Building Societies that Thrive, Not Just Survive: A Behavioral Science Perspective

Historically, we have judged the performance of nations with traditional economic and social indicators—think gross domestic product (GDP), national income, poverty rate, or life expectancy as the basis for measuring the welfare of societies. While these cold, hard numbers do provide important insights into societal health, they only tell part of the story about multifaceted societies. 

These metrics overlook important human factors, failing to capture how humans flourish within societies and the richness of human experience that leads to their holistic welfare. This begs the question, Are individuals within societies thriving or merely surviving?

In 2020, researchers recognized this gap, spurring a paradigm shift and leading to the development of a more holistic measure of societal welfare: the WELLBY (or Wellbeing-adjusted Life Year) approach. This revolutionary framework first appeared in the Handbook for Wellbeing Policymaking in the UK, and considers not only how long people live but also  how well they live.

This dynamic approach measures the cumulative well-being experienced by an individual over their lifetime, instead of capturing a single snapshot. To calculate WELLBYs, researchers assess self-reported life satisfaction (“Overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays?”) on a scale from 0 to 10 and multiply it by the number of years lived (average life expectancy). For instance, someone whose average life satisfaction over the years is a 5 and goes on to live for 80 years would have 400 WELLBYs. In 2019, Finland led the world with an average of 638.3 WELLBYs, followed by Switzerland, and Iceland.

But what exactly does this mean for us? How can we leverage this newfound understanding to maximize collective well-being? How can behavioral science guide individuals and inform public policies towards living long and living well?