Felicitous Approach to Global Researches of Well-Being and Social Inequality: The Search for a Universal Model of Future Fair Society

The idea of universalism presupposes development of an effective social policy of the state, redistribution of resources in society to achieve equality in the access of citizens to all public goods, building a fair society in the future.

An important indicator of a fair society is the high level of well-being of all its members. In this aspect, indicators of economic well-being that can be measured statistically (for example, GDP per capita) correlate with the indicators of subjective well-being only up to a certain level of people’s material wealth.

We understand subjective well-being as a feeling of happiness and satisfaction with life of a certain person. The study of happiness has developed in the new science of felicitology, and measurements of the level and indicators of happiness have spread from the national to the global level. Thus, Happy Planet Index since 2006 explores the progress of most countries of the world on their path to happy and sustainable life, and in 2012 the UN launched a unique global study World Happiness Report, which covered more than 150 countries.

Global sociological researches using modern information technologies allow identifying the most urgent problems of social development and create opportunities for cross-national and cross-temporal analysis of the level of social well-being and ways to improve it in all countries without exception. An example of such a research is the United Nations Global Internet Survey “My World”, in which 9.7 million people from all over the world took part (since 2012).

Consequently, integration of universalism and felicitous approach in conducting of global researches will help in effective search of a universal model of the future fair society, as well as in determining the best ways to achieve it.