Measuring the social progress or well-being of society has long been the objective of many international organizations, national and local governments, and NPO's. In 2008, the OECD launched the Global Project on Measuring Progress of Societies, while the Japanese government has been studying social indicators since around 1970. Based on the “New Growth Strategy” decided by the Japanese Cabinet in 2010, the Cabinet Office's Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) strengthened well-being studies in cooperation with the OECD. The ESRI organized the Asia-Pacific Conference on Measuring Well-Being and Fostering the Progress of Societies in cooperation with the OECD (co-host) in 2011. The ESRI also contributed to the OECD Guidelines on Measuring Subjective Well-Being and the OECD Expert Group to Measure Disparities in a National Accounts Framework. As a product of the Global Project, as well as part of the OECD's 50th Anniversary Forum and Ministerial Council Meeting celebrations, the OECD launched the Your Better Life Index in 2011. The ESRI conducted the Quality of Life Survey to collect data on subjective well-being in 2012, 2013, and 2014. There are still many different types of well-being indicators developed by various international institutes, and studies in this field should continue to accumulate research findings.

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By focusing on individual well-being beyond the scope of economic growth and GDP, this introductory paper evaluates indicators of subjective well-being, including socio-economic conditions, health, and relatedness, as well as the role and significance of these indicators in policy-makings in Japan. The practical importance of well-being indicators particularly highlighted in this paper includes the ability: to identify causes and consequences of social deterioration, which would allow policies to have better focus on improving existing social systems; to reveal the low level of subjective wellbeing amongst the elder population and to suggest policies to reflect the well-being of the upcoming aging population; to evaluate how one's current level of well-being differs from one's expected level of future well-being. The results may help the government identify specific policies that would contribute to establishing a society with more hope. Due to the broad nature of ‶well-being," it would not be feasible for the government to be directly involved in maximizing the level of well-being at all aspects. Nevertheless, this paper emphasizes that the rightful evaluation and the identification of well-being indicators reveal areas in which the government can act and take a lead upon, in particular, the areas of health, employment opportunities, social support for elder population, and support systems for child-rearing.

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Subjective well-being can be a useful indicator to address issues beyond the reach of normative economic analyses. Japan's subjective well- being is poor and does not match her income level, longevity etc. Although it is partly because of the character of the Japanese people, analyses indicate that it is also because of the outdated settings in the Japanese labor market, which have long been pointed out by international organizations. These outdated settings mar well-being by creating a large gap between regular and irregular workers, distorting work-life balance, enlarging gender gap, and subjecting companies to excessive cost-cutting competition. A medium-term approach is required to rectify this problem.

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The Easterlin Paradox, describing the contrast between the happy poor and the unhappy wealthier citizens, was first presented in 1974, and has been mentioned by many scholars on various occasions. We developed a questionnaire to gauge general trust and life-satisfaction in East Asia's eight countries/areas, to be used for Senshu University's research project “Exploring Social Capital towards Sustainable Development in East Asia,” funded by the MEXT-supported Program for the Strategic Research Foundation at Provate Universities, 2009–2013. Fig. 2 shows the relationship between general trust and average/median household income. Fig. 3 shows the relationship between general trust and average GRP. Although neither conveys the causal relationship between general trust and economic factors, Fig. 4 does express a relationship between general trust and life-satisfaction. This indicates that life-satisfaction, or happiness, is increased by social capital in each area.

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This paper is an attempt to approach the notion of “happiness” from the perspective of poverty studies. In doing so, a clear distinction should be made between subjective happiness and well-being. The former is a feeling of happiness as perceived by individuals and it can be measured using opinion surveys. The latter is a multi-dimensional concept of one's living standard, including dimensions such as health, economic standing, education, and social participation. Poverty studies traditionally stay away from subjective happiness, because people tend to ‘adopt’ their preferences. The concept of well-being looks similar to the definition of poverty, especially that being defined as relative deprivation, which is also multi-dimensional. However, poverty studies focus on economic constraints as determining factors in comparison to other dimensions, while the well-being index places economic constraints in parallel to other dimensions.

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The survey on “happiness” is now popular not only in academic research but also in governmental surveys. Some unresolved issues, however, are appearing on the surveys and the implications in policymaking. On the one hand, it is not rare to find some contradictions in the survey results. Those contradictions seem to result from lack of literacy in data collection and analysis, among others, or of the representativeness of data that, in an ideal situation, is guaranteed by statistical sampling and scientific scaling. On the other hand, even if the methodological issues of data collection and data analysis are solved, more substantive question remains: Should we really measure “degree of happiness” by public opinion survey for policymaking? In other words, can the statistical distribution of responses on “happiness,” on a numerical scale such as 10 point-scale, be a scientific measure of people's wellbeing by public opinion survey? This article provides some comments from the viewpoint of basic statistics and cross-national survey research. These comments would recommend that researchers and policymakers be sensitive to the distinction between the surface structure represented by response distribution in public opinion survey and the deep structure of people's minds.

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Community organizing policy in local government started in 1970 in Japan based on residentsʼ participation in the planning of local areas and social activities for improvement of the community environment. This paper focuses on the community planning scheme started from 1993 in Kochi, a city with a population of 300,000 in Shikoku. This scheme is a unique collaboration system for communitybased associations which are organized by volunteer citizens and supported by city government, with local officers participating voluntarily as members as well. The authors employed the method of “profiles of practitioners” developed by J. F. Forester and interviewed the officer responsible for this scheme. We analyzed the narrative of the scheme executed by him. We also present the actual process of this scheme, the results, and problems for the consideration of future communityoriented planning under population decline in local cities.

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This study derivates the empirical models of residential and power demand and attempts to measure the price elasticity of residential and power demand among nine power companies. As the general consensus among researchers analyzing electric demand is that electric power demand is extremely inelastic; the price elasticity of electric demand is a priori assumed to be as low as zero or –0.1. The results of the empirical analysis reveal that the values for the price elasticity of residential demand in each region are distributed between –0.14 and –0.64; therefore, it is clear that price elasticity significantly varies from zero in all regions. Further, since the price elasticity values of power demand are between –0.16 and –0.55, it is apparent that these values also significantly vary from zero in all regions. Regional disparities for residential demand were also found. Moreover, we can confirm that a feature of regional power demand is that price elasticity is smaller in urban areas and larger in rural areas. It is understood that power demand is related to the ratio of self-owned power plants.

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