Almost ten years after the 2007–12 global financial crisis, EU citizens are still feeling the effects of social and economic insecurities to the detriment of perceived distributive justice (Eurofound, 2018). This underlines the need for an analysis of patterns of well-being that takes into account whether people live in poor or rich regions in the EU. In this chapter, I will analyse well-being by comparing poor and rich regions, drawing on the distinction in EU regional policy between relatively poor Objective 1 or Convergence regions, which have a GDP below 75 per cent of the EU average, and the richer regions outside of Objective 1 or Convergence.

Progress in the study of subnational well-being in the EU has to date been hampered by the absence of comprehensive datasets. This chapter therefore introduces a novel quantitative dataset that includes various measures of regional well-being as conceptualized in Chapter Three. I discuss how the wellbeing indicators were created and which data sources were used to compile the dataset, which is unique in its regional coverage over the period from 1994 to 2013. The dataset has been collated at the NUTS 1 and 2 levels, since it is at these levels that regional fund payments are appropriated and administered (see Table A.1). This allows me to examine the various well-being problems encountered in regions that EU funding is intended to ameliorate.

After presenting the dataset, the chapter provides an analysis of patterns of well-being. This descriptive analysis reveals strong variations over time at the regional level both within and between EU member states, which underlines the importance of using regions as a unit of analysis in order to gain a nuanced understanding of well-being. There are two key findings. First, richer regions tend to perform better on all well-being indicators. Second, levels of poverty and income inequality have not significantly declined since the 1990s in either rich or poor regions. In the discussion of the results, the chapter pays specific attention to well-being trajectories in the crisis years of 2007–12.

Taking stock: existing measures of well-being

There is much debate surrounding the proper measurement of well-being. In welfare economics, many argue that gross domestic product (GDP) is a good proxy for well-being.