What are the methodologies for assessing and improving governmental policy in light of well-being? The Oxford Handbook of Well-Being and Public Policy provides a comprehensive, interdisciplinary treatment of this topic. The contributors draw from welfare economics, moral philosophy, and psychology and are leading scholars in these fields.The Handbook includes thirty chapters divided into four Parts. Part I covers the full range of methodologies for evaluating governmental policy and assessing societal condition-including both the leading approaches in current use by policymakers and academics (such as GDP, cost-benefit analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis, inequality and poverty metrics, and the concept of the "social welfare function"), and emerging techniques. Part II focuses on the nature of well-being. What, most fundamentally, determines whether an individual life is better or worse for the person living it? Her happiness? Her preference-satisfaction? Her attainment of various "objective goods"? Part III addresses the measurement of well-being and the thorny topic of interpersonal comparisons. How can we construct a meaningful scale of individual welfare, which allows for comparisons of well-being levels and differences, both within one individual's life, and across lives? Finally, Part IV reviews the major challenges to designing governmental policy around individual well-being.

1. IntroductionMatthew D. Adler and Marc FleurbaeyPART I: METHODS OF POLICY ASSESSMENT2. GDP and WelfarePaul Schreyer3. Cost-Benefit AnalysisRobin Boadway4. Inequality and Poverty MeasuresFrank A. Cowell5. Social Welfare FunctionsJohn A. Weymark6. QALY-Based Cost Effectiveness AnalysisJose Maria Abellan, Carmen Herrero, and Jose-Luis Pinto-Prades7. Fair AllocationWilliam Thomson8. Social Ordering FunctionsFran?ois Maniquet9. Multidimensional Indicators of Inequality and PovertySatya R. Chakravarty and Maria Ana Lugo10. Happiness-Based Policy AnalysisDaniel Fujiwara and Paul DolanPART II: CONCEPTIONS OF WELL-BEING11. Preference-Based Views of Well-BeingKrister Bykvist12. Mental-State Approaches to Well-BeingDaniel M. Haybron13. Objective GoodsThomas Hurka14. Subjective Well-Being in PsychologyRichard E. Lucas15. Subjective Well-Being in EconomicsCarol GrahamPART III: MEASURING WELL-BEING: A DEBATE16. Equivalent IncomeMarc Fleurbaey17. Extended PreferencesMatthew D. Adler18. SWB as a Measure of Individual Well-BeingAndrew E. Clark19. Does the Choice of Well-Being Measure Matter Empirically? An Illustration with German DataKoen Decancq and Dirk Neumann.20. Does Fairness Require a Multidimensional Approach?Richard Arneson21. The Capability ApproachSabina Alkire22. Measuring Poverty: A ProposalThomas Pogge and Scott Wisor23. Multidimensional Poverty Indices: A Critical AssessmentJean-Yves Duclos and Luca TibertiPART IV: CHALLENGES FOR POLICY ASSESSMENT24. Social Evaluation under Risk and UncertaintyPhilippe Mongin and Marcus Pivato.25. Individual Responsibility and Equality of OpportunityFrancisco H.G. Ferriera and Vito Peragine.26. Welfare Comparisons with Heterogeneous Prices, Consumption, and PreferencesD.S. Prasada Rao27: Welfare and the HouseholdP.A. Chiappori28. Preference Inconsistency: A Psychological PerspectiveEldar Shafir29. Lifetime Well-Being, Mortality Risk, and Public PolicyGr?gory Ponthi?re30. The Well-Being of Future GenerationsJohn Broome