The share of satisfied individuals: A headcount measure of aggregate subjective well-being

This paper proposes the use of headcount-based indicators for the measurement of national Subjective Well-Being (SWB). I argue for the adoption of sufficientarianism as the guiding principle for aggregate measures of SWB, as opposed to the widely used average utilitarianism. I construct measures of the share of sufficiently satisfied individuals using reported life satisfaction data from the World/European Values Surveys across a range of sufficiency thresholds. A Beta-regression approach is employed to explore the empirical relationships between these measures and objective indicators of well-being. The use of this model is novel in this context. The findings reveal relationships between objective measures of development and SWB that are not apparent from analysis relying on conventional average measures of SWB. For example, I find no significant link between national income and the share of satisfied individuals when cultural controls are included (except when the sufficiency threshold is very high), which suggests that the SWB benefit of higher average incomes is limited from a sufficientarian point of view.