In my previous OpenThink blog post, I discussed why we care about well-being. In this post, I am going to talk about the different dimensions of well-being that we should consider when measuring it.
Previously, well-being was mainly defined through objective dimensions. In other words, if you did not have a physical health issue, you were generally considered a healthy person. This meant that much of the focus was on objective or physical health-related measures of well-being, such as increases in life expectancy or decreases in mortality rates. However, many researchers and scientists have shown that well-being includes other dimensions as well.
The World Health Organization provides a widely accepted definition of well-being: “Well-being is a positive state experienced by individuals and societies. Similar to health, it is a resource for daily life and is determined by social, economic and environmental conditions.”
Contemporary literature widely uses three main dimensions: physical, psychological, and social well-being. Other dimensions, including economic and environmental well-being, are also considered important components in some contexts.
In brief, physical well-being refers to a level of health that allows a person to perform daily activities, so it is not only the absence of illness. But how do we measure it in a society? There are some commonly used indicators, including life expectancy, the prevalence of non-communicable diseases and infant mortality rates, among others. Psychological well-being, on the other hand, includes factors such as resilience, emotional health and cognitive functioning, which help individuals manage challenges in their daily lives. It is usually measured using indicators such as life satisfaction, self-esteem and anxiety levels. Social well-being refers to the ability to build relationships, create interpersonal bonds and develop social networks. It is often assessed using indicators related to social capital and community involvement.
Currently, economic and environmental well-being are also considered important components of well-being. These dimensions are very connected to our everyday lives. Economic well-being focuses on economic conditions and measures such as income, income distribution and economic development. Environmental well-being, meanwhile, focuses on ecological sustainability and resource management and how they relate to our health and quality of life.
So, are there any solid, well-established frameworks for measuring all of this? Of course there are.
One of the most commonly used frameworks is the Human Development Index (HDI). This index was developed by the United Nations Development Programme as an alternative to using only economic measures such as GDP when thinking about human development and well-being. It includes three main dimensions: health and longevity—which is assessed by life expectancy and education (measured by expected and mean years of schooling) —and economic well-being (assessed using Gross National Income (GNI)). Although this framework goes over economic measures and makes worldwide comparisons possible, it still falls short when it comes to measuring subjective well-being.
There are also two well-being frameworks used in Canada that I would like to mention here.
The first is the Canadian Index of Well-being (CIW). The project “Asking Canadian Citizens What Matters for Quality of Life in Canada” contributed to the development of the CIW framework at the University of Waterloo. The framework includes 64 indicators across eight domains. The domains are community vitality, democratic engagement, education, environment, healthy populations, leisure and culture, living standards and time use. As a composite index, it provides an overall picture that allows us to compare changes over time and better understand the quality of life of the Canadian population.
The second is Canada’s Quality of Life Framework. In 2021, the Government of Canada introduced this framework with the goal of bringing quality-of-life considerations more directly into federal decision-making and budgeting. The framework helps policymakers understand different aspects of Canadians’ well-being. It includes a broad set of indicators organized around five main domains: prosperity, which covers economic and employment indicators; health, which includes physical and mental health as well as access to healthcare; environment, which focuses on climate and ecological indicators; society, which includes social and community indicators; and good governance, which covers areas such as trust in institutions, justice, safety and security.
So, what can we take away from all of this? Well-being does not fit into one indicator or one number. As the WHO definition reminds us, it is multidimensional. Our physical and mental health matter, but so do our relationships, economic circumstances, communities and the environment in which we live.
