Abstract
Attaining a positive level of well-being or quality of life is an ancient and primary goal of people in Europe and elsewhere. In the long run, the well-being of Europeans has been greatly affected by the evolution of modernization (since the Middle Ages) including democratization (since the French revolution 1789) and industrialization (since its beginning in the nineteenth century in England). In contrast to the difficulties brought by wars and other civil strife, the increase of wealth and the spread of democracy constituted developments toward a better life. The political structure of European countries went through stages of state and nation building, mass democratization, and the rise of different types of welfare states (welfare regimes). The unique history of Europe has laid a foundation for increasing wealth and prosperity as well as for living with growing diversity. The Human Development Index and its core indicators demonstrate that Europe’s countries have achieved (despite a few latecomers) “very high human development.” Nevertheless, significant inequalities exist in health, material living standards, and education in the countries of the European Union. The devastation caused by World War II took a significant toll on the well-being of Europeans. The 70 years since the war have provided a welcome respite of relative peace and growing prosperity, overshadowed only by the social and political tensions arising from the Cold War. Europe is now confronted with two important challenges influencing the well-being of its people: (1) social and political integration in the supranational context of the European Union, the Eurozone, and the Council of Europe; and (2) the immigration of large numbers of people fleeing war and poverty in North Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe.
Well-being is a fashionable topic today,
appearing on advertising billboards as well as in numerous philosophical or scientific writings. This seems natural in a society that endeavours to produce complete satisfaction for all its members.
Thus, after a period of strong economic growth granting easy access to
mass consumption, citizen’s concerns shift
towards the purpose which it arguably defeats: well-being.
Alexander Viadychenko (Council of Europe 2008)
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Notes
- 1.
The Council of Europe, founded in 1949, is an intergovernmental organization which includes 47 European states and promotes human rights, democracy and the rule of law. It is separate from the European Union and cannot make binding laws for their members.
- 2.
The term welfare regime or welfare state regime refers to complex socio-political-economic public policy arrangements including governmental, business, and private nongovernmental actors and activities. “To talk of ‘a regime’ is to denote the fact that in the relation between state and economy a complex of legal and organizational features are systematically interwoven” (Esping-Andersen 1990: 2).
- 3.
For example, a small country like Switzerland has four official languages: French, German, Italian, and Rhaeto-Romanic.
- 4.
For example, people in the Netherlands are fearful of a rising ocean level.
- 5.
The Czech Republic and Slovakia, formerly unified, have been separate states since 2001.
- 6.
Some territories outside of the European continent—the outermost regions—belong to the European Union because they constitute a part a member country of the European Union: Azores and Madeira, Canary Islands, British, Dutch and French overseas territories, Greenland and others. They are not under consideration in this study.
- 7.
The European city-states with a reputation for luxurious lifestyles and happiness are the Pyrenean Principality of Andorra in the Pyrenees mountains with 76,000 inhabitants (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andorra); Liechtenstein, the Alps state, with 37,000 inhabitants (www.liechtenstein.li/en/country-and-people/state); the Principality of Monaco, on the Mediterranean, 37,000 inhabitants(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monaco); San Marino, the oldest state in the world, with 32,000 inhabitants (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San Marino); and the Vatican City State, an ecclesial state governed by the Pope (http://www.vaticanstate.va/).
- 8.
The exploitation of African wealth by the Europeans is discussed by Wolfgang Glatzer and is highly controversial.
- 9.
The top economic position of Germany ended finally when it was unified in 1990 because a poor part of East Germany was added to the rather rich section that was West Germany.
- 10.
Living conditions and well-being in Europe have been studied extensively by social scientists, so one can find many publications on the topic: Significant examples include the comparison of European Union states (Gabriel 1992) and the analyses of the social structure of Europe (Mau and Verwiebe 2009; Therborn 1995). The Index of Social Progress (Estes 1988) covers Europe and the world beyond. The European System of Social Indicators is detailed and oriented toward a combination of objective and subjective indicators for European people (Berger-Schmitt 2001). Wealth in a broad sense and from a worldwide perspective is discussed by the World Bank (2010): Wealth and well-being across different welfare regimes are covered in recent studies (Holtmann 2014). A recurrent question involves convergence or divergence in Europe and its satellites (Langlois et al. 1994). Whereas older studies concentrated on objective living conditions (Weller 1996), more recent investigations focus on subjective well-being and social cohesion (Ahrendt et al. 2015; Alber et al. 2008; Delhey and Dragolov 2015).
- 11.
“Expected years in retirement” is a calculation of the remaining years of life expectancy from the time one exits the labor force (men and women).
- 12.
This is not the case for immigrants and their children, for whom language is a key problem.
- 13.
For the sake of comparison, we have also chosen to subsume under the liberal welfare state the non-European countries of the United States, Canada, and Australia, which are regarded by many scholars as more typical representatives of this type of regime.
- 14.
Some smaller countries (for instance the Baltic States, Malta, and Cyprus), for which the quality of data often appears to be less reliable, have been excluded from the analysis.
- 15.
The percentage of adults below the upper secondary level can thus be calculated as the remaining percentage up to 100 %.
- 16.
It should be noted that this percentage is just a fraction of the first indicator.
- 17.
Although it may be true that these countries have undertaken special efforts to raise the educational level of their citizens, the reported figures may at least partly be artefacts resulting from problems in classifying their educational systems.
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Glatzer, W., Kohl, J. (2017). The History of Well-Being in Europe. In: Estes, R., Sirgy, M. (eds) The Pursuit of Human Well-Being. International Handbooks of Quality-of-Life. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39101-4_13
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