Prof Paul Behrens (Oxford), Reapra Senior Research Fellow at the Wellbeing Research Centre, shared findings on the implications of climate change on wellbeing at the latest of the Wellbeing Research Centre’s Seminar Series.
His research includes an overview of major integrated environment–society–economy (ESE) models, and how they all fail to account for human wellbeing.
Watch the full presentation on the Centre’s YouTube channel.
Sachintha Fernando (Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg) presented findings on climate worries at the latest of the Wellbeing Research Centre’s Seminar Series.
Her research compares levels of worry about unemployment and climate change, and the capacity for people to care about more than one issue from their ‘finite pool of worry’.
Watch the full presentation on the Centre’s YouTube channel.
Sam Harris speaks with Michael Plant about the philosophy of happiness and effective altruism. They discuss the nature of well-being, Nozick’s “Experience Machine” thought experiment, the validity of self-reported happiness data, the conflict between the experiencing self and the remembering self, Derek Parfit’s “Repugnant Conclusion,” the disconnect between moral intentions and consequences, why treating depression is more impactful than cash, the massive disparities in charitable impact, the potential effects of AI on human flourishing, the meaning crisis in a post-work future, and other topics.
Climate change is already shaping our wellbeing. It affects mental health, spreads infectious diseases, disrupts work, damages food supplies and forces families to leave their homes because of conflict, hunger or flooding.
Wellbeing refers to everything that enables people to live healthy, safe and meaningful lives. It includes physical and mental health, access to food, clean water, hygiene and income, as well as work, leisure, culture and education.
It also involves personal safety, freedoms, trust in institutions and how people feel about their own lives. Environmental quality, biodiversity and the degree of inequality in society are part of wellbeing too. Climate change touches every one of these areas.
Adolescence, spanning ages 10–24, is a period of significant transition marked by changes such as puberty, brain development, and shifts in social norms and relationships. As a malleable developmental context, adolescence presents an opportunity for early intervention for improving wellbeing over the life course. Taking a socioecological approach, this chapter outlines the integral role that schools can play in improving adolescent wellbeing as part of adolescents’ environment. This chapter draws on empirical literature as well as case studies of existing health and education policies around the world. In doing so, it considers the role and responsibility of schools for improving wellbeing outcomes; how different aspects of school impact wellbeing differently; and provide policy-based recommendations for how schools can most effectively promote adolescent wellbeing.
Background Educational mobility is considered a key driver of population health. While prior studies suggest that intergenerational equality of opportunity may be linked to mortality, most evidence comes from high-income countries. Little is known about whether these associations apply globally.
Objective This study assesses the relationship between intergenerational educational mobility and all-cause mortality across a global sample of countries.
Methods We combine country-level data from the WHO Mortality Database and the World Bank’s Global Database on Intergenerational Mobility, covering five birth cohorts across 148 countries. Using multilevel random effects models, we estimate associations between four dimensions of educational mobility (upward, downward, stagnant, and correlation-based) and age- and sex-adjusted all-cause mortality, controlling for national indicators of education, income, inequality, health spending, unemployment, and political freedoms.
Results Higher upward educational mobility and lower stagnant mobility are significantly associated with reduced all-cause mortality. In fully adjusted models, a one standard deviation greater measure of upward mobility is associated with a reduction of 29.1 deaths per 100,000 population, while a one standard deviation lower stagnation measure is associated with a reduction of 27.3 deaths per 100,000 population. These patterns are consistent across high- and low-income countries.
Conclusions Our findings suggest that promoting educational equality of opportunity may reduce mortality and improve public health worldwide. Strengthening social mobility, especially in settings with persistent educational inequality, can be an effective policy lever for reducing health disparities and supporting healthier populations.
This paper studies “national worry.” It finds that in the West European nations the intensity of worry seems to be inversely linked to the level of social spending in a country. We also demonstrate that the proportion of citizens in Western Europe who report extreme-worry levels has risen steadily over the last two decades. The United Kingdom experienced the fastest increase in worry. Our country-panel estimates point to a potentially central role for the little-discussed ex ante psychological value of the welfare state (i.e., the benefit to the whole population, and not just the mental-wellbeing gains going ex post to the smaller number of citizens who actually draw upon welfare-state help). Worry levels move with other economic variables, including the unemployment rate, and we provide some of the first estimates of the patterns of worry across different kinds of individuals. Finally, the analysis is extended to the set of OECD countries. We believe that much needs to be understood about the troubling rise of worry in modern society.
In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in motivated memory as a psychological determinant of economic outcomes. According to motivated memory, people tend to better recall pleasant information because it serves their psychological needs. Another phenomenon, however, predicts the same pattern: According to mood congruence, pleasant information is easier to recall for individuals in nonnegative mood, regardless of any psychological needs. Since most people tend to have some need for self-esteem and to experience more positive than negative feelings during the day, the two phenomena predict similar outcomes in most ordinary situations, but not all. To test the predictive power of these two phenomena, we collect data from a laboratory experiment and from a nationally representative survey. We study how individuals in a temporarily induced negative mood (via a video clip) or those who report a low baseline mood (relative to the population) recall negative feedback. Our results meet the predictions of motivated memory: Individuals better recall positive than negative feedback, even when they are in negative mood. Motivated memory is not just a matter of mood.
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