ABSTRACT
There seems to be an emerging consensus that “well-being” needs to be a primary focus of policy-making. This consensus appears to be explicit on an international level, including the OECD, the UN, the World Bank and the European Commission and Eurostat, and more prevalent in national politics in some countries, including e.g. France and the UK. Data and quantitative studies helped us a great deal to get closer to understand what makes us happy – by and large, and on average. The availability of large-scale cross-national datasets with information on subjective well-being enabled social scientists, including economists, to study the systematic patterns of happiness across countries, the relationship between circumstances (e.g. income, income growth, employment, social relationships, certain activities), institutions (e.g. direct democracy, churches) and self-reported well-being.
