The concept of well-being is used by social scientists and policy makers to evaluate how individuals, groups, and countries are doing. What constitutes well-being is not a settled matter, however. Happiness and life satisfaction have both been used as proxies for well-being but have also been criticized as a bit weak and one-dimensional. In search of more nuance and complexity, the concept of flourishing has gained some ground within academic circles. Like well-being, flourishing means different things to different people, but at least it acknowledges there's more to the life well-lived than "positive affective tone". For instance, some flourishing measures address feelings of competence (or self-efficacy), meaning (purpose), and engagement (having interests).
So what on the societal level promotes flourishing on the individual level? Between mediators, moderators, and confounders, exploring causal pathways from the macro to the micro is fraught with wrong turns and premature conclusions, but what the hey - the subject engages me, so I'm taking the plunge.
One European study gave me the idea to compare the authors' cross-country ranking of flourishing against indicators of inequality and affluence. Without further ado:
Mmmm.... In most cases, lower inequality and higher GDP per capita are associated with higher levels of flourishing. Can't tease out their separate influences from the above rankings alone, though. And then there's Slovakia and Slovenia: more equal, less affluent, and not yet flourishing. And then there's Russia at the bottom of the heap. I haven't felt sorry for Russians in a long time.
References:
Baumeister, R. F., K. D. Vohs, et al. (2013). "Some key differences between a happy life and a meaningful life." The Journal of Positive Psychology 8(6): 505-516.
Huppert, F. A. and T. T. C. So (2013). "Flourishing Across Europe: Application of a New Conceptual Framework for Defining Well-Being." Social Indicators Research 110(3): 837-861. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11205-011-9966-7