Policy makers don't understand what contributes to people's wellbeing

A study of citizen's in Addis Abbaba found factors influencing well being are held in common with developed nations, including:

• married people are more satisfied with life than unmarried and divorced people.
• Women are happier than men.
• Health,
• consumption per capita,
• the possibility of being able to raise the money to cope with an emergency situation in a week and
• belief that one's own standard of living can be improved over the next few years
• environmental quality and sewage management 

When 63 policymakers were asked to guess what influences citizens' well-being, to a large extent they guessed both wrongly and heterogeneously.  Despite a clean environment having been shown to be important to the citizens' well-being, they gave such measures lowest priority.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-05/uog-wdp052311.php