Social well-being is a good complementary measurement to the economically biased measurements of development such as GNP and GDP. However, this "perception-based" measurement may lead to subjective feelings or false consciousness or even a paradox. To achieve more objective data, we need to emphasize the importance of well-being at the societal level, namely the macro and systemic dimensions of society. Here, societal well-being is measured by three basic social dimensions: the structural, indicated by people's trust in government institutions, satisfaction with employment, job stability and the income gap, and fairness in education and jobs; the cultural dimension, including people's trust in cultural institutions such as religion, and perception of fair treatment to culturally related identities, such as gender, age, race, ethnicity, and nationality; and the processual, indicated by social dynamics such as trust in political parties, the local community, and civil organizations. This study compares well-being at the societal level in Indonesia and South Korea using survey data collected by the International Consortium of Social Well-being. The analysis shows that (a) the mean scores for Indonesia are higher than for South Korea on each dimension; (b) for Indonesia, the mean cultural dimension score is far higher than the structural or processual scores; and (c) for South Korea, the range between the mean scores of the three dimensions is narrow, suggesting that South Korea's societal well-being is more balanced than that of Indonesia.
Wirutomo et al. (Sat,) studied this question.
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