What Counts? Reorienting Economics Around Human Wellbeing

In this inaugural lecture, Nicky Pouw presents a new economic framework of wellbeing and a research agenda for the Chair of Economics of Wellbeing at the University of Amsterdam. Taking bestaanszekerheid (basic safety) as its central test case, the lecture argues that standard indicators such as income, the poverty line and unemployment capture only part of what people need to live securely. Building on Modigliani, Akerlof, Ostrom and Sen, and on fieldwork in rural Uganda and Amsterdam, wellbeing is conceived as embedded, multidimensional, relational and shaped by trade-offs. The framework distinguishes three dimensions (material, social and personal) and three levels (basic safety, stability and comfort), separated by thresholds. Formalised as a Stone–Geary-type threshold model, it implies that below the floor in any dimension, gains elsewhere cannot compensate, and that marginal returns are highest where the floor is weakest. Falling below the safety floor produces illbeing: a shift into a survival mindset that alters planning, saving and risk-taking. Empirically, the lecture draws on participatory wellbeing dashboards co-created with residents in six Amsterdam neighbourhoods since 2021. About half of resident-defined priorities concern basic safety, the social dimension scores lowest, and only 41 per cent of what residents value appears in municipal data. A Necessary Condition Analysis shows basic safety to be necessary but not sufficient for higher wellbeing. The research agenda spans theory (behaviour around thresholds), empirics (a longitudinal neighbourhood panel) and institutions (embedding resident-built indicators in policy). The lecture closes with a plea to recognise interdisciplinary research in the evaluation of economists.
Keywords: wellbeing economics; basic safety (bestaanszekerheid); threshold model; participatory wellbeing dashboards; Amsterdam neighbourhoods