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5. CONCLUSIONS
5.1 Part of the challenge in examining 'well-being' is the lack of clarity and consensus over what the term actually means. Although interest in how happy and satisfied people are with their lives is not new, the term coined to describe it - 'well-being' - is a relatively recent phenomenon. However, improving 'well-being' is now a fixed item on local, national and international policy agendas. Since improving health and well-being is a key strategic objective of the Scottish Government, it is critical that there is a means of measuring it.
5.2 SSA 2007 demonstrated that subjective well-being - a person's assessment of their situation - is high in Scotland. When asked how happy and satisfied they are with their life as a whole, most people scored 8 on a scale of 0 to 10. People were equally satisfied with their family or personal life and their general standard of living. Job satisfaction was lower (7) but it was still the case that more people were satisfied with their job than were dissatisfied with it.
5.3 In western developed countries it is not unusual for subjective well-being scores to be positively skewed in this way. Comparing levels of happiness and life satisfaction in Scotland with other countries in Europe confirmed this. While it is too early to conclude that people in Scotland are happier and more satisfied with their lives than people elsewhere in Europe, the evidence suggests that subjective well-being in Scotland is at least on a par with many other Western European countries. The evidence also does not lend support to Bell and Blanchflower's conclusion that levels of happiness and life satisfaction are lower in Scotland than elsewhere in the UK.
5.4 Employment 29 and marital status were the objective factors most strongly related to happiness and satisfaction across all domains. Socio-economic classification and actual household income were related to a person's assessment of their job and their standard of living. In addition, area deprivation was found to be a factor related to happiness, job satisfaction and satisfaction with life as a whole. These findings are consistent with the literature on subjective well-being - that the unemployed, the least wealthy and most deprived, those who are divorced or separated and those in routine or semi-routine occupations report the lowest life satisfaction and happiness in Scotland.
5.5 In addition to these objective indicators, two subjective factors were found to be highly correlated with well-being across the board - self-assessed health and self-perceived financial hardship. Looking at these subjective factors alone, it would appear that subjective well-being is as much about how a person feels about their situation than the actuality of the situation itself. In other words, a person's income may be high and they may be free of any long-term health problems, but if they feel that they are struggling financially and don't feel very healthy then this is likely to impact on how they assess their overall happiness and life satisfaction. This is in tune with Layard's argument that it is relative wealth - or relative poverty - that affects happiness and satisfaction (Layard, 2005).
5.6 However, when the objective and subjective factors are taken together it is clear that it is much more likely that it is those who are truly experiencing financial hardship and/or poor health who are most at risk of poor subjective well-being. This is apparent from emerging evidence on the impact of the growing gap between rich and poor in developed nations on inequalities in health and well-being. In the Scottish context, the most recent survey of Public Attitudes to Mental Health, Mental Well-Being and Mental Health Problems found that 'people on lower incomes, people who experience difficulty managing financially and people who live in deprived areas are most likely to rate their general health as poor and to be more susceptible to mental ill-health.' This is consistent with a recent study into the epidemiology of suicide in Scotland, which concluded that 'across Scotland there was a strong relationship between suicide and socio-economic deprivation: the higher the level of deprivation, the higher the standardised suicide mortality ratio.'30
5.7 Taken together, the evidence from large scale social survey data and official statistics on health inequalities, such as those on suicide, increasingly justify the use of subjective well-being measures as additional indicators of national progress. The Scottish Government's 2008 action plan 'Towards a mentally flourishing Scotland' will, through a series of initiatives, aim to tackle inequalities and ensure that the mental health and well-being of people in Scotland improves. The findings in this report contribute to the evidence base which will help determine progress towards these objectives.
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