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.
Annegeke Jansen (Leiden), Reapra Research Associate at the Wellbeing Research Centre, shared findings on alternatives to GDP at the latest of the Wellbeing Research Centre’s Seminar Series.
Her research includes a high-level synthesis of multiple Beyond GDP measures, accounting for sustainable development and other important dimensions not captured within Gross Domestic Product figures.
Watch the full presentation on the Centre’s YouTube channel.
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.
Climate change has broad and deep impacts on people’s wellbeing; yet, these dynamics are largely excluded from integrated environment–society–economy (ESE) models. In this Review, we provide an overview of climate change–wellbeing impact pathways and explore which of these pathways have been quantified or modelled, or both. We assessed literature reviews and meta-analyses to describe how climate change affects specific wellbeing outcomes and which of these relationships are robust and amenable to parametrisation. We also conducted a review of 18 models that include one or more wellbeing impacts of climate change. Generally, more quantified pathways are available in the literature than those currently incorporated in ESE models. Temperature-related mortality, food security, and GDP are well represented in quantitative literature and to some extent in ESE models, whereas the impacts of climate change on infectious diseases; respiratory, cardiovascular, and neurological outcomes; mental health; adverse birth outcomes; occupational health and labour productivity; conflict; migration; poverty; air quality; and biodiversity loss have been quantified in the literature but are largely absent in ESE models. These relationships present promising steps towards a next generation of ESE models that could include more sophisticated interactions between environmental impacts and wellbeing.
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.
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