In this article, we lay out the basic case for wellbeing as the goal of government. We briefly review the history of this idea, which goes back to the ancient Greeks and was the acknowledged ideal of the Enlightenment. We then discuss possible measures on which a wellbeing orientation could be...

Governments in liberal democracies pursue social welfare, but in many different ways. The wellbeing approach instead asks: Why not focus directly on increasing measured human happiness? Why not try to improve people's overall quality of life, as it is subjectively seen by citizens themselves?...