This chapter sets the stage for the book by providing an overview of the social, psychological, and physical benefits of music participation that enhance the overall well-being of older adults. The authors discuss various venues where musical activities for older adults might take place and then zoom in to portray senior centers across the United States, followed by an elucidation of the need for a series of studies on the musical engagement of older adults, a culturally undervalued population. A rationale is shared for examining how senior centers are adopting dramatic changes in their music activities through a global pandemic, leading into a new normal. Voices demanding changes in these centers segue into an introduction to the subsequent chapters of the book.

Wellbeing is mainly studied by asking people questions. The most common question is about life-satisfaction and replies satisfy standard tests of reliability and validity. Using the Gallup World Poll, the World Happiness Report finds that on a scale of 0–10, 1 in 6 of the world’s population score 3 of below and 1 in 6 score 8 or above – a huge inequality in the quality of life. Another approach is to measure how people feel from moment to moment – their ‘affect’. This can be done by bleeping people in real time or asking retrospective questions about yesterday. This approach is best for measuring the effects of short-term experiences, but less so for measuring a person’s underlying wellbeing. The book rejects the third so-called ‘eudaimonic’ measure of wellbeing, on the grounds that virtue is the means to an end (and not the end itself).

People’s wellbeing is experienced by how far their needs are satisfied. This depends on what they bring to the table (their behaviour, their thoughts, and their genes) and by the social environment in which they live. This determines the structure of Parts II and III of the book. Part IV deals with the role of government.

Social connections are vital to our wellbeing, not only for practical reasons but also for mutual affection, a sense of being needed, and a source of identity. This applies not only to connections within the family and the workplace but also within the community.

More community networks raise the average wellbeing in a society. Such networks depend heavily on volunteering - which benefits both the members of the community who are served but also the volunteers themselves.

Moreover, if everyone feels they can trust the other members of society, their wellbeing increases by one whole point compared with a position of zero trust. High levels of trust benefit especially those who are more disadvantaged, so trust is a force for equalising wellbeing. Crime is a breach of trust, and therefore the prevalence of crime reduces average wellbeing.

Immigration may cause political tensions but it has no measurable impact on the wellbeing of the existing residents and it confers huge wellbeing gains on the immigrants. But political stability requires controls on immigration.

This concludes our brief initial overview of the main causes of high and low wellbeing – and of the huge variation in wellbeing in the world. All the findings are cross-sectional, with time series and experiments left to later chapters. The findings of this chapter provide the framework for the rest of Part III of the book – starting with personal factors and working outwards to those relating to whole communities.

Within a country (if it is advanced), the main factors explaining the variance of wellbeing (and the prevalence of misery) are in rough order of importance: mental illness; physical illness; having work and the quality of that work; having a partner; family income; and education.

The variation of wellbeing across countries is largely explained (in rough order of importance) by: income; health; social support; personal freedom; trusting social relations; and generosity.

Predicting whether a child will become a happy adult is not easy. But wellbeing in childhood is a better predictor of satisfaction in adult life than the child’s academic success is. And as the next chapter shows, both schools and parents have big effects on children’s wellbeing.

The wellbeing approach offers a clear solution to the basic questions in political philosophy and moral philosophy. Crucially, it provides a single overarching goal. Coherent decisions require an overarching goal, for if you have multiple goals, they may point in different directions. Aristotle recognised this but modern ’utilitarianism’ dates back to Jeremy Bentham. According to the Benthamite approach, decisions should aim to maximise the discounted sum of future wellbeing.

This is already the approach of many health policy-makers. However others believe that it is especially important to raise the wellbeing of those whose wellbeing is low. This ’prioritarian’ approach suggests looking for new policies especially in those areas which account for the most misery (on which evidence exists), and giving especial weight to the reduction of misery.

There have been many criticisms of the wellbeing approach, which the chapter discusses and tries to answer – consequentialism and rights, the experience machine, adaptation, and the nanny state. Readers who accept those criticisms are challenged to come up with an alternative philosophy that is operational.

This article addresses frequently asked questions about “trolleyology,” scientific research using trolley dilemmas to probe the moral mind:What are trolley dilemmas? What is the Trolley Problem? Why should philosophers or scientists care about the Trolley Problem? What have we learned from scientific research using trolley dilemmas? Do trolley dilemmas help us understand utilitarianism or other moral philosophies? Do hypothetical trolley judgments predict real judgments? Does it matter if they don’t? What about the relationship between the scientific (descriptive) Trolley Problem and the philosophical (normative) Trolley Problem? Can science really tell us anything about what’s right or wrong? What’s new in Trolleyology these days? Do you have any concluding thoughts?

The dramatic impact of the global pandemic has reached every sector of society, and older adults are no exception. This chapter presents a mid-pandemic (October 2021) survey study of senior center managers in six cities of different sizes across the United States regarding the changes made in senior center activities since the pre-pandemic period (prior to March 2020), with a specific focus on musical activities in three categories: music-making, dance and exercise with music, and attending live music performance. Discussions also include how center managers plan to adopt changes in their programs and services, especially in musical offerings, as we emerge from the pandemic.

There has been widespread consensus amongst professional philosophers on responses to initial variants of the Trolley Problem. However, those philosophers have all been from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies. There is a growing literature that investigates whether judgments differ across cultures. If judgments differ, the implications for moral philosophy depend on whether this represents genuine moral disagreement and what are its causes. I survey the literature on cross-cultural variation in moral judgments in trolley problems. There is not much evidence and it is mixed. The higher acceptability of acting in Bystander compared to Footbridge is relatively consistent across cultures (small-scale societies may be an exception, but there is limited evidence); however, the level of acceptability of acting in the individual scenarios differs across cultures, especially in Footbridge. This preliminary inspection suggests that it is plausible that cross-cultural differences in judgments exist. Assessing their causes, they seem likely to be genuine moral disagreements, which result from differences in culture and institutions. This raises issues for the metaphysics and epistemology of moral judgments. If we are not to be skeptics about the existence of moral facts or the possibility of knowing them, then we may need to endorse a form of constructivist relativism.

Philippa Foot offered her original Trolley Case, where a driver will unavoidably kill either five or one, neither to present a moral quandary nor to pose any special problem for moral theory. Its purpose was simply to illustrate how her theory of duties – which she deployed to defend non-consequentialist intuitions about various other cases of harmful agency – could also handle cases like this one where consequentialist verdicts seem apt. The Trolley Problem arose when Judith Jarvis Thomson modified the case, using the bystander variation to raise difficulties for Foot. Intuitively, it seems that the bystander may equally turn the trolley, but that would amount to killing one to save five, which was ruled out by Foot’s theory (even though it allowed a driver to kill one to avoid killing five). That was the Trolley Problem, which amounted to a challenge to explain why the bystander trolley case is an exception to the usual prohibition against killing some to save others for the greater good. For decades Thomson saw it as a legitimate challenge and offered plausible ways of meeting it. Later, however, she changed her mind, concluding that it is not permissible for the bystander to turn the trolley after all. In this chapter, I begin by examining the relevant background, refining the understanding of the Trolley Problem, and considering basic methodological issues in this area of normative ethics. I then develop a solution to the Trolley Problem along with a diagnosis of what went wrong in Thomson’s later attempt to show that there was never really a Trolley Problem to begin with. In the end I hope to have shown why there was indeed an important theoretical challenge posed by the Trolley Problem and how it can be resolved in a principled way with minor revisions to Foot’s original theory.

If wellbeing is to be at the heart of policy-making, some major changes would be needed.

Every organisation would try in whatever way it could to generate the largest number of WELLBYs (appropriately discounted).

Wherever there is a budget constraint, the available funds would go to those policies which generate the most WELLBYS (discounted) per dollar of expenditure (discounted).

Where traditional cost-benefit analysis measures benefits in units of money rather than wellbeing, benefits measured in money could be readily changed into units of wellbeing by multiplying them by the marginal utility of money. But monetary cost-benefit is not able to capture more than a fraction of the benefits of public policy.

Policy makers would especially develop new policies in areas which are causing the largest numbers of people to live in misery (low wellbeing). New Zealand has followed this approach.

Thousands of experiments would be essential to evaluate possible specific policies. We would also need better models of the determinants of wellbeing over the life-course. The explanation of wellbeing would become a central aim of all the social sciences.

The way our parents behave affects our wellbeing. Affection and firm boundaries have positive effects on our wellbeing. However, individual resilience plays a role too - many children survive severe abuse without major changes to their wellbeing. The mental health of parents (and especially mothers) has a significant impact on the wellbeing of their children.

Meanwhile, schools have more effect on children’s wellbeing than is usually appreciated, and so do individual teachers. If schools wish to improve child wellbeing, they will make that a major goal of the school, and will measure it regularly. Life skills will also be taught at least weekly using evidence-based materials.

In adulthood, family life is, on average, beneficial to wellbeing. But the quality of relationships often deteriorates after the birth of the first child. This problem can be reduced if both parents take ante-natal classes covering not just childcare but the impact of the child on their own relationship. If, despite this, the mental health of the children or their parents deteriorates, it is vital that professional mental health support is available.

Causal studies on the relationship between wellbeing and political participation have produced mixed results. Happier voters are found to be more engaged in some contexts but not others. In the Arab world, low wellbeing was a strong precedent and predictor of future uprisings. This relationship appears to be slightly weaker in Western countries.

Overall, there is strong evidence that happiness predicts higher levels of support for the incumbent political party. This effect has been found in a number of countries and using a variety of different analytic methodologies, including propensity score matching techniques and natural experiments. In many cases, this effect is even stronger than standard economic models of voter preferences.

Around the world, unhappier voters are also more likely to vote for populist parties and identify with populist ideologies. However, studies performed on elections in France, the United Kingdom, and the United States have found mostly mixed results regarding the extent to which life satisfaction in particular is predictive of populist electoral victories.