Keywords

The First Measured Century

In ancient times, the shape of the earth was conceived as a disc; later, after revolutionary rethinking, it was transformed to a globe and still later, in a process of fine tuning, it has been corrected to an oblate spheroid. We cannot exclude the possibility that something similar could happen when social sciences start to measure global quality of life (QoL), which is obviously rather complex; and increasing experience in measurement could cause a change in the results. Our question is: what is the shape of quality of life of humankind or, similarly, what is the shape of human wellbeing on earth? We will concentrate on the recent centuries and we do not expect to find immediate consensus on a satisfactory answer to this question. But, if we do not begin to explore this question – insufficient as the results may be – we will never answer the question about the shape of global quality of life. There are many pieces which must be put together in order to construct a complete picture of global quality of life. The difficulties are unsolved; basic questions of conceptualization, operationalization and measurement among social scientists have not been agreed on. However, the available number of theoretical insights and empirical findings – brought together in this Global Handbook – will lead to a better, more comprehensive picture of global quality of life and wellbeing than we had before. This introduction is concerned with concepts and procedures which we use to describe global quality of life.

This handbook aims to present the main results of global quality of life and wellbeing research. Various topics are presented in the main research fields mainly by the senior leading authors form all continents. In addition, as an intergenerational recruitment is going on, there are already younger authors who are standing on the shoulders of the older ones. They stand for the future of quality of life research. Strong emphasis was placed on contributions from supranational organizations (for example, UN, OECD, WHO, ILO, EU, EC) and in most cases the cooperation was successful. We think that the worldwide success of quality of life and wellbeing research would increase if the different groups of researchers in local and supranational contexts would intensify their cooperation.

New Emerging Goals: Quality of Life and Wellbeing

We refer to the concepts of “quality of life” and “wellbeing” to focus our attention on the structures of the evolving world society. Both terms are often used interchangeably in the literature: quality of life in the sense of wellbeing, and wellbeing in the sense of quality of life.Footnote 1 Developed in the last century, they are significant goals in and for the ongoing century. The economist Pigou (1920) was the first who spoke of the “qualité de vie” (Pigou 1920) and it seems that the OECD (1972), especially, laid great emphasis on the concept of “social wellbeing”. The basic idea is much older and gained public and political awareness in certain circumstances: for example, the Prussian Emperor Frederick the Great claimed cheerfulness and happiness for his people. Today there is a variety of definitions for both, either in terms of societal goals and models or in measurement devices and criteria, some of which are shown in the procedures for QoL-research. The political significance of quality of life and wellbeing is to define a new direction for mankind’s long-term struggle for progress; since the beginning of human existence, people have striven to improve their living conditions and to develop their life styles. In past centuries, the struggles focused mainly on health (to prolong life), on wealth (to overcome poverty) and more recently on democracy (to secure human rights). Not least, health was defined as “a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”Footnote 2 as the WHO had already stated in 1948. Now there are many comprehensive concepts of quality of life and wellbeing, and in consequence, many empirical transformations of different models. Quality of life and wellbeing have become part of public debate as goals for people, and they are often included in the schedule of political thinking and planning. This Global Handbook provides a global perspective on the concepts and monitoring of quality of life and wellbeing.

Components of Quality of Life: Positive Wellbeing, Negative Wellbeing and Future Expectations

The idea behind the quality of life-concept is to concentrate social research on the positive side of being and it is often used as an own standing approach. Quality of life is broad differentiated and has as many components as the language offers. It is not the first time in the history of science something like this has happened, but the emphasis given to the positive side of wellbeing, previously a neglected approach, is rather new and has found many followers. However, the negative side of wellbeing cannot be overlooked as it was introduced in traditional health research as the three d’s: death, disease and disability. The early studies from the US on QoL and Wellbeing showed that, although positive and negative wellbeing are somewhat positively correlated, they are largely independent. Wellbeing and illbeing vary independently, and increasing wellbeing is not the same as reducing illbeing. Moreover, there are dozens of concepts not only for describing positive concepts of wellbeing but also many for negative wellbeing. Another measure of contrast, which is sometimes but not very often heeded, are future expectations like hopes and fears, or the related concepts of optimism and pessimism. A bad living situation accompanied by hope is something very different from a bad situation without the presence of hope (Gulyas 2013). A good living situation which is connected with fears for the future is not at all full wellbeing; it can, in fact, be a severe burden. Hopes and fears should not be neglected when the basic components of “wellbeing” are considered.

Positive and Negative Evaluations – Praise and Criticism

Quality of life research is closely related to evaluations, which are sometimes regarded with skepticism in the social sciences. Scientific approaches prefer often to be kept “value free” as far as possible. The quality of life approach wants to contribute to enlightenment and betterment of quality of life. Thus, it is often impossible to avoid evaluations when somebody is concerned with important questions about human beings. Sometimes it seems that the value basis of a quality of life approach is not taken seriously enough. The evaluations implicit in the research process have to be carefully laid bare; a debate should be carried about the adequate values within the research community. As is obvious, quality of life research is embedded in a highly consensual goal scenario and criteria such as ‘better’ or ‘worse’ are components of all the approaches. Historically, social scientists were concerned with negative features of society like disease, poverty and oppression with the aim of reducing these evils. On the other hand, positive goals like health, progress, democracy and wellbeing were developed and these goals are inevitable when people like knowing where to go in their future. Quality of life and wellbeing, when they emphasize positive models of society, need to elaborate a value basis for the “good society”.

Objective and Subjective Views on Wellbeing

In the broad literature on social reporting we find usually terms like subjective and objective approaches, dimensions and indicators. “Subjective” is a very clear term and concerns attitudes, opinions and values of people. “Subjective wellbeing” refers to all the various types of evaluations, both positive and negative, that people make of their lives. It includes reflective cognitive evaluations, such as life satisfaction and work satisfaction, interest and engagement, as well as affective reactions to life events, such as joy and sadness. Thus subjective wellbeing is an umbrella term for the different valuations people make regarding their lives, the events happening to them, their bodies and minds, and the circumstances in which they live. Accordingly, wellbeing and illbeing are “subjective” in the sense that they occur within a person. The term “subjective” expresses what comes out of the heads of the people who are monitored in a survey. “Even though the existing measures of subjective wellbeing are imperfect, useful conclusions can be drawn from them. All scientific measurement includes error. Thus, users of the measures should understand the biases and artifacts that are inherent in the measures, and, when possible, take steps to correct for them” (Diener 2006).

There are very few attempts to define “objective” in the sense of quality of life research but, as an inspection of the relevant literature shows, “objective” refers to those aspects of reality which are defined and recognized by scientific experts who have special competence for a certain problem scenario. Regularly the meaning of “objective” is in the sense what scientific experts approve. This is especially important for cases, where ordinary people, have difficulties to become aware of a problematic situation. Examples are the shrinking ozone-sphere, the atomic radiation after atomic accidents, the long-term increase in temperature, and so on. Usually experts with special skills and equipment define and monitor these dangers. Often people do not recognize these dangers even though they can have a profound hidden impact on their lives. Sometimes objective and subjective reality may coincide, sometimes they may differ in varying measures and there are many transfers and influences between them. But what is true in the world of scientific experts is often different from the world of non-scientists and what they believe.

Monitoring and Analyzing

In social sciences most colleagues do not like to repeat scientific measurement; they prefer to invent something new. At the same time, many colleagues claim to explore social change which is only possible if there is more than one measurement which uses the same procedure. Quality of life and wellbeing measurement took societal change and improvement as a primary goal. Time series not merely one-shot designs constitute the genuine program of quality of life research. The Global Handbook is concerned with monitoring quality of life, which needs time intervals, repeated measures and multiple indicators. In regard to analyzing data there is a tension between two claims: one is to use elaborate statistical methods to attain very sophisticated results, the other is to present intelligible indicators for a broad, educated public. This should help to explore, to give interpretations and explanations for their society. The idea of this handbook project is to bring together the different pieces of knowledge about the world society and to give as much room as possible to understandability but as much as necessary for the truth to complex methods.

Single Events and Social Structures

The information we receive each day are related mainly to events; these are the topics we hear about every day in different media. To regard structures and structural change is a more scientific view on reality and is related to persistent patterns of living. Of course, events and structures influence each other. Usually the question on information about events is posed in the media as: “What were the most significant events in the last fifty years?” The following list shows examples of good and bad events. However, these examples are not what we imagine as quality of life and wellbeing though they touch on it.

In the modern information society all events on the globe can be communicated easily, nevertheless some events are followed by overwhelming enthusiasm, others are more disputed.

  • 20 July 1969: The first landing of people on the moon

  • 9 November 1989: The Fall of the Berlin Wall and the End of the Cold War

  • 1 November 1993 European Union according to the treatment of Maastricht

There seem to be many more events in the minds of the people that were followed by disappointment and sadness:

  • 22 November 1963: The assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas

  • 1975: Banquiao Dam failure, where 23,100 people died from flood and disease

  • 26 April 1986: Nuclear catastrophe of Chernobyl with many deaths

  • 26 April 1989: Daulatpur-Salturia tornado which killed 1,300 people

  • July 1995: Srebrenica massacre where 8,000 Bosnian Muslims died

  • 11 September 2001: The four airplane attacks on the World Trade Center, New York

  • 26 December 2004: Indian Ocean tsunami which killed 240,000 people in 14 countries

  • 11 March 2011: Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster

  • 23 July 2011: Worst peacetime mass killing: 89 young people were shot in Norway

  • May 2012: Hunger crisis in Yemen, famine for 10,000,000 people

These events could also provide an answer to the question “What constitutes the quality of our societies?” On one hand they made many people happy, like the landing on the moon. On the other hand, they made most people unhappy and depressed, like the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas. But these events are not in the focus of the quality of life approach. There is a strong preference for representative numbers of people evaluating their lives, not for evaluating single events, even though they may influence the evaluation process. Following the fundamental postulate of democracy, each person should count just “one” in this process of evaluating life, wise philosophers the same as influential politicians. No authority is allowed to dominate the individual’s opinions and attitudes. In quality of life analysis the adequate sample of individual is the final arbiter of individual and collective circumstances.

Nations and Continents in the Global Society

Quality of life research focuses in the first place on individuals and their surroundings. But there is no hesitation in summing up quality of life in indicators for regions, nations and the world. These measurements are not in any sense metric measurements, but they give indications about the position a nation or a continent takes in the world context. There are so many biases in the national accounts and their public understanding that we are not allowed to see the needle in the eyes of one side without seeing the beam in the eyes of the other side. Nations and continents are of interest for quality of life measurement because they are political actors and have the chance to influence and improve bad conditions. The far-reaching fragmentation of the world in past centuries changed into the interdependence of nations and continents in the new century. In a certain sense, the world has grown together. We need to monitor quality of life on the whole globe because of the dependence between the areas. (Footnote: The huge migrations problems between North Africa and Europe and also Mexico and the US are examples for the social consequences of big QoL-biases).

The preceding century was once described in the US as the “The first measured century” (Ted Caplow), but this seems true for large parts of the world. Examples of comprehensive worldwide approaches are well-known handbooks which originate, on the one hand, from supranational organizations (e.g. the Diversity and Inequality World Economic and Social Survey from the United Nations) and on the other hand, from scientific research institutions (e.g. the Global Handbook on International Poverty Research). There are moreover, specialized worldwide approaches on society and economy using various terms for the quality of societies. “Measures of wellbeing and illbeing should be seen as part of the democratic process, in which citizens and their leaders are given information that can be useful in policy debates. Measures of subjective wellbeing and illbeing do not override other sources of information, but serve as one potentially useful type of knowledge that can be used to create better policies” (Diener 2006).

Diversity and Inequality

Quality of Life in the World is different, but “difference” can have very different significance. Diversity is related to the fact that nearly nothing is equal and many differences are perceived as acceptable and legitimate. Inequality is related to the fact that many differences among human beings are not justified and not tolerable for the same species. Inequalities are a highly influential source of conflicts within and between nations. That the Inuit’s live differently from people in Hong Kong is normal diversity. That the newborn children in the world have very different life expectations is a question of non-acceptable inequality. Often the difference between diversity and inequality is difficult to define, but in the final instance there is no objective difference; only what people decide is important. If people think that their homeland is unsatisfactory, they often try to leave it. Leaving on the one hand or protesting on the other are possible ways of reacting to inequality. They are far more evident in the countries where people are dissatisfied than in the countries where people are satisfied.

The main sections of the handbook are the following:

Long-Term Trends of World Social Development: Health, Wealth, Democracy (Part I)

Today, quality of life research can be characterized as an “explicit” term, concerned with the improvement of living conditions and perceived quality of life. In mankind’s history we often found an “implicit” interest in quality of life. This is true for a long tradition of improving health and increasing life expectation, of improving nutrition and upgrading the standard of living, as well as for the spreading of democracy and the establishment of political participation. In the chapter, “Demographic and Health Development in the Long Run” (Chap. 2) by Frank Swiaczny, some of the main demographic topics of global long-term research are shown. The improvement of nutrition and the partial overcoming of poverty contributed to people’s health and longevity. There were components of increasing living standards in the course of industrialization investigated by Herman de Jong who considered “Living Standards in a Modernizing World – A Long-Run Perspective on Material Wellbeing and Human Development” (Chap. 3). The main disturbances of human development were related to conflicts and wars, which have to be under control before people can begin to think about realizing quality of life. Mathias Boes and Hinrich Rosenbrock give an overview of these pre-conditions for quality of life in their article, “Wars and Violence Through the Centuries” (Chap. 4). Progress has been made insofar as wars and conflicts are under better control nowadays but they are still serious challenges for world politics. Beyond these ever-during burdens, the continual struggle of mankind for democracy and participation is seen as a step to improving the human lot. Quality of life – in the eyes of the people – can only be acceptable if democratic conditions exist where people can make up their minds about quality of life without pressure. Robert K. Schaeffer studies the “The Worldwide Spread of Democracy” (Chap. 5), which is a pre-condition for monitoring quality of life from the people’s view. Before quality of life became a manifest societal goal there were partial goals such as a long and healthy life, or living peacefully in decent economic conditions. These components improved human development in the long run but the chapters show that there was no smooth upgrading and times of regression, crisis and war in varying amounts accompanied the development of mankind. This is the background for the modern quest for quality of life.

Monitoring Global Wellbeing: Objective and Subjective Measurement (Part II)

Once the goal of quality of life has been articulated, usually the next step is to measure and monitor wellbeing. Old approaches are analyzed critically and new, more or less different approaches are developed. Traditional approaches used measures based on national accounts like Gross National Income (GNI) or Gross Domestic Product (GDP). National economies are presented competitively in the media and an increase of 1뭱% of the GNI is often regarded as a success. However, this approach does not measure the welfare of people at all, especially because it does not reflect the devastation of tsunamis, tornados, earthquakes, floods, climate change and nuclear catastrophes people had to deal with in the last decade. The significance of the conventional national accounts are described in the chapter “Global Economic Accounting and its Critics” (Chap. 6) by Jürgen Faik.

With regard to alternative approaches, the difference between objective and subjective approaches is fundamental and relies on the difference between people’s awareness and expert evaluations. For a long time, the Human Development Index, which is an objective indicator, has been used as the main index in UN publications. This is an official approach which gives substantial weight to educational performance but also includes components of economic accounts as Kenneth C. Land describes in his chapter on “The Human Development Index” (Chap. 7) (HDI). Included in this chapter is a statement of the United Nations (UN) about their social reporting activities concerning human development.Footnote 3 An important difference between objective indicators is the number of components, which they include. An example with a broad battery of indicators is “The Index of Social Progress” (Chap. 8), which is presented in the chapter by its inventor, Richard J. Estes. This weighted index of social progress is built on 20 sub-indices. As this shows, objective indicators can be incorporated in very different approaches.

Subjective indicators are again fundamentally different, depending on the question of whether there is one indicator, like satisfaction with life, as presented in the chapter “The Overall Satisfaction With Life” (Chap. 9) by Ruut Veenhoven. Often the measurement is an 11-point scale with steps between 0 and 10. But the one-dimensional measurement is sometimes criticized and multi-dimensional measurement is preferred, as discussed in the chapter by Robert A. Cummins and Melissa K. Weinberg, “Multi-Item Measurement of Subjective Wellbeing” (Chap. 10). Multidimensional measurement of satisfaction can be more or less differentiated. Another type of subjective approach is the “affect balance scale” insofar as the measurement space includes explicit positive and negative items. “The Affect Balance Scale” (Chap. 11), where the items run from plus 5 to minus 5, is explained by its inventor, Norman Bradburn. We have no consensual measures for satisfaction, affect and quality of life but there are a number of approaches in the scientific literature – many more as are presented here. The course of time and the scientific debate will decide which one will survive successfully.

Socio-economic Structures of Wellbeing (Part III)

Though the concepts of quality of life and wellbeing have been developed in contrast to economic concepts, the relationship has never been broken. Socio-economic aspects of wellbeing show that quality of life has a firm foothold in the economy and that it would be a mistake to separate these principles in total. A notable global structural problem is the question whether economic growth improves people’s quality of life. The answer seems to look backward at the long history of humanity, but in recent decades it has become a critical debate. This question has been tested in respect of the different conditions in developed and developing countries. This key question is still debated and Richard A. Easterlin’s review, presented in his article “Happiness and Economic Growth” (Chap. 12) seriously doubts that economic growth is always producing happiness. Closely related is the question of “Wellbeing and Sustainable Consumption” (Chap. 13) from Monica Guillen and Harold Langford Wilhite because sustainability is threatened by economic growth. Despite far-reaching economic growth, the persistent burden of mankind remains severe poverty. Mariano Rojas points this out in his chapter, “Poverty and People’s Wellbeing” (Chap. 14). Mankind has made steps forward in fighting poverty but the problem has not been solved at all. Another connection between questions of economic success and quality of life exists in the area of employment. Employment is significant for people’s wellbeing as the International Labour Office states in the chapter “Wellbeing and the Labor Market from a Global View – It’s not Just the Money” (Chap. 15). “Decent work” functions in this area as an ILO-concept in the context of quality of life welfare. A similar problem is examined in the chapter on unpaid labor which, worldwide, is an important means of quality of life. Maria-Angeles Duran analyzes this in “The Contribution of Unpaid Work to Global Wellbeing” (Chap. 16). It is a very limited view that regards the market as the only model for the production of goods and services. If the market is seen as the production model for goods and services, it would be a great mistake to neglect the production of private households (household production), or of the intermediate associations and the state (collective goods). Michael Dauderstädt demonstrates this in his chapter on “Welfare Production and Quality of Life” (Chap. 17). It is rather irritating how often social scientists define the market as the productive institution par excellence. At the same time they neglect the immense performance of households with their private goods and intermediate organizations and the state with their collective goods.

Social Structures of Wellbeing (Part IV)

National and continental populations are constituted of social structures in the sense of different population groups characterized by typical constellations of greater or lesser quality of life. Only some of these are considered in the following part on social structures of wellbeing. In contemporary societies, a growing number of people are living alone though it is agreed that human beings are basically collective beings. What is the meaning of quality of life for such people? This is the topic of Liz Eckermann’s chapter “Living Alone and Living Together – Their Significance for Wellbeing” (Chap. 18). Another fundamental division of life is between young and old people. Their quality of life is investigated in two contributions: First, “Worldwide View of Child Wellbeing” (Chap. 19) by Vicki C. Lamb and Kenneth C. Land and second, “Global Perspective on Quality in Later Life” (Chap. 20) by Fermina Rojo-Perez, Gloria Fernandez-Mayoralas and Vicente Rodriguez-Rodriguez. Another important group are the migrants who leave their home country and need to be integrated in a host society. This category is considered by David Bartram in his article, “Migration and Quality of Life in the Global Context” (Chap. 21).

Wellbeing in Nations and Continents (Part V)

People in history have divided the world into continents on the basis of geographic-geological criteria, but continents and their nations go far beyond these criteria. Nations are built according to historical and political characteristics and they are associated with many typical components of living conditions and perceived quality of life. Nations and continents incorporate their own type of quality of life and have their individual features. Social reporting of continents and nations has to be built on the selective pattern of each region.

Africa is the continent where conflicts are most virulent and massive migration processes are going on. This is due to deficits in quality of life, as Habib Tiliouine shows in his chapter on North Africa, “Quality of Life and Wellbeing in North Africa – Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia” (Chap. 22). The south of Africa is comprehensively covered in the article on the sub-Sahara, “Shadow of the Sun – The Distribution of Wellbeing in Sub-Saharan Africa” (Chap. 23) by Benjamin J. Roberts, Steven L. Gordon, Valerie Møller and Jaré Struwig. Both chapters make it clear that Africa is the most problematic continent with a difficult path to peace, with poor standards of living and troubled conditions of democratic participation.

Alphabetically, America is the next continent and shows deep divisions between north, middle and south. The north is fully represented by the chapter from Simon Langlois on “Wellbeing in Canada” (Chap. 24) and Rhonda Philips on “Quality of Life in the United States” (Chap. 25). The United States can look back on the longest tradition of QoL-research. Latin America is represented by just one country. Martin Tetaz, Pablo Schiaffino and Miguel Braun contributed the article: “Argentina’s Economic Development and Life Satisfaction Revisited – 1984–2012” (Chap. 26), but social reporting in Latin America is increasing and more information will be available soon. That life satisfaction is – compared to the worldwide level – quite high, is surprising because of the bad living conditions. The modes of measuring QoL on different continents are always peculiar and often unique.

The huge sub-continent of Asia is represented by Takashi Inoguchi’s chapter, “Multiple Modes of Wellbeing in Asia” (Chap. 27). It will be clear to the reader that the style of monitoring wellbeing leads to unknown and unconventional views of a continent. Unfortunately, although 22 countries of Asia are included, a large number is missing.

“The Distribution of Quality of Life in Australia” (Chap. 28) is analyzed along the lines used in USA and Europe by Melissa K. Weinberg and Robert A. Cummins. Due to the special multifaceted conditions in Oceania this area is not regarded.

In addition, many social reports on Europe are provided, often restricted to the European Union. Here we find the comprehensive article, “An Overview of Quality of Life in Europe” (Chap. 29), written by Daphne Ahrendt, Hans Dubois and Erika Mezger. After this overview about the quality of life in Europe, two further examples present more detailed information about the extremes at the top and the bottom: “Wellbeing in Slovakia” (Chap. 30) from Josef Džuka covers a poorer country as opposed to one of the richer countries in the article, “From Dissonance to Wellbeing and Adaption? Quality of Life in Switzerland Over the Past Decades” (Chap. 31) by Christian Suter, Katja Iglesias and Jehane Moussa. These articles show the kind of discrepancies that exist within a continent and between continents, as well the social consequences of these discrepancies.

Finally we add the Arctic as an example of the difficulties, which are inherent in a uniform concept of quality of life. This region is covered in the article “Living Conditions and Perceived Quality of Life Among Indigenous Peoples in the Arctic” (Chap. 32) by Birger Poppel. Most interesting is that the Arctic attracts people despite an extreme lack of comfort. Hence satisfaction with life does not necessarily come with congenial living conditions.

Thus, the Global Handbook provides comprehensive reports for nearly the whole continents (Australia, Asia, Europe); one continent has been divided in two parts (Africa) and the American continent is represented by three countries: Canada, USA, Argentina. A multi-continental study on the Arctic region is also included.

Of course, quality of life and wellbeing is monitored in many countries. The Global Handbook contains a small number of selected countries which are of special significance as models for rich and poor examples of the continent. The number of potential countries for quality of life and wellbeing research is fairly high and will be the subject of varying approaches of social monitoring.

Social Reporting on Wellbeing in Supranational Organizations (Part VI)

Supranational and international organizations play a special role in social reporting on a global, continental, supranational and national level. It is a central aspect of globalization that global actors are engaged in shaping the world’s order and influencing the world’s living conditions and perceived quality of life. In consequence, the need to measure and monitor societal features has emerged. Social scientific divisions in the supranational organizations developed, influencing the international discussion, though the cooperation between supranational institutions and university research was not very deep.

Most influence on the international debates came from the OECD who has organized and published wellbeing-research since the 1970s. Romina Boarini belonging to the scientists at the OECD, describes in her contribution “Wellbeing and Quality of Life Reporting at the OECD” (Chap. 33). Similar significance was achieved by the United Nations and its sub-organizations. A short statement of the UN-scientists is presented in the chapter on the Human Development Index. As a specialized agency of the UN, the World Health Organization focused its activities on health-related measures and acted as a proponent of the health-related interests of people. In “The World Health Organization – The Case for Measuring Wellbeing in Europa” (Chap. 34), Claudia Stein and Ritu Sadana explain this approach. On each continent there has been a certain degree of joint endeavor to monitor societies on the continent, often in a comparative approach. Especially in the Europe Union there has been a far-reaching response to social reporting for the public as shown in “Social Reporting of the European Union – Description of the Organization” (Chap. 35) by Marleen de Smedt. Another European Organization, the European Council, which contains many more countries than the EU, also worked wellbeing concepts, as Gilda Farell reports in “Wellbeing for All – The Aim of Social Cohesion – Developing the Approach at the Council of Europe” (Chap. 36). Supranational Organizations were also present in sections of special perspectives: the International Labour Office is concerned with employment and decent work and the tripartite agency of the EU, Eurofound gives an overview of quality of life in Europe.

Basic Dimensions of Global Wellbeing (Part VII)

The final part of this Global Handbook is related to fundamental questions of conceptualization, measurement, monitoring and analyzing wellbeing and quality of life. First there is the methodological problem of measuring and assessing wellbeing and quality of life of nations which is postulated step by step by Filomena Maggino in her chapter “Assessing the Subjective Wellbeing of Nations” (Chap. 37). Rules are defined but many researchers choose their own ways. Yukiko Uchida, Yuji Ogihara and Shintaro Fukushima investigate the cultural share in defining and analyzing wellbeing and quality of life from a Japanese point of view in the chapter “Cultural Construal of Wellbeing – Theories and Empirical Evidence” (Chap. 38).

Authors from the different cultures in this Global Handbook demonstrate that research questions and research procedures have their cultural accent which needs some effort to understand each other. Towards the end of the Global Handbook, fundamental dimensions of perceived quality of life are considered. As we know from the first great investigations on quality of life and wellbeing, positive and negative wellbeing are not the same dimension; they are partially independent. “Satisfaction and Happiness – The Bright Side of Quality of Life” (Chap. 39) is considered through the lenses of positive psychology from Louis Tay, Lauren Kuykendall and Ed Diener. On the other side, “Worries and Pains – The Dark Side of Quality of Life” (Chap. 40) is Wolfgang Glatzer’s investigation into human suffering. Happiness and pain are present among many people at the same time, but positive and negative wellbeing together does not provide the full state of wellbeing. In addition, hopes and fears are dimensions which have to be considered for people’s wellbeing. Jennifer Gulyas explores this in her article “Hopes and Fears – Future Views of Quality of Life” (Chap. 41). People with hope and those without are of different subjective wellbeing, given all other components of wellbeing are equal. Whether people look optimistically or pessimistically into the future is part of their wellbeing and hence a crucial component for their future wellbeing. If wellbeing and quality of life is regarded comprehensively, then positive and negative components as well as hopes and fears are inevitable.

The philosophy behind this handbook is the desire to balance wellbeing and quality of life in a world view based on a long-term perspective. At the core, various approaches of wellbeing are presented with regard to the objective measurements of experts and the subjective perceptions of the world’s people. The hope is to attain two kinds of outcomes: negative statements and criticism should produce activities to reduce misery and pain. But quality of life points out that we need positive concepts of wellbeing and the experience of them to know where to go. Obviously the northern European welfare states are relatively successful examples of a good quality of life, but they are also confronted with catastrophes. We consider a broad selection of nations and continents. We try to give a global view of the main perspectives of people’s wellbeing: on the one side, satisfaction and happiness; on the other side, worries and pain, and on the third, their modification by hopes and fears.

Astonishingly it seems evident that the world population of about seven million people is overwhelmingly satisfied. Many people doubt this because there is so much evidence of misery and pain. Of course satisfaction exists despite a lot of illbeing. A serious problem emerges because dissatisfied and suffering people are concentrated in certain parts of the globe. This leads to tensions and often conflicts. The question is if the wealthy part of mankind tries to react with solidarity or if they choose an exclusion strategy.