Happiness, Health and Well-Being in a Life Course Perspective : Quantitative Data Collection and Analysis of Sequences of Subjective Indicators

Abstract

MEXT-Supported Program for the Strategic Research Foundation at Private Universities (2014-2018)Forming a Social Well-being Research Consortium in AsiaSubjective information has recently made a remarkable breakthrough into quantitative data collection and analysis in demography. Seen as a complement to hard statistics, the new perspective it opens seems promising. In the study of life-event histories, pioneering sociologists have developed the qualitative analysis of turning-points based on qualitative life-course narratives; we here present quantitative surveys which recorded factual individual life-event histories together with perceptions of subjective well-being, self-rated health indicators and financial situation over the life course. The interest of this approach is to explore variations in the subjective indicators along individual life courses rather than their absolute level at any point in time; and to confront facts and perceptions in order to better grasp the interpretation of social, familial, health transitions that take place along the life course. We here present how demographers collect such data and how they validate the subjective information against factual data. Some examples of the analysis of individual histories of subjective well-being are then presented and discussed