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The fact that our attitudes change poses well-known challenges for attitude-sensitive wellbeing theories. Suppose that in the past you favoured your adventurous youthful life more than the quiet and unassuming life you expected to live as an old person; now when you look back you favour your current life more than your youthful past life. Which period of your life is better for you? More generally, how can we find a stable attitude-sensitive standard of wellbeing, if the standard is in part defined in terms of unstable attitudes? In this paper, I introduce an ‘attitudinal matrix’ framework that will help us clear up the problems posed by changing attitudes across time. In particular, it will help us see what is at stake, which principles that can or cannot be combined, and what might be the best solution. I defend a very plausible candidate constraint on a solution to the challenge of changing attitudes, which I call ‘diagonalism’. It is argued that among the three main forms of substantive attitude-sensitive wellbeing theories – the attitude-version, the object-version, and the satisfaction-version – it is the satisfaction-version that can both satisfy diagonalism and provide the best account of temporal and lifetime wellbeing.

Despite common findings suggesting that lack of negative life events should be optimal, recent work has revealed a curvilinear pattern, such that some cumulative lifetime adversity is instead associated with optimal well-being. This work, however, is limited in that responses to specific stressors as they occurred were not assessed, thereby precluding investigation of resilience. The current research addressed this critical gap by directly testing the relationship between adversity history and resilience to stressors. Specifically, we used a multimethod approach across two studies to assess responses to controlled laboratory stressors (respectively requiring passive endurance and active instrumental performance). Results revealed hypothesized U-shaped relationships: Relative to a history of either no adversity or nonextreme high adversity, a moderate number of adverse life events was associated with less negative responses to pain and more positive psychophysiological responses while taking a test. These results provide novel evidence in support of adversity-derived propensity for resilience that generalizes across stressors.

When adverse life events occur, people often suffer negative consequences for their mental health and well-being. More adversity has been associated with worse outcomes, implying that the absence of life adversity should be optimal. However, some theory and empirical evidence suggest that the experience of facing difficulties can also promote benefits in the form of greater propensity for resilience when dealing with subsequent stressful situations. I review research that demonstrates U-shaped relationships between lifetime adversity exposure and mental health and well-being, functional impairment and health care utilization in chronic back pain, and responses to experimentally induced pain. Specifically, a history of some lifetime adversity predicts better outcomes than not only a history of high adversity but also a history of no adversity. This has important implications for understanding resilience, suggesting that adversity can have benefits.

Per capita GDP has limited use as a well-being indicator because it does not capture many dimensions that imply a “good life”, such as health and equality of opportunity. However, per capita GDP has the virtues of being easy to interpret and to calculate with manageable data requirements. Against this backdrop, there is a need for a measure of well-being that preserves the advantages of per capita GDP, but also includes health and equality. We propose a new parsimonious indicator to fill this gap, and calculate it for 149 countries. This new indicator could be particularly useful in complementing standard well-being indicators during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is because (i) COVID-19 predominantly a ects older adults beyond their prime working ages whose mortality and morbidity do not strongly a ect GDP, and (ii) COVID-19 is known to have large e ects on inequality in many countries.

An interpretation is offered of the relationship between fertility, child spacing, family resources, and market work of mothers and the subsequent cognitive skills of grade schoolers as reported by their teachers. Data are obtained from a national survey of time use conducted in 1975-1976 by the Survey Research Center of the University of Michigan. The sample of 77 is limited to 2-parent-present families with preschoolers in 1975-1976 who were reinterviewed successfully in 1981-1982. Large family size is found to have a negative impact on the child's subsequent grade-school performance. In addition, male siblings in nearby age ranges have the most negative impact on performance. Parental resources, as measured by income, education, child-care time, and a mother's reduced market time are associated with greater cognitive skills. Apparently, there is a significant trade-off between a market career and a home career for women.

In this paper, the distribution of lifetime purchasing power for a large sample of Canadian households is examined. The study differs from most distributional studies in two ways. First, it annuitizes an estimate of lifecycle earnings and so is capable of encompassing variations in earnings which occur over the lifecycle. Second, it focuses on the joint distribution of income and wealth in that the annuity distribution generated incorporates both lifecycle earnings and net assets. The degree of inequality associated with the distribution of annuities is found to be less than that associated with the more traditional measures of inequality, such as the distribution of wealth or income or earnings. /// La répartition du revenu et de la richesse au Canada dans le cadre d'un modèle du cycle de vie. L'auteur examine la distribution du pouvoir d'achat pendant le cycle de vie pour un échantillon de ménages canadiens. Cette étude diffère des autres études de répartition conventionnelles de deux façons: d'une part elle annualise une évaluation des gains durant le cycle de vie et donc est en mesure de tenir compte des variations dans les gains ou revenus au cours du cycle de vie; d'autre part, l'étude met l'accent sur la répartition conjointe du revenu et de la richesse (l'annualisation tient compte non seulement des revenus ou gains tout au long du cycle de vie mais aussi des actifs nets). Il ressort de l'étude que l'inégalité dans la répartition des annuités est moindre que celle qui est associée aux mesures conventionnelles de l'inégalité comme la répartition de la richesse, du revenu ou des gains.