On Friday the 27th of October, our very own Bas van Bavel and Auke Rijpma presented their collaborative work with Rabobank on a broad measure of welfare, to the provincial council of Brabant. This indicator aims to go beyond standard measures of growth (often construed as GDP) to cover many different variables that effect people’s…

By Jan Luiten van Zanden Someone who commits suicide is extremely unhappy. The happiness industry has also made abundantly clear that people are unhappy The number of victims of violent crime has plummeted. Have we become madder since Freud?   How did people feel in the past? Suicide, prisons and psychiatric patients. A history of…

One from the archives: Economic growth not translating into well-being of Dutch households   The prosperity and well-being of Dutch households has hardly risen in recent years, despite the economic growth in the same period. This is revealed by Rabobank and Utrecht University’s Comprehensive Indicator of Well-being, which was presented today. This indicator is an…