Why are people in some countries much more satisfied with their lives than people in others? In fact, the national mean life satisfaction scores of 72 countries in this study range from 3.7 to 8.5 on a 10 point scale. This book examines the importance of social capital for societal well-being with highly interesting results. If people in a rich nation increased their civic engagements from one to three memberships on average, the life satisfaction would rise by the same amount as from an increase in GDP per capita of 24,000 US-$. The effects of networks and trust, as well as GDP,...

The Sustainable Development Report 2021 features the SDG Index and Dashboards, the first and widely used tool to assess country performance on the UN Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals. The report analyses and outlines what needs to happen for the Decade of Action and Delivery of the SDGs. In order to build back better following the Covid-19 pandemic, especially low-income countries will need increased fiscal space. The report frames the implementation of the SDGs in terms of six broad transformations. The authors examine country performance on the SDGs for 193 countries using...