Using subjective wellbeing: Measuring wellbeing and cost-effectiveness analysis

A new discussion paper from the 'Measuring Wellbeing' series produced by the What Works Centre for Wellbeing - designed to ignite discussion about measuring wellbeing.

The piece suggests that

• "Life-satisfaction is the best common currency for policy-makers to use when comparing the outcomes of different interventions. But other measures can be useful, for example to capture finer detail in certain domains.
• When necessary, other measures can be converted into life-satisfaction.
• We give more weight to raising life-satisfaction when it is low than when it is high.
• Policies should be evaluated in terms of the wellbeing improvement (weighted for inequality) per unit of net expenditure from the policy-maker’s budget."