicators. However, little is known about the factor structure of these indicators. We explored the structure of quality of life, using country-level data on tens of subjective and objective indicators. Applying factor analysis, we identified three distinct factors that exhibited both overlap and complementarity. This structure was replicated in data from previous years and with a partially different set of variables. The first factor, ‘socio-economic progress’, is dominated by socio-political and economic indicators but also includes life satisfaction, which thus appears to reflect objective living conditions. The second factor, ‘psycho-social functioning’, consists of subjective indicators, such as eudaimonic well-being and positive affective states. The third, ‘negative affectivity’, comprises negatively-valenced affective states. The three macro-factors of societal quality of life demonstrated moderate intercorrelations and differential associations with cultural and ecological variables, providing support for their discriminant validity. Finally, country and regional rankings based on the three societal factors revealed a complex picture that cautions against over-reliance on any single indicator such as life satisfaction. The results underline the need for a broadly-based approach to the measurement of societal quality of life, and provide an empirically-derived multidimensional framework for conceptualizing and measuring quality of life and well-being at country level. This study is thus an initial empirical step towards systematizing the multiple approaches to societal quality of life.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Towards a greater global understanding of wellbeing: A proposal for a more inclusive measure
Louise Lambert,Tim Lomas,Margot P van de Weijer,Holli-Anne Passmore,Mohsen Joshanloo,James K. Harter,Yoshiki Ishikawa,Alden Yuanhong Lai,Takuya Kitagawa,Dominique Chen,Takafumi Kawakami,Hiroaki Miyata,Ed Diener +12 more
TL;DR: The authors in this article reviewed the discussion from the international well-being summit in Kyoto, Japan (August 2019), where nine such additions were proposed and highlighted why a more global view of wellbeing is needed.
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Family Functioning and Life Satisfaction: The Mediatory Role of Emotional Intelligence
TL;DR: Evidence of an indirect association between family functioning and life satisfaction through the mediating role of emotional intelligence is provided, indicating that individuals who evaluate their family functioning as cohesive, flexible, communicative, and fulfilled, are more likely to process their own emotions and enjoy higher life satisfaction.
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Are the Variables Used in Building Composite Indicators of Well-Being Relevant? Validating Composite Indexes of Well-Being
TL;DR: It is proved that a robust ranking of countries based on multidimensional well-being can be achieved with a relatively small number of variables, which mitigates the risk of including variables that are not reliable and/or not available for a significant number of countries.
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Personal life satisfaction as a measure of societal happiness is an individualistic presumption: evidence from fifty countries
Kuba Krys,Kuba Krys,Joonha Park,Agata Kocimska-Zych,Aleksandra Kosiarczyk,Heyla A. Selim,Agnieszka Wojtczuk-Turek,Brian W. Haas,Yukiko Uchida,Cláudio Vaz Torres,Colin A. Capaldi,Michael Harris Bond,John M. Zelenski,Vivian Miu-Chi Lun,Fridanna Maricchiolo,Christin-Melanie Vauclair,Iva Poláčková Šolcová,David Sirlopú,Cai Xing,Vivian L. Vignoles,Wijnand A.P. van Tilburg,Julien Teyssier,Chien-Ru Sun,Stanislava Stoyanova,Ursula Serdarevich,Beate Schwarz,Ruta Sargautyte,Espen Røysamb,Vladyslav Romashov,Muhammad Rizwan,Zoran Pavlović,Vassilis Pavlopoulos,Yvette van Osch,Ayu Okvitawanli,Azar Nadi,Martín Nader,Mustaffa Nur Fariza,Oriana Mosca,Tamara Mohorić,Pablo Barrientos,Arina Malyonova,Xinhui Liu,J. Hannah Lee,Anna Kwiatkowska,Nicole Kronberger,Lucie Klůzová Kračmárová,Natália Kaščáková,İdil Işık,Eric Raymond Igou,D.O. Igbokwe,Diana Hanke-Boer,Alin Gavreliuc,Ragna B. Garðarsdóttir,Márta Fülöp,Márta Fülöp,Vladimer Lado Gamsakhurdia,Carla Sofia Esteves,Alejandra Domínguez-Espinosa,Patrick Denoux,Salome Charkviani,Arno Baltin,Arévalo D. M. Mira,Lily Appoh,Isabelle Albert,Charity S. Akotia,Mladen Adamovic +65 more
TL;DR: This article found that individualism correlates with societal happiness because the most common measure of societal happiness (i.e., country-level aggregates of personal life satisfaction) is individualism-themed.
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