In the past decades, a great interest has emerged in understanding the nature of people’s well-being beyond consumption opportunities. It is widely believed that happiness research based on self-reports on people’s satisfaction with life has made a significant contribution to this...

Increasingly, psychological research has indicated that an individual’s personality changes across the lifespan. We aim to better understand personality change by examining if personality change is linked to striving towards fulfilment, as suggested by existential–humanistic theories of...

This paper is dedicated to methodological issues related to the construction of social indicators of well-being for sustainable territories. These new indicators could be used to improve the understanding of economic realities and also to assist public decision-making in order to redesign public...

The paper presents three empirical studies designed to extend the test of the construct validity of the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS) among Portuguese students. In the first study, the responses of 461 elementary and secondary education students were submitted to a principal component...

The economic crisis to hit a number of countries, particularly European Union countries, since late 2007 has triggered many unpleasant effects that are still being felt today. Faced with such a situation, the question arises as to whether the negative economic consequences of the crisis have...

We re-examine the concept of beta-convergence in living standards across countries during the period 1980–2012. In this study, well-being is assessed using the Human Development Index (HDI) which considers income aspects as well as social indicators, thus reflecting the multidimensional nature...

This paper reconstructs a concept of harmony in two Chinese societies: Hong Kong and China, by utilizing the measures and empirical data of harmony surveys. The data collected in harmony surveys reveal people’s perceptions of social harmony in the two places. Meta-analysis of the harmony data...

We analyze survey data from Bosnia and Herzegovina collected after the 1992–1995 Bosnian War to answer the following questions: How does individual subjective well-being evolve in the post-conflict period? Does exposure to conflict have an important role in determining one’s post-war...

Using pooled cross-sectional data from the first two waves of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, we address the question of whether and how parenthood and marital status are associated with various dimensions of elders’ well-being, which we define by elements of the...

Inconsistencies in comparisons of older parents’ well-being with that of older, childless adults may be resolved by considering the separate effects of sons and daughters on parents. The hypothesis was that older parents of only daughters have greater life satisfaction, more satisfying...