Vienna Yearbook of Population Research 2021, Vol. 19

This introduction to the 2021 special issue of the Vienna Yearbook of PopulationResearch explores demographic perspectives on human wellbeing across time andspace. While the idea of relating demographic parameters to wellbeing has beenaround for a while, a more concrete research agenda on this topic has only recentlygained momentum. Reviewing the research presented in this volume, we show howexisting theoretical concepts and methodological tools in demography can be usedto make substantial advances in the study of wellbeing. We also touch upon themany challenges researchers face in defining and measuring wellbeing, with themost important debate being about whether the focus should be on objective orsubjective measures. The studies discussed here define wellbeing as health andmortality; as income, education or other resources; as happiness or life satisfaction;or as a combination thereof. They cover wellbeing in historical and contemporarypopulations in high- and low-income countries, and also point out important barriersto research on wellbeing, including the lack of good quality data in many regions.Finally, we highlight the value of considering population heterogeneities when studying wellbeing in order to identify population subgroups who are likely to fallbehind, which can have important policy implications.

Keywords: wellbeing, Demography, subjective and objective measures, population heterogeneities

In 2008, the EU Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing (EIP-AHA) set a target of an increase of two healthy life years by 2020. More recently, in 2018, the UK Government set a target to “ensure people can enjoy at least 5 extra healthy, independent years of life by 2035, while narrowing the gap between the experience of the richest and poorest”. This paper reviews the progress the EU member states have made towards meeting this target, and what the UK can learn from their experiences. I conclude that, although the EU target is likely to be reached, the gap in healthy life years between the member states has increased. Past trends in and projections of disability-free life expectancy in England suggest that it will be diffcult to achieve an increase of five healthy and independent years of life by 2035.

Keywords: health expectancy, life expectancy, healthy life years, social inequality, European Union

Demography studies the characteristics of populations. One such characteristic is well-being: this was the subject of the 2019 Wittgenstein Conference. Here, I discuss how objective well-being domains can be summarised to produce an overall well-being score, and how taking self-reported (subjective) well-being into account may help in this effort. But given that there is more than one type of subjective wellbeing score, we would want to know which one is “best”. We would also need to decide whose well-being counts, or counts more than that of others. Finally, I briefly mention the potential role of adaptation and social comparisons in the calculation of societal well-being.

Keywords: subjective well-being, Demography, measurement, policy

This note considers the role that demography as a discipline can play in addressing some of the key questions in the context of human wellbeing and sustainable development. Starting with the wellbeing function of sustainability science that tries to explain an indicator of human wellbeing as being determined by a set of capitals and explanatory factors, it gives an example of how the constituents of such a wellbeing indicator can be combined based on a demographic approach. It also highlights how a broadened view of demographic methodology that goes beyond the conventional focus on age and sex alone can help to make demography more relevant for studying the key challenges of humanity.

Keywords: sustainability science, multi-dimensional demography, years of good life, wellbeing indicator

The current practise of cost-benefit analysis inWestern countries consists of a collectionof various incompatible ideas and methodologies to obtain replicable numbersfor the costs and benefits of major public spending plans. This paper describesthe main elements of the dominant methodology, which combines consumer andproducer surplus, price-taking, government-inputs-as-outputs, hedonic pricing ofexternalities, and the issue-specific use of partial or general equilibrium thinking.The paper then discusses how that methodology can be augmented and partiallyreplaced by looking at how prospective policies would change the total number ofWELLBYs (life satisfaction-adjusted years of life) of the population. The abilityof the WELLBY methodology to address complex externalities is illustrated by theEasterlin Discount, which is a proposed reduction factor of 75% on all estimates ofprivate consumption benefits to offset the envy caused in others.

Keywords: cost-effectiveness, wellbeing, consumer surplus, Easterlin Discount, public advocacy

Subjective well-being (SWB) is an overall evaluation of the quality of a person’slife from his or her own perspective. One common method of assessing thisconstruct requires respondents to think about their life as a whole and to providea “global” evaluation that summarizes across life domains or affective experiencesover extended periods of time. The validity of these global measures has beenchallenged, however; and experiential measures, which ask respondents to reporton their momentary evaluative experiences many times over a constrained timeperiod, have been suggested as a more valid alternative. This paper addresses theempirical evidence for one important challenge to global measures: the possibilitythat temporarily salient information overwhelmingly influences global judgments,reducing their reliability and validity. This paper critiques prior evidence for thischallenge and presents new concerns about the assumed validity of the proposedalternative: experiential measures.

Keywords: subjective well-being, life satisfaction, measurement, experience sampling method, day reconstruction method

It has often been recognised that the average height of a population is influencedby the economic, social and environmental conditions in which it finds itself, andthis insight has inspired a generation of historians to use anthropometric data toinvestigate the health and wellbeing of past populations. This paper reviews someof the main developments in the field, and assesses the extent to which heightremains a viable measure of historical wellbeing. It explores a number of differentissues, including the nature of human growth; the impact of variations in diet andexposure to disease; the role of ethnicity; the relationships between height, mortalityand labour productivity; and the “social value” of human stature. It concludes that,despite certain caveats, height has retained its capacity to act as a “mirror” of theconditions of past societies, and of the wellbeing of their members.

Keywords: anthropometrics, height, Health, wellbeing, standard of living

Per capita GDP has limited use as a well-being indicator because it does notcapture many dimensions that imply a “good life”, such as health and equality ofopportunity. However, per capita GDP has the virtues of being easy to interpret andto calculate with manageable data requirements. Against this backdrop, there is aneed for a measure of well-being that preserves the advantages of per capita GDP,but also includes health and equality. We propose a new parsimonious indicatorto fill this gap, and calculate it for 149 countries. This new indicator could beparticularly useful in complementing standard well-being indicators during theCOVID-19 pandemic. This is because (i) COVID-19 predominantly affects olderadults beyond their prime working ages whose mortality and morbidity do notstrongly affect GDP, and (ii) COVID-19 is known to have large effects on inequalityin many countries.

Keywords: beyond GDP, Well-Being, Health, inequality, human development, lifetime income, COVID-19

Human well-being at the national aggregate level is typically measured by GDPper capita, life expectancy or a composite index such as the HDI. A more recentalternative is the Years of Good Life (YoGL) indicator presented by Lutz et al.(2018; 2021). YoGL represents a refinement of life expectancy in which only thoseperson-years in a life table are counted that are spent free from material (1), physical(2) or cognitive limitations (3), while being subjectively perceived as satisfying (4).In this article, we present the reconstruction of YoGL to 1950 for 140 countries.Since life expectancy – as reported by the UN World Population Prospects in fiveyearlysteps – forms the basis of our reconstruction, the presented dataset is alsoavailable on a five-yearly basis. In addition, like life expectancy, YoGL can beflexibly calculated for different sub-populations. Hence, we present separate YoGLestimates for women and men. Due to a lack of data, only the material dimensioncan be reconstructed based directly on empirical inputs since 1950. The remainingdimensions are modelled based on information from the more recent past.

Keywords: years of good life, well-being indicator;, human development, survival, basic needs

Mortality in Algeria has declined significantly since the country declared its independence in 1962. This trend has been accompanied by improvements in data quality and changes in estimation methodology, both of which are scarcely documented, and may distort the natural evolution of mortality as reported in official statistics. In this paper, our aim is to detect these methodological and data quality changes by means of the visual inspection of mortality surfaces, which represent the evolution of mortality rates, mortality improvement rates and the male-female mortality ratio over age and time. Data quality problems are clearly visible during the 1977–1982 period. The quality of mortality data has improved after 1983, and even further since the population census of 1998, which coincided with the end of the civil war. Additional inexplicable patterns have also been detected, such as a changing mortality age pattern during the period before 1983, and a changing pattern of excess female mortality at reproductive ages, which suddenly appears in 1983 and disappears in 1992.

Keywords: mortality, Algeria, Lexis map, data quality, methodological change, vital statistics

Women live longer but can expect to spend more years in poorer health compared to men. In the context of population aging and declining gender ratios at older ages, there are increasing concerns about how this disadvantage in female health will affect well-being and sustainability, particularly in developing regions that are rapidly aging. Our study compares differences in health expectancies at older ages for men and women in order to assess gender disparities in health.We use data from the Survey on Health, Well-Being, and Aging in Latin America and the Caribbean to decompose the gender gap into total and age-specific mortality and disability effects in seven cities in the region. Our results show that at older ages, higher disability rates among women reduced the gender gap in healthy life expectancy by offsetting women’s mortality advantage. In addition, we find that women’s mortality advantage decreased almost systematically with age, which reduced the contribution of the mortality effect to the gender gap at older ages. Although the gender gap in health followed a similar pattern across the region, its decomposition into mortality and disability effects reveals that there was substantial variation among cities. Thus, across the region, the implications of the gender gap in health for well-being vary, and the policies aimed at reducing this gap should also differ.

Keywords: gender gap, healthy life expectancy, disability, older ages, Latin America and the Caribbean, decomposition

There is increasing evidence that wellbeing is unequally distributed across sociodemographicgroups in contemporary societies. However, less is known about thedivergence across social groups of trajectories of wellbeing across age groups.This issue is of great relevance in contexts characterised by changing populationstructures and growing imbalances across and within generations, and in whichensuring that everyone has the opportunity to have a happy and healthy life courseis a primary welfare goal. In this study, we investigate wellbeing trends in Franceand Switzerland across age, gender, and socioeconomic status groups. We use twohousehold surveys (the Sant´e et Itin´eraires Professionnels and the Swiss HouseholdPanel) to compare the unfolding inequalities in health and wellbeing across agegroups in two rich countries. We view wellbeing as multidimensional, followingthe literature highlighting the importance of considering different dimensions andmeasures of wellbeing. Thus, we investigate a number of outcomes, includingdifferent measures of physical and mental health, as well as of relational wellbeing,using a linear regression model and a linear probability model. Our findings showinteresting country and dimension-specific heterogeneities in the development ofhealth and wellbeing over age. While our results indicate that there are gender andeducational inequalities in both Switzerland and France, and that gender inequalitiesin mental health accumulate with age in both countries, we also find that educationalinequalities in health and wellbeing remain rather stable across age groups.

Keywords: multidimensional wellbeing, sociodemographic inequalities, age development, cross-country comparison

The results of empirical studies focusing on gender differences in subjective wellbeingbased on either national or comparative international data are inconclusive.In Turkey, where levels of gender inequality are high, women tend to report higherlevels of life satisfaction than men. This study investigates the relationship betweenfactors related to women’s empowerment and life satisfaction for both ever-marriedand never-married women using the 2018 Turkey Demographic and Health Survey(TDHS), which collected data on life satisfaction for the first time in a TDHS series.The results show that in addition to their material resources and living environment,factors related to women’s agency – i.e., education and participation in decisionmaking– are associated with women’s levels of life satisfaction.

Keywords: women’s empowerment, subjective well-being, life satisfaction, Turkey, 2018 TDHS

In this study, we ask whether the U-shaped relationship between life satisfactionand age is flatter for individuals who are partnered. An analysis of cross-sectionalEU-SILC data indicates that the decline in life satisfaction from the teens to thefifties is almost four times larger for non-partnered than for partnered individuals,whose life satisfaction essentially follows a slight downward trajectory with age.However, the same analysis applied to three panel datasets (BHPS, SOEP andHILDA) reveals a U-shape for both groups, albeit somewhat flatter for the partneredthan for the non-partnered individuals. We suggest that the difference between thecross-sectional and the panel results reflects compositional effects: i.e., there isa significant shift of the relatively dissatisfied out of marriage in mid-life. Thesecompositional effects tend to flatten the U-shape in age for the partnered individualsin the cross-sectional data.

Keywords: life satisfaction, life cycle, partnership, marriage

More people than ever are living in cities, and in these cities, more and more people are living alone. Using the example of Vienna, this paper investigates the subjective well-being of single households in the city. Previous research has identified positive and negative aspects of living alone (e.g., increased freedom vs. missing social embeddedness). We compare single households with other household types using data from the Viennese Quality of Life Survey (1995–2018). In our analysis, we consider overall life satisfaction as well as selected dimensions of subjective wellbeing (i.e., housing, financial situation, main activity, family, social contacts, leisure time). Our findings show that the subjective well-being of single households in Vienna is high and quite stable over time. While single households are found to have lower life satisfaction than two-adult households, this result is mainly explained by singles reporting lower satisfaction with family life. Compared to households with children, singles are more satisfied with their financial situation, leisure time and housing, which helps to offset the negative consequences of missing family ties (in particular with regard to single parents).

Keywords: singles, city, Vienna, subjective well-being, comparison of household types

Using data from the latest edition of the Italian Time Use Survey (ITUS, 2013–2014), we analyse 31,309 childcare episodes to investigate the relationship betweenmultitasking (i.e., the combination of childcare with housework tasks) and parents’enjoyment of the time they spent on childcare, with a gender perspective. To this end,we rely on information from the episode enjoyment scores the respondents used toevaluate the degree of (un)pleasantness associated with the different activities theyrecorded in a daily diary. These episode enjoyment scores are a novelty in the ITUS,and provide a unique measure of the respondents’ momentary assessments of theirsubjective well-being. Our results highlight the existence of a negative relationshipbetween multitasking and parental well-being when spending time on childcare forboth mothers and fathers, regardless of the nature of the childcare activity theywere performing (i.e., routine or recreational childcare). Our findings add to priorresearch by shedding new light on the role of multitasking as a relevant contextualcharacteristic of care that affects the well-being of fathers, as well as of mothers.

Keywords: time use, childcare, Well-Being, parents

The well-being of older Europeans is of increasing importance given the substantialageing of the population. This paper comprehensively analyses well-being forthe population aged 50+ in 26 European countries, using the newly proposedindicator “Years of Good Life” (YoGL), which measures the remaining yearsof life that an individual can expect to live in a “good” state. The indicatorenables the decomposition of well-being into various dimensions, thereby revealingimportant heterogeneities between regions and genders. Results show that numbersof YoGL at age 50 vary considerably between European countries. They are highestin Northern and Western European countries and lowest in Central and EasternEuropean countries, where many “good” years are lost due to low life satisfaction.Interestingly, the high life expectancy levels in Southern Europe do not translate intohigher numbers of YoGL, mainly due to the low levels of physical and cognitivehealth in this region. While women and men can expect to have similar numbersof YoGL, women are likely to spend a smaller proportion of their longer remaininglifetime in a good state. These results demonstrate the importance of using wellbeingindicators that consider population heterogeneity when measuring humanwell-being, especially for older populations.

Keywords: Well-Being, population 50+, Europe, SHARE data, Sullivan’s method, cross-country analysis

This paper identifies subjective well-being trajectories through happiness measures as influenced by time, socio-economic, demographic and behavioural determinants. Hierarchical age-period-cohort models are applied to European Social Survey (2002–2016) data on the population aged 30 and older in 10 countries. A U-shaped relationship between age and happiness is found for some countries, but a rather flat pattern and considerable diversity beyond age 80 are detected for other countries. Lower happiness levels are found for baby boomers (1945–1964) than for preboomers and post-boomers, and also for late boomers (1955–1964) than for early boomers (1945–1954). Women, highly educated and native people are shown to have higher happiness levels than men, less educated and non-native people, respectively. Moreover, a positive assessment of income, having a partner, and being a parent, in good health, employed and socially active are all found to have a positive impact on happiness levels. We find evidence of gaps in happiness levels due to differences in socio-economic characteristics over the life course in some, but not in all of the countries analysed.

Keywords: subjective well-being, social inequalities, generations, healthy ageing

Formal education is one of the most influential predictors of professional success.As parents in Germany are aware of the importance of education, they often try toenable their children to enrol in the prestigious academic schooling track (Gymnasium).This explains why the transition recommendation made by the teacher afterthe fourth grade is sometimes ignored if the desired track was not recommended fora particular student. How the mismatch between the teacher’s recommendation andthe parents’ choice of schooling for their child affects the child’s development is not sufficiently known. It is very likely that such a mismatch can have consequences forthe child’s well-being, competences and overall academic success. Based on fiveconsecutive panel waves of German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) data(waves 1 to 5, collected between 2010 and 2016) (n = 2;790 in wave 1), our analysesdemonstrate that social background and the probability of ignoring a teacher’srecommendation are associated, and that highly educated parents are more likelyto overrule the teacher’s recommendation. Panel regression models show that pupilswho pursued the academic track (Gymnasium) despite the absence of a teacher’srecommendation were more likely to drop out of the academic schooling track,and were not able to catch up with their peers with respect to both objective andsubjective academic competences over the entire observation window. However, themodels also show that academic track mismatch did not seem to negatively influencethe health and well-being of these pupils.

Keywords: German secondary education, Well-Being, competences, longitudinal analysis, mediation analysis, mismatch, school tracking, teacher’s recommendation

Despite the Indian government’s continuing efforts to encourage children to attend school, levels of educational wellbeing among some groups of children during their elementary schooling remain low. High school dropout and grade repetition rates are among the negative and deleterious outcomes of poor educational wellbeing in children that are rarely discussed as policy issues. Using the panel dataset of the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) conducted in 2005 and 2012, this study explores the effects of educational wellbeing on children’s later educational outcomes, as measured by their school dropout and grade repetition rates. Variation in the educational outcomes of children across states was also examined. The results show that the children whose educational wellbeing index was below average during their elementary schooling were more likely to drop out of school or repeat a grade in early adolescence. For policymakers, this study highlights that the experiences of children during their elementary schooling merit more attention.

Keywords: educational wellbeing, school dropout, grade repetition, educational outcome, India Human Development Survey

While Thailand has achieved high levels of economic growth in recent decades, poverty at the local level has been increasing. Indicators of human development at the national level often mask the differences in well-being across communities. When responding to the need for sustainable development research, the heterogeneity of a population should be emphasised to ensure that no one is left behind. The Years of Good Life (YoGL) is a well-being indicator that demonstrates the similarities and differences between subpopulations in a given sociocultural context over time. The data used in this analysis were collected from Chiang Rai and Kalasin, which are provinces located in regions of Thailand with high poverty rates. Our main results indicate that the remaining years of good life (free from physical and cognitive limitations, out of poverty and satisfied with life) at age 20 among the sample population were 26 years for women and 28 years for men. The results varied depending on the indicators applied in each dimension of YoGL. Our analysis of the YoGL constituents indicated that cognitive functioning was the dimension that decreased the years of good life the most in the main specification. This study demonstrates the applicability of the YoGL methodology in investigating the wellbeing of subpopulations.

Keywords: Well-Being, Thailand, survey design, data collection