Institute for Health and Social Policy; and School of Environment, McGill University, Montreal, H3A1A3, QC, Canada.
ICREA, Pg. Lluís Companys 23, 08010, Barcelona, Spain.
Nat Commun. 2019 Jan 11;10(1):161. doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-08002-2.
Subjective well-being surveys show large and consistent variation among countries, much of which can be predicted from a small number of social and economic proxy variables. But the degree to which these life evaluations might feasibly change over coming decades, at the global scale, has not previously been estimated. Here, we use observed historical trends in the proxy variables to constrain feasible future projections of self-reported life evaluations to the year 2050. We find that projected effects of macroeconomic variables tend to lead to modest improvements of global average life evaluations. In contrast, scenarios based on non-material variables project future global average life evaluations covering a much wider range, lying anywhere from the top 15% to the bottom 25% of present-day countries. These results highlight the critical role of non-material factors such as social supports, freedoms, and fairness in determining the future of human well-being.
主观幸福感调查显示，各国之间存在着巨大且一致的差异，其中大部分可以通过少数社会和经济代理变量来预测。但是，在全球范围内，这些生活评估在未来几十年内可能发生的变化程度以前尚未估计。在这里，我们使用代理变量中观察到的历史趋势来限制自我报告的生活评估到 2050 年的可行未来预测。我们发现，宏观经济变量的预计影响往往会导致全球平均生活评估的适度提高。相比之下，基于非物质变量的情景则预测未来全球平均生活评估的范围要广得多，从当今各国的前 15%到后 25%不等。这些结果突出了非物质因素（如社会支持、自由和公平）在决定人类福祉的未来方面的关键作用。
