The distinctive contribution of this book is the formulation of an integrated social, environmental, and economic framework for public policy. This contribution is realised through investigations and conclusions in the following four domains: a formal stylised model that provides a platform for an integrated approach to public policy; a policy-informing simulation model that can be used to operationalise the public policy insights proposed in the stylised model; the implications of introducing fundamental (or radical) uncertainty and complexity into the policy framework; and the use of viability theory to demonstrate how one can think of and implement public policy in an uncertain and complex world, when the focus of policy needs to shift to building resilience to systemic risks. The book’s stylised model is constructed by weaving together threads from the wellbeing, human needs, complex systems, sustainable development, endogenous economic growth, directed technical change, and credit-based-money literatures. Throughout, the perspective is that of a policy adviser to a "wellbeing state", as distinct from a "welfare state". The key linkages or relationships in the model are supported by empirical evidence that draws on the wider literature in related fields.

New Zealand is widely regarded as a leader in public policy and governance reforms and innovations, being an early adopted of New Public Management, a leader in e-government and transparency. Discussing reforms including those in policy areas such as well-being, sustainability, environmental management, agriculture and indigenous development.

Cities and countries around the globe are starting to incorporate a well-being approach by reorienting policies and budgets to benefit people and long-term sustainability. With insights from an international group of scientists, practitioners, and innovators, Well-Being considers the measurement focus of conversations surrounding well-being, then moves beyond to action: shifts in policy, narratives, and power, and alignment with other movements acrosssectors.

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.

This highly accessible book provides an extensive and comprehensive overview of current research and theory about why and how we should protect future generations. It exposes how and why the interests of people today and those of future generations are often in conflict and what can be done. It rebuts critical concepts such as Parfits' non-identity paradox and Beckerman's denial of any possibility of intergenerational justice. The core of the book is the lucid application of a veil of ignorance to derive principles of intergenerational justice which show that our duties to posterity are stronger than is often supposed. Tremmel's approach demands that each generation both consider and improve the well-being of future generations. To measure the well-being of future generations Tremmel employs the Human Development Index rather than the metrics of utilitarian subjective happiness. The book thus answers in detailed, concrete terms the two most important questions of every theory of intergenerational justice: what to sustain? and how much to sustain?

This Research Handbook critically examines the myriad social and economic inequalities faced by those in later life. Contributors dissect examples from the Global North and South to support a new approach to studying ageing that moves beyond popular discourses.