Well-being is at the forefront of an ongoing debate about economic growth and the distribution of wealth in modern societies. It is widely believed that it is the responsibility of political decision makers to enhance the well-being of citizens. Even in the highly industrialized economies, however, as any careful observer of politics can attest, we face severe shortfalls in well-being. Since the global economic collapse of 2008, deteriorations in well-being in Europe – and how these inflame political conflict – have become increasingly visible and debated. This book argues that problems of well-being, such as income inequality, poverty and unemployment, are transboundary in today's more globalized and interconnected world, and no longer amenable to resolution by national governments acting alone. There is now a clear need to better understand how the EU can help to enhance well-being within its borders.

The EU is currently struggling with a number of progress paradoxes. Despite unprecedented rates of economic growth in the 2000s and then again during the years of recovery from the 2007–12 global financial and economic crisis, we continue to see deep socio-economic divisions. Severe material deprivation leaves many citizens unable to afford basic goods such as a washing machine, to heat their home adequately or to take a one-week holiday away from home. In 2017, one in three Bulgarians and one in five Greek or Romanian citizens was severely materially deprived, as were about one in ten citizens of Croatia, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary and Italy. Young people are known to have borne the brunt of the 2007– 12 crisis (OECD, 2020a). More than 6 million people aged under 25 were not in education, employment or training in 2017, denying them life chances and the prospect of earning a good living. The level of unemployment among young people in 2017 in per cent of the labour force was almost 20 per cent across the EU, but in Italy as many as 35 per cent, in Spain 40 per cent, and in Greece, close to 45 per cent of all young people were unemployed (Eurostat, 2020).

The socio-economic divide is not only evident within households and between states, the two most common units of analysis in well-being research (Fleurbaey and Blanchet, 2013; Busemeyer, 2014; Beckfield, 2019).