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Measuring Eudaimonia With Meaning and Character

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30.04.2026

We need to pursue economic development and well-being promotion simultaneously.

Measurement of well-being can help inform research, practice, and policy.

We need global expansion of measures of meaning, relationships, and character.

One of the key insights from the Global Flourishing Study has been that while overall life evaluation and financial security are higher in high-income countries, other aspects of well-being, such as meaning, pro-social character, and relationships, are often higher in middle-income countries. This leads to critical questions as to how we can carry out economic development without compromising meaning, character, and relationships. One important, albeit challenging, step in this regard would be to measure such aspects of well-being on a truly global basis.

Notions of character have been central to understandings of well-being across time and traditions. In Western contexts, Aristotle—often cited but sometimes misinterpreted in the contemporary well-being literature—conceived of “flourishing” or “eudaimonia” as consisting centrally, but not exclusively, in action in accord with virtue. However, the importance of notions of........

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