Well-being in focus of a quantitative economist

Abstract

Well-being may have a useful role in the measurement of consumer preferences and social welfare, if they can 
be done in a credible way. Economists have already made much use of well-being data Data on well-being have 
been used by economists to examine both macro- and micro-oriented questions.  
What are economists to make of this enterprise? Can well-being be measured by a survey, even approximately?  
In this paper, we discuss research on how individuals’ responses to well-being questions vary with their 
circumstances and other factors. We will argue that it is fruitful to distinguish among different conceptions of 
utility rather than presume to measure a single, unifying concept that motivates all human choices and registers 
all relevant feelings and experiences.  While  various  measures  of well being are useful for some purposes, it is 
important to recognize that well-being measures features of individuals’ perceptions of their experiences, not 
their  utility  as  economists  typically  conceive  of  it.   
Those perceptions are a more accurate gauge of actual feelings if they are reported closer to the time of, and in 
direct reference to, the actual experience. We conclude by proposing the U-index, a misery index of sorts, which 
measures the proportion of time that people spend in an unpleasant state, and has the virtue of not requiring a 
cardinal conception of individuals’ feelings.