Viewpoint: Measuring and understanding subjective well-being

Increasing attention is being paid in academic, policy, and public arenas to subjective measures of well-being. This promising trend represents a shift towards measuring positive outcomes in psychology and greater realism in the study of economic behaviour. We describe the main measures of subjective well-being (SWB) and provide examples of policy-relevant research findings, including new accountings of the differences in individual-level SWB assessments around the world and across Canada. These suggest a consistent pattern of life circumstances linked to SWB and highlight the importance of social factors whose role has otherwise been hard to quantify in income-equivalent terms.