Browsing by Author "Sanborne, Erika"

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    Who Needs a Friend? How Age and Having Someone one can Count on Explain Subjective Well-Being in India
    (Oxford University Press, 2021-11-10) Sanborne, Erika
    Subjective well-being is now considered a reliable predictor of many desirable outcomes not only at the individual level, in terms of one’s personal health, but also at the national level, in terms of a nation’s per capita gross domestic product, progress towards reaching sustainable development goals, and other metrics. Subjective well-being has several known causes that reliably predict well-being across time and place, such as income, education, prosociality, and perceived corruption (ie REF). Given the benefits of well-being to both individuals and nations, and that subjective well-being is often predicted by variables that are not easily altered, this study aims to better understand the relationships between subjective well-being and some of its known predictors, in the context of India. Three hypotheses were tested and found significant with nationally representative samples of a total of 57,077 survey respondents in India, using data from Gallup World Poll for 2006-2019. Hypothesis# 1 tests for having someone one can count on as a mediator. Hypothesis# 2 tests for age as a moderator. Hypothesis# 3 is a moderated mediation that best explains how the known predictors of subjective well-being make their influence, and with whom. This study’s findings give insights into the ways in which subjective well-being in India can be better understood and thus improved. Such understanding may also help local Indian nonprofit organizations, as well as other researchers and mental health providers, with shared interests in the growing prevalence of suicide in India.
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    Why World Leaders Should Prioritize the Well-Being of their People
    (2022-01) Sanborne, Erika
    Throughout this paper, I move towards the endpoint of exploring how the measurement of societal functioning through a multidimensional conceptualization of well-being can reorient development policy and make its implementation more effective. Centering national policy on the goals of multidimensional well-being should lead to more sustainability, reduced ecological footprints, moderate economic development, and additional, mutually reinforcing outcomes. In Section 1, I discuss subjective well-being, which is one key dimension of overall well-being, a necessary but not sufficient indicator to track in a well-being economy. Section 2 is a review of sociology of mental health literature on well-being, focused on the social stress process. Section 3 covers the most popular global health and well-being surveys of today and critiques the most common subjective well-being measures in particular. In Section 4, I describe what a multidimensional well-being economy paradigm might look like, based on some real-world examples, and limited by some principles that tend to explain why the leaders of the world, historically, do not make the best choices, defined as those which would prioritize the well-being of their people. But I ultimately believe a paradigm shift in development is possible, and already beginning, and that it is essential. The reality is that what is required for human flourishing is inherently sustainable and ecological. It is also affordable, and some experts do believe it is possible. We can do this. Will we?