Conceptualizing and Operationalizing the Well-Being Economy: Actionable Domains and Policy Instruments for the EU

The 21st century is marked by intertwined social and ecological crises that deeply affect the health and well-being of both humans and non-humans across the world, while seriously endangering the ability of future generations to thrive or even choose their future. Numerous analyses point to a common root cause behind these social-ecological crises: the current hegemonic economic model oriented towards continuous economic growth measured by the increase of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), considered wrongly as an adequate proxy of human well-being. In response, various post-growth approaches have emerged, “post-growth” being here referred to as an umbrella term gathering different alternatives to standard growth focused economic visions, indicators and policies. Those approaches notably include “degrowth”, the “Doughnut economics”, and, more recently, the “well-being economy”.

This report focuses on the well-being economy and its potential for health policies. While offering valuable insights to address health challenges arising from the social and ecological unsustainability of growth-driven economies, the well-being economy faces significant but surmountable conceptual limitations. Indeed, existing conceptualizations often lack precision, hindering its practical implementation.

To address these gaps, the present report pursues three main objectives:

• Clarifying the conceptual foundations of the well-being economy in order to characterize the analytical framework underpinning well-being policies;

• Introducing an original conceptual framework of well-being economy built upon these conceptual foundations, centered on sufficiency, health and cooperation;

• Initiating the operationalization of the well-being economy via actionable domains and policy instruments based on this conceptual clarification.

The first part of this report is devoted to the conceptualization of the well-being economy and the second to its operationalization. Based on an overview of the genealogy, positioning and purpose of the well-being economy and on a mapping of existing conceptual framings, we first introduce an original conceptual framework of the well-being economy centered on sufficiency, health and cooperation. Starting from this conceptual framework, we then initiate the operationalization of the well-being economy by defining and linking actionable domains and types of policy instruments into a framework aimed at identifying and disseminating well-being economy policies in the European multi-level governance system.