A handbook for wellbeing policy-making : : history, theory, measurement, implementation, and examples / / Paul Frijters and Christian Krekel.

• VerfasserIn: Frijters, Paul,; Krekel, Christian,
• TeilnehmendeR: Krekel, Christian,
• Place / Publishing House: Oxford, England ;, New York, New York : : Oxford University Press,, [2021]; ©2021
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (xix, 433 pages) :; illustrations

"Around the world, governments are starting to directly measure the subjective wellbeing of their citizens and to use it for policy evaluation and appraisal. What would happen if a country were to move from using GDP to using subjective wellbeing as the primary metric for measuring economic and societal progress? Would policy priorities change? Would we continue to care about economic growth? What role would different government institutions play in such a scenario? And, most importantly, how could this be implemented in daily practice, for example in policy evaluations and appraisals of government analysts, or in political agenda-setting at the top level? This book provides answers to these questions from a conceptual to a technical level by showing how direct measures of subjective wellbeing can be used for policy evaluation and appraisal, either complementary in the short run or even entirely in the long run. It gives a brief history of the idea that governments should care about the happiness of their citizens, provides theories, makes suggestions for direct measurement, derives technical standards, shows how to conduct wellbeing cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analyses, and gives examples of how real-world policy evaluations and appraisals would change if they were based on subjective wellbeing. In doing so, the book serves the growing interest of governments as well as non-governmental and international organizations in how to put subjective wellbeing metrics into policy practice"-- Publisher's description.

Table of Contents

Richard Layard: Foreword -- Preface -- 1: The Case for Wellbeing as the Goal of Government in the Context of Constraints on Policy-making -- 2: Wellbeing Measurement and Policy Design Measures, Key Findings, and Wellbeing Frameworks -- 3: Wellbeing Policy Evaluation and Appraisal: Data, Methods, Literature, Rules-of-thumb, and Technical Standards -- Appendix A. Data: General Overview -- Appendix B. Data: Technical Details -- Appendix C. Data: Download Links and Sample Studies -- Appendix D. Conversion between Different Scales and Indicators of Wellbeing -- Appendix E. Headline Cost-effectiveness Graph and Justification of the Elements -- 4: Wellbeing Cost-effectiveness Analysis and Existing Approaches -- Appendix. The Monetary Value of Wellbeing in Mathematical Notation -- 5: Applying Wellbeing Insights to Existing Policy Evaluations and Appraisals.