Life satisfaction and sense of meaning and purpose

An important part of measuring quality of life is gaining an understanding of how people in Canada experience their own well-being. Overarching measures of subjective well-being provide a useful barometer of how life is going in general, and understanding the drivers of inequalities in subjective well-being can shed light on the factors that matter most in people's lives.

Two important traditions of subjective well-being measurement are to seek to understand how people assess the quality of their own lives according to their own chosen set of criteria (known as the evaluative approach), and to seek to understand the extent to which people experience a sense of meaning and purpose in their lives (known as the eudaimonic approach).

The Quality of Life Framework includes two indicators of subjective well-being, corresponding to these two measurement traditions, positioned at the centre of the Framework.

Note: Indicators marked with a star icon are headline indicators. Headline indicators are intended to provide a high-level assessment of overall quality of life in Canada.

• Life satisfaction headline indicator
• Sense of meaning and purpose headline indicator

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