Measuring and Explaining Subjective Well-being in Korea

Subjective well-being has attracted sharply increasing attention among researchers and policy makers in recent years. The public also pays a lot of attention to it, evidenced by the heavy use of the word “happiness” in media. Some researchers argue that subjective well-being measures should serve as important and reliable measures of human well-being, complementary to the more traditional, more material wellbeing measures such as Gross National Income (GNI). The World Happiness Report 2012 and 2013 strongly support the idea. One of the main agenda of the government of Korea is to increase the happiness of each citizen. However, there is no comprehensive study on Korea’s subjective well-being to guide policy makers. This study is the first comprehensive investigation into subjective well-being in Korea, aiming to show a clearer and more complete picture of Korea’s subjective well-being, including its past and current status, its distribution over time, cohorts, and regions, and its determinants, based on the vast majority of available data.