This book started out by suggesting that money and material goods are not the route to happiness. The subsequent chapters have shown that well-being is not a function of economic progress or affluence, but that what matters is the social context of material existence. This is why well-being is more closely associated with income inequality than income levels themselves; it ‘is not the direct effects of absolute material living standards so much as the effect of social relativities’ (Wilkinson, 1996, p 3) that matters.

Well-being, then, does not emerge from the satisfaction of higher income or consumption opportunities, but is dependent upon one's relative position. The evidence reported in this book together with other research suggests that, where the continual pursuit of happiness is at the expense of others’ social immobility, this will never increase the well-being of a nation. This raises the issue of what we deem ‘success’ to be and whether, in fact, it is ever achievable where it is dependent upon upward advancement in society (Pahl, 1995). This chapter provides explanations for this phenomenon – raising questions about what we do and what we should consider to be successful and positive progress.

The economics of social justice

The 1990s were arguably a period of reflection, a reconsideration of the politics of the 1980s – living with the consequences of individualisation and privatisation – with a highly visible though (relatively) peaceful reaction against it. The first decade of the millennium has so far been a period of a much different ‘experience’ – of a real and violent reaction (for example, 11 September 2001 in the US and 7 July 2005 in the UK) to the excess and ideology of western capitalist civilisation.

There is no doubt that there are elements of well-being that operate on a global scale. This is notable in the tendency for studies of well-being to be influenced more by western culture, with an emphasis on ‘achieving’ – ‘work, struggle, striving and purposefulness’ – at the expense of ‘useless’ (expressive, being and growing) behaviour that is more in line with eastern cultures (Maslow, 1970, pp 62–3).