In my first OpenThink blog post, I mentioned that my research focuses on Canada’s Old Age Security (OAS) and Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) and their impact on the well-being of older adults. Then, in my second post, I explained Canada’s retirement income system, including OAS and GIS. But if you look carefully at my research statement, there is another important component that deserves just as much attention: well-being.
Let’s first talk about why we even care about well-being. Several factors have contributed to the growing interest in the concept of well-being. Until the beginning of this century, societal progress was mainly assessed using economic indicators. However, researchers and policymakers gradually realized that measures such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) could not provide a complete picture of how a society is actually doing. This is where the concept of well-being started to gain global attention.
The goal was never to replace economic indicators. Instead, well-being was introduced as a complementary measure that could capture aspects of people’s lives that traditional economic metrics often miss and this could allow for a more comprehensive understanding and comparison of societies.
As interest in well-being grew, several initiatives around the world started to incorporate it into policy and practice. One of the most important milestones came in 2008, when the then-President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, established what later became known as the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress (CMEPSP). The commission brought together some of the world’s leading economists to assess the limitations of traditional economic measures and propose better ways to measure social progress.
Their final report, published in 2009, argued that although indicators such as GDP are important, they are not enough. They tend to miss many aspects of people’s lives, including health, education, quality of life, the environment and sustainability. The report therefore recommended incorporating well-being into public policy as a more holistic way of evaluating societal progress. This report is now considered a turning point in the global movement toward well-being-focused policies.
Now that we have a better idea of why well-being matters, let’s talk about the concept itself.
If someone asked you, “What is well-being?” how would you answer?
Some people might say being healthy. Others might say being able to walk, do daily chores or live without pain. Someone else might say feeling calm, happy or safe. None of these answers are wrong, but also none of them fully capture what well-being means.
For centuries, researchers from many disciplines, including economics, philosophy, psychology, political science and medicine, have debated exactly what well-being is and tried to define it in a way that could be widely accepted.
One of the earliest and most historical contributions came from the Greek philosopher Aristotle. He proposed two ways of thinking about a good life: the eudaimonic and the hedonic approaches. Aristotle introduced the idea of eudaimonia, described as the highest human good. In his famous work Nicomachean Ethics, he argued that the highest good for humans comes from fulfilling one’s specific talents and capabilities. And in this process of achieving personal excellence and virtue, one may experience suffering. In contrast, the hedonic approach emphasizes pleasure and happiness while focusing on avoiding suffering.
So, despite centuries of discussion and research, there is still no single, universally accepted definition of well-being. This is partly because well-being is such a complex and multidimensional concept.
Reaching agreement among different disciplines has proven to be extremely difficult. As Hone and colleagues put it, “although several researchers and research teams have developed theoretical, conceptual, and operational models of well-being, and there is general agreement that well-being is a multidimensional concept, that is where the consensus ends.”
With that background in mind, in my next post I’ll introduce some of the most widely used definitions of well-being in general and explore how different disciplines have approached this fascinating concept.
