Mapping the distribution of well-being in Europe beyond national borders

Well-being is a difficult concept to define and even harder to measure. The first part of this report reviews and provides a synthesis of the vast amount of literature that exists on the concept of well-being. Two main broad approaches to well-being are considered - the subjective and the objective approaches. For each of these, the main definitions, the most important theoretical perspectives and the most relevant metrics and quantifications are reported. The most recent well-being approach, which integrates the objective and subjective approaches, is also presented in order to give an overview of the future directions of investigations into well-being. The second part of the report provides an integrated description of well-being across Europe. By evaluating multiple criteria, and by considering the twelve economic, social, environmental and health indicators developed by Eurostat for the 266 NUTS 2 regions, a study on regional well-being is provided for the year 2009.