Is reliable sociological measurement of social well-being possible? The case of Ghana

The desire to improve living conditions and social well-being has always determined efforts of both researchers and reformers, especially since the last quarter of the 20th century, filled with different types of development ideas. The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Agenda implies accelerating the pace of basic human development with “leaving no one behind”, focusing mainly on improving the standard of living. However, in the contemporary world, well-being has become a multidimensional rather than a purely objective-economic concept, which determines the need for relevant approaches and methods for assessing and ensuring social well-being, especially in the non-western, developing countries. The first part of the article presents an overview of conceptual approaches and empirical methods typically applied in the study of well-being as rather a universal and unambiguous phenomenon, which is not relevant for the contemporary social realities. The second part of the article presents a specific case (Ghana) proving the validity of criticism in relation to the objectively ‘biased’ measurements of social well-being. One of the key social-economic challenges in Ghana is the low standard of living, especially in rural areas and northern regions suffering from the “multidimensional poverty”. In Ghana, basic studies of welfare and measurements of poverty (supported or conducted by the state institutions) rely on the monetized consumption and income approaches, following the European Commission’s definition of poverty as a state of economic deprivation, thus missing its subjective and social dimensions crucial for ensuring equity and social justice. The authors suggest an interpretation of social well-being as a combination of personal (overall satisfaction with life), relational (quality of social connections) and societal (social integration, acceptance, contribution, actualization and coherence, institutional trust) measurements, i.e., a combination of economic wellbeing, life satisfaction and societal well-being in the assessment of poverty and inequality at the national level. This interpretation was tested in the sociological survey conducted in 2022 as a basis for such an understanding of social well-being that aims at reducing inequality and improving living standards through better informed policies and programs.