Measuring wellbeing: towards sustainability?

Measuring human well-being is gaining attention from administrations and decision-makers, yet there is little understanding of the role of power in considering well-being and quality of life into policies. The aim of this book is to introduce the concept of well-being and explore its link with power. The book is a result of a Ph.D. study carried out jointly with a local authority strategy team, whose main result was a set of Quality of life indicators.

The book is structured into two parts: a theoretical one, followed by an illustrative case study. The theoretical chapters introduce variously framed concepts of well-being, focusing on their measurement, the relationship with sustainable development, the role of power, participation, knowledge and indicators. Given the growing dissatisfaction about the current economic approaches – which put the world's natural capital and wealth at risk – and the need for alternative development models, many countries (starting from Bhutan) began to investigate the definition and dimensions of well-being.

Chapter 2 presents a review of different definitions and approaches to well-being, while Chapter 3 is focused on trade-offs. Starting from the Aristotelian idea of Eudaimonia, philosophers, scientists and politics are quoted: from ancient milestones to more contemporary ones. In this first part, one of the goals of the author is to give a complete set of interpretations, so as to enable the reader to approach the problem of defining well-being. Far from being specific, this is neither a practical manual nor a list of guidelines, rather a pretty complete review of concepts, focusing on strong and weak aspects of each approach.

The second part looks at the broad and interconnected fields investigated in the first part of the book adopting a case study approach (Blyth Valley Borough Council). Here the local context, goals, technicalities and output of the work are described. The case study represents a historical site, in one of the least populated areas of the UK. The town lays in a situation of decline, but following to this trial in adopting an innovative perspective and approach, new challenges and opportunities are emerging. Participation in policy making was seriously looked for and taken into consideration.

In my view, the main contribution of this book is presented by the theoretical part, which offers a clear picture of the panorama of Quality of life definitions – approaches, as opposite to specific indicators or indices, with their pros and cons. Subjective well-being is not analyzed in depth because it is considered still in its infancy for being useful in designing public policies. After characterizing GDP as incomplete and misleading to become a good indicator of quality of life, from a variety of alternatives the author seems to prefer Amartya Sen's ‘capability’ approach, rather than approaches based on human needs. The capability approach may be more difficult to put into practice, as it requires the formulation of an idea of how the society should be and live. Nevertheless, as this work is focusing on a local context, this idea inflected at small scale is already more manageable than in terms of universal definition.

An interesting input provided by this book is represented by the investigation of the differences and links between well-being and sustainability, focusing on the fact that indicators for these overlapping fields have been, so far, developed separately. The frame of the UK laws and public policies described can be interesting for a more specific audience, while much more challenging is the study of trade-offs and overlapping between well-being and sustainable development at the end of Chapter 3. Different forms of participation are structured and analyzed too. The issue of indicators is treated in general terms, giving some kind of principle to assess the effectiveness of these metrics. The author creatively defines participation not only as a good means to choose the right indicators but also as indicator of Quality of life itself. The case study can be a useful help to better understand the theories explained in the first half of the book.

Rather than proposing brand new ideas, the book focuses on putting some order in the jungle of concepts and contents, sometimes overlapping, sometimes just confused. And it does it well. The author assumes a didactic role and faces it with fairness, by giving every time the whole panorama of ideas and by specifying what she is going to write about and not. She uses as discriminating factor the relevance of the argument for the goal of her work. In addition to this, even when not going deep on some concepts because of their scarce pertinence, she provides references to the reader in case of personal interest.

This is an introductory text about measuring well-being, grounded in the experience of everyday life, realities and policies. The book engages both philosophical and practical challenges. For its contents and form, it is appropriate to an audience of both researchers and policy makers.