1 Introduction and Overview
The concept of wellbeing is an important theme in international academic research and in public policy agenda. Increasing governmental interests in measuring Subjective Wellbeing (SWB) (see, e.g., Hicks, Tinkler, & Allin, 2013; Stiglitz, Sen, & Fitoussi, 2010) and extensive interdisciplinary work on the subject over the last few decades attest to the importance of wellbeing (Blanchflower & Oswald, 2011; Linton, Dieppe, & Medina-Lara, 2016). The importance of wellbeing and its implications for various outcomes have been discussed in the fields of sociology, economics and psychology, among others. Studies across these fields also examine various determinants of wellbeing (see, e.g., Awaworyi Churchill & Mishra, 2017; Cummins, 2000; Diener & Chan, 2011; Diener & Oishi, 2000; Diener, Oishi, & Lucas, 2003; Diener, Sandvik, Seidlitz, & Diener, 1993; Frankel & Hewitt, 1994; Fredrickson, 2002; Hudson, 2006; Okun, Stock, Haring, & Witter, 1984; Winkelmann, 2009; Zhang & Zhang, 2015). These studies have examined, among others, factors such as income (Headey, Muffels, & Wooden, 2008; Headey & Wooden, 2004), social capital (Hooghe & Vanhoutte, 2011), mode of travel and transport poverty (Awaworyi Churchill & Smyth, 2019; Bergstad et al., 2011), consumption (Hudders & Pandelaere, 2012; Wang, Cheng, & Smyth, 2019), life events (Luhmann, Hofmann, Eid, & Lucas, 2012) and various socioeconomic factors (Haring-Hidore, Stock, Okun, & Witter, 1985; Van der Meer, 2014; Witter, Stock, Okun, & Haring, 1985), as determinants of SWB. Dolan, Peasgood, and White (2008) provide a useful review on the factors associated with wellbeing.
Sitting alongside the broader literature on the determinants of wellbeing are studies that focus on elderly people. Particularly, the theme of âageing wellâ in the gerontology and geriatrics literature (see, e.g., Aberdeen & Bye, 2013; Bowling, 2005; Cosco, Matthew Prina, Perales, Stephan, & Brayne, 2014) has increased interest in understanding the wellbeing of older people (Davey, 2007; Lau & Morse, 2008; Smith, Sim, Scharf, & Phillipson, 2004). The World Health Organizationâs (WHO) declaration of âageing wellâ as a global health priority coupled with the rapid increase in the relative number of older people worldwide lends support to the importance of understanding the determinants of cognitive function and wellbeing of older people.
With this book, we seek to build on the existing literature and expand our knowledge of wellbeing among the elderly. As many countries are faced with the challenges of an ageing population, further insights into what influences the wellbeing of the elderly are required to ensure appropriate policies are formulated for healthy ageing. Recent development in the field of wellbeing research as demonstrated in Bache and Scott (2018) places politics centre stage and provides fresh insights that aid our understanding of the significance of wellbeing. Specifically, Bache and Scott (2018) provide a unique collection of chapters that examine the politics of wellbeing and emphasize the state of research on wellbeing in public policy. However, none of the chapters provide insights into the wellbeing of older persons.
The purpose of this book then is to present a series of authoritative case studies that demonstrate how scientific research can discover important insights into the wellbeing of older persons, and so contribute to policies that can expand their capabilities for wellbeing. The case studies have been chosen to include examples from developed and developing countries, and they involve a variety of interdisciplinary research methods. Taken together, the chapters in this book demonstrate the rich opportunities for further research and policy development in this field. Findings from this book are also timely for policymakers across developed and emerging countries interested in promoting the wellbeing of the elderly.
2 The Concept of Wellbeing
The extant literature is yet to reach a consensus on what constitutes a general definition of wellbeing, although within the policy literature, indicators of wellbeing are often divided into subjective measures and objective measures. Regarding subjective measures, one strand of the literature has defined wellbeing as a personâs evaluation of their life with respect to emotion and cognition. This dimension of wellbeing reflects oneâs feelings and overall judgement about how satisfying life is. It represents the evaluative, reflective and cognitive aspect of wellbeing (Awaworyi Churchill & Mishra, 2017; Diener, 1984, 1994; Pinquart & Sörensen, 2000). Wellbeing, along these lines, also referred to as SWB (Diener, 1984), is argued to encompass a complex subjective state and has thus been measured using constructs such as self-reported life satisfaction, happiness and self-esteem, among others. The simplest measures of wellbeing in this tradition consist of single-item happiness and life satisfaction questions, which are often included in large-scale surveys. For instance, the question, âAll things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a wholeâ or its variants are routinely used as measures of wellbeing. Similar questions are used to capture feelings of happiness and depression, among others. Multi-item or composite versions of these measures have also been used in the literature. These include similarly worded questions that attempt to capture various dimensions of oneâs feelings and life (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985; Lucas, 2018; Lyubomirsky & Lepper, 1999). Objective measures have included constructs such as income, employment and health, among others.
The definition of wellbeing has also been driven by different perspectives of national and international policy drivers. For instance, from the perspective of international organizations such as the WHO, mental health is a component of wellbeing. In addition to the emotional dimension, wellbeing is said to also encompass how people feel physically, and thus, measures of physical health have also been used in the literature to measure wellbeing (Lindert, Bain, Kubzansky, & Stein, 2015). Others have considered wellbeing more broadly to refer to economic progress (Fleurbaey, 2009) while some studies suggest that expressions such as smiling (Harker & Keltner, 2001) are good indicators of wellbeing.
Studies in this book have examined wellbeing across various dimensions including general health, mental health, life satisfaction, happiness and other related composite...