OECD Conference on New Frontiers in Subjective Well-being Measurement, 4 March 2024, Paris, France

1. Consideringthe OECD’s
Recommendations on Affective
Subjective Well-being
Arthur A. Stone, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology, Economics, and Public Policy
Director, Dornsife Center for Self-Report Science
University of Southern California

2. Presentation
REFLECT
 2013 OECD recommendations for
Affective SWB
 Content of the affective
components
 Adoption of the recommendations
REPORT
 Drivers of Affective SWB
 Y
esterday reporting period
RECONSIDER
 Expanding the breadth of Affective
SWBfor OECD Guidelines

3. REFLECT
Original Strategy for Positive and Negative Affect was Sound

4. REFLECT
Original Strategy for Positive and Negative Affect was
Sound
• Intuitively, affect is a core component of Subjective Well-being
• An essential component of everyday human functioning
• Affect has strong connections with physiology, motivation, and decision-making
• Schools of thought regarding content
• There is an entire field that studies the content of emotions
• Measurement challenge
• Emotions can be highlyvariable
• Bias and heuristics possible with extended recall periods
• Recall period was “Y
esterday” to counter these concerns

5. REFLECT
Original Strategy for Positive and Negative Affect was Sound
• Uptake of affective SWBnot universal among OECD countries
• 55% have adopted affective SWB
• Why?
• Scarcity of survey real estate?
• Affective SWBmay be perceived as less compelling for policy making
• Acknowledgement of the terrific 2023 SWBreport led by Jessica Mahoney

6. Does affective SWBrespond in ways we expect?
• How can affective SWBdata be used?
• Dr. Smith will address uses in the next presentation
• How do major life events impact Evaluative and Affective SWB?
• New data from the Understanding America Studyat USC
• Internet panel of 12,000 US residents
• Comparison of momentaryreports of affect over a week (bursts)with life satisfaction
• Some bursts were random and, for those with later major events, a second burst soon afterwards
• Greater impact of major events on life satisfaction than on momentaryaffect
• Consistent with prior work suggesting that affect is responsive to proximal stressors and
occurrences
• Important to note that some major events do have long-lasting effects on everyday life
• I am advocating for continuing the measurement of affect; in fact, I’ll later
suggest expanding it
REPORT

7. Concern that “Y
esterday” is too limited
• Perhaps this period isn’t stable enough to adequately represent affect
• Shorter recall periods are indicated for fluctuating phenomena
• Daily recall has become a standard for regulatory agencies
• Food and Drug Administration in US
• European Medicines Agency in Europe
• Recent studies have addressed the representativeness of“yesterday”
• Strong associations between yesterdayand the average of 7 consecutive days of affect
• Correlations of between .80 and .95
• Comparable findings for pain
• Affective reports about yesterday do, then, characterize at least a full week of
affective experience
• Confirmatory for OECD Recommendations
REPORT

8. Broadening the definition of Affective SWB
• SWBis where the person-perspective comes
is assessed
• Notable that the “Patient perspective” has
become a dominant theme in medicine
• I propose that the OECD consider
expanding the scope of what
defines Affective Subjective Well-
being
• There are manycandidates given the
complexityof human experience and various
ways experience can impact us
RECONSIDER

9. Consider broadening the definition ofSWB
• One of the most salient experiences for humans is the
experience of pain
• It is certainly a component of misery
• The alleviation of misery must be considered paramount
• From a societal point of view, the social and economic toll
of pain, especiallychronic pain, is enormous
• One statistic: in US, $560 billion annually affecting 100,000,000
• This is going to get worse over time with aging population
• Advocated several years ago in a National Academyof
Sciences Committee report on SWB(Stone &Mackie)
• Dr. Macchia will discuss in detail
• Next, Iwill present a study supporting the importance of
monitoring pain
RECONSIDER

10. Insights from monitoring pain in a population over
time
• Background to interpret
the results
• The point is to disentangle
age of respondent effects
from when respondents
were studied
• There are several cartoons
to illustrate a point and
actual data follows
• Acohort might be
recruiting a group of 50 yo
people in a calendar year
• Monitor their pain over the
next few years
• Note increase in pain over
the period studied
RECONSIDER
1970 Cohort

11. Insights from monitoring pain in a population over
time
• Now add a new 50 year old
cohort recruited in 1975
• The pattern of the increase in
pain is the same, even though
they are separated in time by
5 years
RECONSIDER
1970 Cohort 1975 Cohort

12. Insights from monitoring pain in a population over
time
• T
o simply the
presentation, plot both of
the cohort results by
respondents’year of birth
• This tells us about
different rates of change in
pain between the two
cohorts
• Overlapping lines mean
that pain was increasing at
the same pace in the 1970
and the 1975 cohorts
RECONSIDER
The Red and Blue lines
are Overlapping
1970 and 1975

13. Insights from monitoring pain in a population over
time
• Now let’s imagine that
pain increases at different
rates in the two cohorts
RECONSIDER
1970 Cohort
1975 Cohort

14. Insights from monitoring pain in a population over
time
• Again, to simplifythe
presentation, plot the
cohorts by age of
participants
• The divergence at, say, age
52 indicates much more
rapid increases in pain for
the 1975 cohort
• It is exactly the logic we
used in the following
paper
RECONSIDER
1975 Cohort

15. Monitoring population pain
• Motivation for the study was an unusual
pattern in pain by respondent age
• Expected a systematic increase, but this wasn’t
observed
• Speculated that it might be the case that
different subgroups of the US population
experienced pain over time at different rates,
depending on when theywere born
• Alikely candidate subgroup was those
without higher levels of education – without a
BAdegree
• Based on prior work of Case and Deaton
• Large-scale surveys in the US and Europe
• Several cohorts of individuals drawn from Gallup
Poll
• Results for those with a BAindicate similar
increases in pain over time
RECONSIDER
[Some cohorts are omitted for presentation clarity]
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2022

16. Monitoring population pain
• Those without a BAhave more
pain in general
• For those without a BA, the cohort
lines are separating, indicating
increasing pain in younger
generations.
• Illustrates how longitudinal,
population monitoring can
inform us of current or
impending problems for
segments of the population that
may be suffering
RECONSIDER

17. • The 2013 OECD Guidelines were sound
• We should consider of the drivers of components of Affective
Subjective Well-being and how they inform policy
• Suggests consideration of an expanded definition of Affective
Subjective Well-being to include Self-reported Pain
Thank you
SUMMARY