Wellbeing policymakers need a better theoretical understanding of both wellbeing and the policy applications of it.
There is presently a groundswell of enthusiasm and advocacy for “wellbeing public policy” (WPP), especially as part of the movement to go “beyond GDP”. While recognising the merits of this proposal, this paper advocates for a cautious approach owing to our poor theoretical understanding of both wellbeing and the policy applications of it. There are certainly well-established empirical regularities in wellbeing data, many of which have policy implications. However, we presently lack a causal understanding of these empirical regularities, and wellbeing change more broadly. They could be explained by a number of mutually exclusive theoretical accounts. We also lack a sophisticated understanding of how these causal mechanisms interact with prevailing socioeconomic, institutional, and cultural structures. In the context of public policy, these issues raise the risk of policymakers naively pulling the wrong causal lever, with unintended consequences. This paper explains how these issues can undermine the robustness, generalisability, and persistence of wellbeing public policies, and outlines a research agenda to address the most pressing gaps in our knowledge.
Read the blog: Wellbeing public policy needs more theory
The project is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
