Couertsy: cdc.gov

Well-being is a positive outcome that is meaningful for people and for many sectors of society, because it tells us that people perceive that their lives are going well. Good living conditions (e.g., housing, employment) are fundamental to well-being. Tracking these conditions is important for public policy. However, many indicators that measure living conditions fail to measure what people think and feel about their lives, such as the quality of their relationships, their positive emotions and resilience, the realization of their potential, or their overall satisfaction with life—i.e., their “well-being.”^{1, 2} Well-being generally includes global judgments of life satisfaction and feelings ranging from depression to joy.^{3, 4}

• Why is well-being useful for public health?
• How does well-being relate to health promotion?
• How is well-being defined?
• How is well-being measured?
• What are some findings from these studies?
• What are some correlates and determinants of individual-level well-being?
• What are some correlates of well-being at the national level?
• What is the difference between health-related quality of life, well-being, flourishing, positive mental health, optimal health, happiness, subjective well-being, psychological well-being, life satisfaction, hedonic well-being, and other terms that exist in the literature?
• What is CDC doing to examine and promote well-being?

Why is well-being useful for public health?

• Well-being integrates mental health (mind) and physical health (body) resulting in more holistic approaches to disease prevention and health promotion.⁶
• Well-being is a valid population outcome measure beyond morbidity, mortality, and economic status that tells us how people perceive their life is going from their own perspective.^{1, 2, 4, 5}
• Well-being is an outcome that is meaningful to the public.
• Advances in psychology, neuroscience, and measurement theory suggest that well-being can be measured with some degree of accuracy.^{2, 7}
• Results from cross-sectional, longitudinal and experimental studies find that well-being is associated with^{1, 8}:
  • Self-perceived health.
  • Longevity.
  • Healthy behaviors.
  • Mental and physical illness.
  • Social connectedness.
  • Productivity.
  • Factors in the physical and social environment.
• Well-being can provide a common metric that can help policy makers shape and compare the effects of different policies (e.g., loss of greenspace might impact well-being more so than commercial development of an area).^{4, 5}
• Measuring, tracking and promoting well-being can be useful for multiple stakeholders involved in disease prevention and health promotion.

Well-being is associated with numerous health-, job-, family-, and economically-related benefits.⁸ For example, higher levels of well-being are associated with decreased risk of disease, illness, and injury; better immune functioning; speedier recovery; and increased longevity.^9-13 Individuals with high levels of well-being are more productive at work and are more likely to contribute to their communities.^{4, 14}

Previous research lends support to the view that the negative affect component of well-being is strongly associated with neuroticism and that positive affect component has a similar association with extraversion.^{15, 16} This research also supports the view that positive emotions—central components of well-being—are not merely the opposite of negative emotions, but are independent dimensions of mental health that can, and should be fostered.^{17, 25} Although a substantial proportion of the variance in well-being can be attributed to heritable factors,^{26, 27} environmental factors play an equally if not more important role.^{4, 5, 28}