Turbulent times have given rise to fundamental questions about our future individual and collective security. This has brought considerable attention to the concept of well-being, generating a range of explanations as to what it means and why it is important, especially in the realm of public policy.

The World Health Organization defines well-being as “enabling people to develop their potential, work productively and creatively, form positive relationships with others and meaningfully contribute to their community.” Others have expanded it to include the experience of positive emotions, contentment, having some control over one’s life, a sense of purpose.

Well-being, most agree, is a state of being that allows the individual, or population, to develop and thrive. Importantly, it is deeper than “a narrow psychological approach which over-estimates individuals’ control over their own well-being, and under-estimates the role of systemic inequities.”

For decades, traditional economic indicators — GDP, income, wealth, legal rights — have been the primary measures of economic progress and hence, individual well-being. These measures, however, mask how heavily dependent on the circumstances into which one is born, grows and lives determine an individual’s well-being and contribute to growing inequality.

This status-quo practice led Nobel-Laureate economist Amartya Sen to argue that well-being cannot be accurately measured by these age-old gauges. Instead, judgments about well-being, equality and justice should focus on the actual opportunities and freedoms people have to lead lives of value and the choices they have to actually secure them.

In the early 1990s, Sen conceived of and advanced the Capability Approach, a framework  focused on human well-being and development, and the design of “just” institutional and social arrangements. Its intent is to orient social policies and practices toward assuring a decent quality of life for every living person. As such, both the aspects of people’s lives — their health, education, support from social networks and what they can do, such as work, raise a family, travel, be politically active — must be valued.

Grounded in human well-being, freedom and justice, the Capability Approach commits to building a just society where individuals can flourish and communities can prosper. If we are to deliver on a promise of institutional changes to alleviate the inequities that bar human success, metrics that measure the complexities of human well-being, quality of life and social justice — the hard-to-quantify aspects of life — must be developed.

Recent attempts to make improvements in Maine’s child welfare system are a good example of a justified collective frustration of legislators and policymakers tasked with charting better futures. “I know we’re trying, but nothing’s changed,” said Sen. Jeff Timberlake, the ranking Republican on the Government Oversight Committee. “We’re on the path to doing several things,” Sen. Ned Claxton, Senate chair of the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee, said. “We have no way of knowing if it will be enough. What is enough and how do we measure that?”

The Capability Approach brings us a framework for policy-development and policy-making that assesses both the process through which an individual’s outcomes are achieved and redefines the outcomes themselves. From there, a just design of institutional and social arrangements, centered in human well-being to achieve them can follow.

Moving forward will, however, require a re-imagining of what has been “business as usual.” It means embracing more comprehensive and integrated systems of support which can lead to measurable improvements in well-being as opposed to simply tabulating program outcomes.   It means policies and practices that revolve around interrelated concerns: the recognition of each person’s intrinsic worth, attention to social inequalities, genuine freedom to choose.

These then give way to a policy template that assesses how everyone is doing, ensures shared prosperity, promotes and sustains all elements of well-being, and establishes conditions in which people can freely access and use the resources they need in order to thrive — the end result being that all laws, policies, and social arrangements support and expand this freedom to achieve well-being.

In the previous legislative session, a paid family leave bill was introduced. It will reappear again this coming year. This bill has as its core, well-being. Using the CA as a tool to assess its ability to achieve individual, community, and state well-being is, we argue, a worthy approach. It couples the issue of social inequalities with benefits that resonate and support not only individuals but sustain business and education sectors, local communities and the state as a whole.

Maine’s destiny is dependent on its ability to renew itself, not just redo itself. Bold innovations in the practices of how we deliver resources and services to Maine residents must be at the forefront of this agenda for change. And as we rededicate our efforts to securing the architecture to build better lives, well-being must be the foremost measure of successful state and national policies.

Among these policies must be paid family leave as an addition to the array of social insurance benefits, including Social Security, unemployment insurance, disability insurance and paid time off, that workers have earned as they enter the 21st century.

John Dorrer, a labor market economist, is the former director for the Center for Workforce Research and Information at the Maine Department of Labor. Luisa S. Deprez is Professor Emerita of Sociology and the Edmund S. Muskie School of Public Service at the University of Southern Maine. They are members of the Maine chapter of the national Scholars Strategy Network, which brings together scholars across the country to address public challenges and their policy implications. Members’ columns appear here the monthly.

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