Economic Seminar - Well-being productivity around the world

STATEC Research is pleased to invite to the  economic seminar

Well-being productivity around the world:
how well countries transform resources into subjective well-being

The seminar was presented by Nikolaos Rigas on Thursday, 25 June 2026 at 11:00 am 

In a resource-constrained world, improving well-being productivity - that is a country's ability to convert resources into well-being - could be key to sustainably improving well-being.

Well-being productivity captures changes over time in both efficiency and technology in how well-being is achieved. We first estimate relative-efficiency across 121 countries using data envelopment analysis (DEA) applied to data primarily from the Gallup World Poll for the period 2006-2023. The outcome variable and set of resources is based on the World Happiness Report framework to explain subjective well-being. Results indicate that countries reporting high subjective well-being tend to have high relative efficiency, but there are important exceptions. Indeed, countries where well-being is already high could achieve higher levels still without increasing their resources, while some low well-being countries are surprisingly efficient. Well-being productivity - estimated based on DEA and Malmquist Productivity methods - generally declined up until the COVID-19 Pandemic, after which it stabilized. However, the average conceals substantial heterogeneity. Productivity improved in Latin America by more than 5 percent over the period, while it declined by more than 10 percent in Central and South Asia. Exploratory regression analysis reveals three plausible variables can explain the evolution of well-being productivity over time - unemployment, government health expenditures, and CO2 emissions. Well-being productivity is a useful tool to track country's progress in converting available resources into subjective well-being.