There is currently a revitalised interest in the study of happiness and positive mood; arguably this is a period when the ‘concept of Gross National Happiness is coming of age’ (Stehlik, 1999, p 52). Academics, professionals and politicians are all working towards a new generation of measurements of social progress that value quality of life and subjective well-being and that recognise that these are not simply a measure of affluence. However, the study of well-being is in its infancy (Donovan et al, 2002) and there is still an element of mystery surrounding which factors are associated with life satisfaction and how they interact with each other.

This chapter unveils some of that mystery and presents a new analysis of the factors associated with experiences of positive well-being in both the short and the long term (reported in Chapter 4). This chapter builds a model of subjective well-being using the most comprehensive data available on UK trends. A positive subjective well-being scale, specially developed for this research, is discussed before presenting an overview of the wide range of factors shaping individual experiences of subjective well-being.

The empirical findings are based on secondary analysis of the first nine waves (1991–99) of the Economic and Social Research Council Research Centre on Micro-Social Change, British Household Panel Survey (BHPS). The BHPS was designed as a nationally representative sample in 1991 of around 5,500 households containing approximately 10,000 individuals who are re-interviewed each year. The survey follows members of the original household if they move to new households as well as adding people to the sample as they join existing households or reach the age of 16. This is an attempt to ensure that family and household history is not lost and there is no reduction in the number of interviewees. Changes to sample composition are, however, inevitable – for the period studied the average yearly response rate is 88%, so that just 65% of individuals interviewed in 1991 were interviewed in 1999.