Wellbeing

resilience

“Societal wellbeing (social welfare), broadly speaking, depends on the individual wellbeing (utility) of all society members (the individualistic part), and on society’s structure (the links among individuals, i.e. the social connections). Utility in general depends on physical and abstract objects (“goods”) the individual gets or is exposed to. Within economics, the interpretation of goods is typically restricted to traditional products, services and leisure time, but it can be interpreted more broadly. This aggregation from individual wellbeing to social welfare can be done by social welfare functions, or by using less structural approaches (like social multi-criteria evaluation, see Munda (2008)). Yet, individual wellbeing also has a subjective component. Many of these ingredients (like social engagement, sense of belonging to a community, and social trust) go beyond individual wellbeing, and have a strong link with the structure of the society. This is what we will label as socio-system services later.”

[Source: European Commission. Joint Research Centre., 2017. Building a scientific narrative towards a more resilient EU society. Part 1, A conceptual framework. Publications Office, LU.]