This report explores the impact material resources, social relationships, time use and perceptions of society have on individual life satisfaction, happiness and sense of belonging. It reveals that levels of individual well-being reflect levels of national prosperity and the quality of society,...

An objective and a subjective approach to study well-being is introduced. The objective approach is particularly useful to compare the quality of life of given societies across time and space. Using the objective approach, we can identify strong differences of quality of life between European...

Empirical studies of the 'old EU' countries suggest that poverty brings limited social relations and a lack of social support in its wake. At the same time, it is thought that in the transition countries, especially, individual supply crises are compensated for by a composite and stable network...

Life satisfaction is quite heterogeneously distributed across countries of the enlarged European Union. Previous research has shown how living conditions within individual countries, such as access to material and emotional resources, are important for personal well-being, but it has neglected...

The issue of social exclusion, currently of particular concern to policy makers in Brussels, is a manifestation of new aspects of social inequality that are supposed to go along with persistent high unemployment rates and increasing poverty affection. The concept provides a multidimensional and...