Gross domestic product per capita may be a good way of indicating a nation’s well-being, but material conditions are not everything. As acknowledged by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, a true measure of well-being should include quality-of-life aspects, like one’s sense of personal security, social connections, happiness, skills and education. The behavioural sciences can help us study how to best pursue these outcomes. Small inputs and changes in narrative can be effective in determining how people react to adversity, and whether they see it as a challenge they can overcome. For example, behavioural scientists have shed light on the conditions under which students at schools and universities can better flourish. The Behavioural Insights Team, a publicly owned, UK-based company, found that fewer students with disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds apply to university than students from higher income families, even when these students have the same grades and abilities; however, if such students from lower income families received letters of encouragement from enrolled students with the same socioeconomic background, their application rates increased by 3%. A study by Stanford University researchers published in Science in 2011 demonstrated that simply teaching students that all newcomers to college worry about fitting in, but that over time, everyone feels more at home, both halved the racial-achievement gap and improved the health of African American students.

Behaviourally-informed interventions have also effectively improved outcomes for children in the developing world. One example: early childhood development interventions that increase psychosocial stimulation in children from very poor families. One report about an early childhood intervention that took place in 1986 and 1987 in low-income neighborhoods in Kingston, Jamaica, showed that twenty years later, stunted children who had received psychosocial stimulation earned, on average, 25% more than stunted children who did not receive stimulation, and had eventually caught up with other children who had not been classified as stunted before the intervention. Other research has examined the boundaries that prevent children from regularly attending school in remote or conflict-affected areas of the world. One factor shown to have a strong impact on attendance is a student’s travel time to school. For example, the installment of village-based schools in remote areas of Afghanistan has been shown to increase school enrollment rates from 27% to 68%. The effect was also stronger for girls, reducing the gender gap in school enrollment. Human development faces myriad other challenges. For example, how can ageing societies in Europe, the US and Japan maintain inclusiveness for the elderly? Identifying and removing barriers that keep older adults from staying actively engaged is crucial, in this regard. For example, residential areas need to be built to enable older adults to stay social and mobile, despite their limited movement - by adding more easily accessible public spaces with ample seating, or providing hand rails.

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