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 character and virtues can be seen across philosophical, cultural, and religious traditions. Good character is constitutive of, and helps promote flourishing of oneself and others; though measurement, of course, is not straightforward.

In assessment efforts on well-being, a distinction is sometimes drawn between so-called “eudaimonic” approaches, focused more on fulfilling human potential, and hedonic or evaluative approaches, focused either on how happy or unhappy one feels, or on cognitive evaluations of one’s life or how satisfied one is with it. In the contemporary psychology literature, Carol Ryff argued for the distinction and put forward a eudaimonic understanding of psychological well-being grounded in notions of purpose, personal growth, self-acceptance, positive relations, autonomy, and environmental mastery; and others have followed her.

Both aspects of well-being are arguably important, and both should be assessed. However, what one assesses will depend on the context and the resources available. In some contexts, only a single-item assessment will be possible; in others, much more extensive measures may be desirable.

In thinking about well-being and in identifying the strengths and areas for growth of individuals and communities, to see who needs help and in what ways, data collection is essential. Measurement can also give rise to research insights that are important for policy and practice. For example, feeling like an outsider growing up is unsurprisingly related to overall lower life evaluation in adulthood, but has even more profound effects on happiness and life satisfaction. Or with regard to meaning, we find consistently across countries that childhood religious service attendance can powerfully give rise to a sense of meaning in adulthood. Or concerning relationships, while in most countries women reported higher relationship quality than men, in Kenya, the pattern is reversed. Or concerning character, while childhood adversity mostly uniformly predicts poorer outcomes, volunteering and charitable giving are among the few outcomes where there appear to be beneficial relationships, suggesting some capacity for personal growth amidst adversity. Such insights help us understand the distribution of well-being, and what might be done to promote it.

Later this year, we are intending to launch an annual nationally representative data collection in the United States on numerous aspects of flourishing, including assessments of national community well-being, and also love (love of neighbor and of enemy), to create a State of the Nation Flourishing Report. Many institutions are coming together to expand quantitative data collection efforts to include questions on life satisfaction, meaning, character, relationships, love, and others. A recent meeting at the Vatican called for such coordinated, spiritually richer assessment efforts, and this would be an important step forward in that regard.

With better measurement, policy, and collaboration, we can advance flourishing and the development of the whole person and the whole of society.

Symons, X., & VanderWeele, T. (2024). Aristotelian flourishing and contemporary philosophical theories of wellbeing. Journal of Happiness Studies, 25(1), 26.

VanderWeele, T.J., Johnson, B.R., et al. (2025). The Global Flourishing Study: Study profile and initial results on flourishing. Nature Mental Health, 3(6), 636-653.

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