Measures of Well-being

As part of a continuing effort to understand the restructuring in the US, I investigated some social aspects of American society.  A preliminary investigation would indicate that economic strength is expressed in several ways, including the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index.  The index takes into consideration the following factors:  

• life evaluation (present life situation now and five years hence),
• physical health (an amalgam of nine factors e.g. obesity, disease burden), 
• emotional health (ten factors ranging from depression to learning or doing something interesting), 
• healthy behaviour (four lifestyle habits e.g. smoking, exercise frequency), 
• work environment (four factors e.g. job satisfaction, supervisor's treatment), and 
• basic access (access to thirteen necessities crucial to well-being e.g. enough money for food and shelter, community safety). 

On a national basis, there are several noteworthy trends:

• the resiliency of Americans as they struggle with the repercussions of one of the most serious economic depressions in modern history; 
• the decline in key metrics such as access to health insurance, attitudes toward the workplace; and,
• the rise of obesity and associated health problems.

The report advanced a few key demographic findings:

• that men have slightly higher states of well-being than women (middle-aged women with families are particularly stressed);
• the sense of well-being generally increases with age;
• Americans earning  more than $90k annually have the highest sense of well-being whereas those earning less the $20k have the lowest; 
• Asian Americans have the highest scores, followed by whites, hispanics and blacks;
• well-being scores for westerners are highest whereas southerners have the highest levels of obesity and associated medical issues

http://www.well-beingindex.com/findings.asp

Here is how the rankings pan out nationally by state.  Note the general congruity of well-being with trends in economic growth as reported in an earlier post. It is also noteworthy that the condition of lowest-ranked states is remarkably persistent i.e. low is always low.  In contrast, there is more dynamism in the more highly ranked states.  

http://www.well-beingindex.com/snapshotFindings.asp

A review of the economic well-being of cities is quite interesting as some cities in otherwise low-ranked states have high scores, especially those which more or less conform to Richard Florida's thesis.  In other instances such as Texas, the sheer size of the rural area masks the dynamism of cities such as Houston and Austin.  

The full report can be accessed here:http://www.well-beingindex.com