Progress in measuring subjective well-being

Author(s): Alan B. Krueger and Arthur A. Stone

Source: Science , Vol. 346, No. 6205 (3 OCTOBER 2014), pp. 42-44
Published by: American Association for the Advancement of Science

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/24917731

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 INSIGHTS | P E R S P E C T I V E S
PSYCHOLOGY AND ECONOMICS
Progress in measuring subjective well-being
Moving toward national indicators and policy evaluations
By Alan B. Krueger1,2* and
Arthur A. Stone3
P
rogress in science requires new tools
for measuring phenomena previ-
ously believed unmeasurable, as
well as conceptual frameworks for
interpreting such measurements.
There has been much progress on
both fronts in the measurement of subjec-
tive well-being (SWB), which “refers to how
people experience and evaluate their lives
and specific domains and activities in their
lives” (1). In 2009, the Sarkozy Commission
recommended adding SWB measures as
supplements to existing indicators of soci-
etal progress such as gross do-
POLICY mestic product (GDP). In light
of subsequent activity by gov-
ernments and international organizations,
we summarize several important advances
and highlight key remaining methodologi-
cal challenges that must be addressed to de-
velop a credible national indicator of SWB
and to incorporate SWB into official statis-
tics and policy decisions.
VALIDITY AND COMPARABILITY. Subjec-
tive well-being is necessarily measured by
respondents’ self-reports evaluating their
life and feelings (see the photo). In some
fields, such reports are the standard, e.g., as-
sessment of pain and fatigue. Although there
have been long-standing concerns about the
meaning of subjective reports, emerging
evidence finds that self-reports are related
to biological processes and health outcomes,
which increases confidence in the validity of
such measures. Experimental studies find
that self-reports of the extent of pain are as-
sociated with changes in blood flow to brain
regions known to process pain (2). Studies
have shown correspondence between sub-
jective reports of affect and experience with
immunological and hormonal measures (3,
4). Mortality has been associated with low
levels of SWB (5).
Nevertheless, additional evidence is
needed to support the validity of between-
group comparisons, e.g., when compar-
ing SWB across countries or demographic
groups. Differential reporting styles, includ-
ing interpretation of questions and response
1
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA. 2National
Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
3
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089,
USA. *E-mail: akrueger@princeton.edu
42 3 OCTOBER 2014 • VOL 346 ISSUE 6205
134.255.40.16 on Wed, 27 Mar 2024 02:07:31 +00:00
1003Perspectives.indd 42
Faces Pain Scale—Revised [©2001, International Association for the
Study of Pain]
scales, by groups, has the potential to yield
misleading conclusions. Some rankings of
countries have been questioned on these
grounds.
A recent technique for evaluating and
adjusting interpersonal and intergroup dif-
ferences in self-reports is the “vignette ap-
proach.” Questions about the constructs
under investigation are preceded by vi-
gnettes that describe an individual at some
intensity of the construct, providing an ex-
plicit comparison standard for the subse-
quent rating. Responses can be compared
and scales adjusted if systematic intergroup
differences emerge (6). This has proved
promising for assessing subjective health ap-
praisals and is being applied to well-being
reports, although there are potential envi-
ronmental factors that may confound com-
parison, such as differences in the quality of
health care across communities.
Interpretation and use of response scales
(i.e., options for answering questions) is
likely to vary according to past experiences,
cultural background, genetic factors, and
immediate context. Well-known response
options are verbal scales (e.g., “Extremely
satisfied” through “not at all satisfied”) and
numeric rating scales (e.g., 0 through 10 an-
chored scales, with 0 indicating the absence
of some feeling). On the basis of studies of
individual differences in densities of taste
receptors on subjects’ tongues, Bartoshuk
(7) described scale elasticity, wherein self-
reports with standard response scales of
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taste sensation were invalid.
Response options had differ-
ent meanings for two groups
of tasters. “Supertasters” had a
“stretched-out” scale, a feature
lost in current response scales.
The same logic may prove use-
ful for SWB.
Another validity issue con-
cerns the extent to which
people adapt to their circum-
stances. There is a critical
distinction in how scales are
used, where extreme events
can result in “recalibration”
(8), as opposed to true adapta-
tion. In the first case, changes
in SWB are not due to actual
differences in experience or
evaluation but simply to how
the scale was used. True adap-
tation is defined by changes
in emotional experience. There is evidence
that people shift their use of scales and that
they can adapt to circumstances; e.g., in re-
sponse to physical disabilities or winning a
lottery [see (9) for a recent meta-analysis].
But adaptation is not a uniform process,
and some circumstances and aspects of
SWB appear relatively more or less resistant
to adaptation.
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK. The con-
ceptual framework for SWB remains, in
our view, the most important obstacle to
developing a comprehensive national indi-
cator. Innovative new work (10) provides a
framework in which individuals’ utility de-
pends on several fundamental, nonoverlap-
ping aspects, such as material well-being,
life satisfaction, and emotional experience.
Following standard economic logic, compo-
nents can be aggregated on the basis of the
extent to which individuals would be will-
ing to trade an improvement in one aspect
against an improvement in another, on the
margin. This method is implemented by pos-
ing hypothetical choices between situations
that involve different dimensions of SWB.
PHOTO: MAY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
These marginal valuations provide weights
for aggregating aspects of SWB, just as
prices (marginal utilities) provide appropri-
ate weights for aggregating components of
the GDP under certain assumptions.
This research is in its infancy, and ob-
jections can be raised about its reliance on
revealed preference, but it provides a coher-
sciencemag.org SCIENCE
9/26/14 5:06 PM
 ent framework for aggregating dimensions
of SWB on the basis of individuals’ choices.
Further refinements—perhaps including ac-
tual, as opposed to hypothetical, choices—
may advance the measurement of SWB.
Kahneman and Krueger (11) seek to side-
step many requirements for a comprehen-
sive index of SWB (such as interpersonal
comparability) by focusing only on experi-
ential SWB and measuring the percentage
of time that people spend in an unpleas-
ant state, which they call the U-index. An
unpleasant state is defined as an episode
in which the intensity of a negative emo-
tion is greater than the intensity of positive
emotions (see the chart). They justify the U-
index in part by arguing that policy-makers
often care more about minimizing misery
than maximizing happiness [a theme echoed
in (1)]. The U-index can be constructed with
the Day Reconstruction Measure, which col-
lects time-use data together with emotional
experience. The U-index is robust in that dif-
ferent individuals and groups can interpret
scales differently, as long as they consistently
apply their interpretation to positive and
negative emotions. The U-index is related
to, but conceptually distinct from, more tra-
ditional measures of affect (measured with
momentary and diary approaches), in that
the U-index emphasizes that one dominant-
negative emotion can color an entire episode
or day.
Until more progress is made toward de-
veloping a credible, comprehensive index of
SWB, we would emphasize the importance
of separately measuring the key components
of SWB (e.g., satisfaction with life, positive
emotional experience, meaning in life) and
keeping them distinctive.
OFFICIAL MEASURES. After the Sarkozy
report, the UK Office of National Statistics
(ONS) initiated a program to measure SWB
in its Annual Population Survey. Evaluative
(“satisfaction” with life), eudaimonic (wel-
fare or human flourishing), and hedonic
(affect in everyday life) SWB were surveyed.
However, the assessment consists of only
four questions and lacks information on ac-
tual time use or events in people’s lives. To
partly address these concerns, ONS plans
more detailed surveys of SWB. The proper
way to combine ONS’s measures into a com-
prehensive indicator is unresolved.
The Organization for Economic Coopera-
tion and Development (OECD) published an
extensive report on measuring SWB (12) to
guide national statistical offices and pre-
sented a detailed critique of ongoing ef-
forts. The OECD’s Better Life Index finesses
the problem of how to aggregate different
components of well-being by allowing users
to set their own weights. The OECD has as-
SCIENCE sciencemag.org
134.255.40.16 on Wed, 27 Mar 2024 02:07:31 +00:00
1003Perspectives.indd 43
U-index by household income
30
25
U-index (%)
20
15
10
5 ing depression and self-reported health, but
0
<30,000 30,000– 50,000– 100,000
50,000 100,000 and up
Household income ($)
U-index. The proportion of time that a rating of sad,
stressed, or pain exceeds happy. [Data from (17)]
sembled a “high-level” commission to ana-
lyze topics that could be informed by SWB
research, such as income inequality, and the
United Nations launched initiatives on well-
being and sustainability (e.g., the Interna-
tional Day of Happiness).
Earlier this year, the National Research
Council (NRC) of the U.S. National Acad-
emy of Sciences issued a report on hedonic
well-being and policy (1). This stressed the
importance of considering both happiness
and misery in SWB. It supported a broader
definition of hedonic well-being (called ex-
periential WB) that includes pain and other
forms of suffering, which the panel consid-
ered important for policy purposes. The U.S.
Bureau of Labor Statistics has incorporated
an affective module in the American Time
Use Survey (ATUS) in 2010 and 2012 to
combine SWB data (happy, pain, sad, stress,
tired, meaningful) with time-use informa-
tion during representative periods of the day.
The NRC report highlighted that, “The ATUS
SWB module is practical, stable, inexpensive,
and worth continuing…. Not only does the
ATUS SWB module support research; it also
generates information to help refine SWB
measures that may be considered for future
additions to official statistics” (1).
A striking feature of the OECD and NRC
reports is their optimism about future pros-
pects of SWB measures. Another recent re-
port on well-being and policy stated “we
should measure wellbeing more often and do
so comprehensively…. This would help gov-
ernments improve policies, companies raise
productivity, and people live more satisfying
lives” [(13) executive summary].
POLICY EVALUATION. Measures of SWB
have become key outcome measures in
program evaluation, often yielding deeper
insights than traditional measures. For ex-
ample, 10 to 15 years after the launch of the
Moving to Opportunities experiment, which
randomly offered some low-income families
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living in U.S. public housing the opportunity
to move to less-disadvantaged neighbor-
hoods, significant improvements were found
for components of SWB (distress, depression,
anxiety, and calmness) but not for economic
(employment and earnings) and educational
outcomes (14). Evaluations of the Oregon
Medicaid expansion found significant im-
provements in subjective outcomes, includ-
mixed results concerning physical health
(15). Because individuals and policy-makers
value subjective outcomes and because such
outcomes appear to be affected by major
policy interventions, measures of SWB are
likely to play an increasingly important role
in policy evaluation (16) and decisions.
Further advances in measurement and
the conceptual framework for combining
SWB measures are needed before suffi-
cient consensus can be reached to support
a comprehensive, official measure of SWB
that can be compared at the national level.
In the meantime, comparisons of various
components of SWB, with a focus on nega-
tive emotional experiences, strike us as a
reasonable agenda for national statistical
agencies and researchers. ■
RE FE RE N CES AN D N OT ES
1. A. A. Stone, C. Mackie, Eds., Subjective Well-Being:
Measuring Happiness, Suffering, and Other Dimensions
of Experience (National Research Council, National
Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2014).
2. R. C. Coghill, J. G. McHaffie, Y. F. Yen, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci.
U.S.A. 100, 8538 (2003).
3. S. Cohen, N. Hamrick, Brain Behav. Immun. 17, 407 (2003).
4. J. Smyth et al., Psychoneuroendocrinology 23, 353 (1998).
5. A. Steptoe, A. Shankar, P. Demakakos, J. Wardle, Proc. Natl.
Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 110, 5797 (2013).
6. A. Kapteyn, J. P. Smith, A. van Soest, Am. Econ. Rev. 97, 461
(2007).
7. L. Bartoshuk, Perspect. Psychol. Sci. 9, 91 (2014).
8. P. A. Ubel, Y. Peeters, D. Smith, Qual. Life Res. 19, 465
(2010).
9. M. Luhmann, W. Hofmann, M. Eid, R. E. Lucas, J. Pers. Soc.
Psychol. 102, 592 (2012).
10. D. Benjamin, O. Heffetz, M. Kimball, M. Szembrot, Am.
Econ. Rev. 104, 2698 (2014).
11. D. Kahneman, A. Krueger, J. Econ. Perspect. 20, 3 (2006).
12. OECD, “OECD guidelines on measuring subjective well-
being” (OECD Publishing, Paris, 2013).
13. G. O’Donnel et al., Wellbeing and Policy (The Legatum
Institute, London, 2013).
14. J. Ludwig et al., Am. Econ. Rev. 103, 226 (2013).
15. A. Finkelstein et al., Oregon Health Study Group, Q. J. Econ.
127, 1057 (2012).
16. E. Diener, Perspect. Psychol. Sci. 8, 663 (2013).
17. A. B. Krueger et al., in Measuring the Subjective Well-Being
of Nations: National Accounts of Time Use, A. B. Krueger,
Ed. (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2009).
ACK N OW LE D G M E N TS
A.B.K. was a member of the 2009 Sarkozy Commission and
the ONS Forum on Measuring National Well-Being. A.A.S.
chaired the National Academy of Science’s Panel on Measuring
Subjective Well-Being in a Policy-Relevant Framework. A.B.K.
and A.A.S. are members of the OECD High-Level Expert Group
on Multilevel Subjective Well-Being. Financial support from the
National Institute on Aging Roybal grant P30AG024928 and
grants R01AG042407, R01AG0406629, and P01AG05842 are
gratefully acknowledged.
10.1126/science.1256392
3 OCTOBER 2014 • VOL 346 ISSUE 6205 43
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