Flourishing within the Working-Aged Finnish Population

Abstract

Over the years, sociologists and psychologists have defined different concepts to capture a person’s subjective world, e.g. quality of life, subjective well-being, satisfaction with life, and happiness. The concept of flourishing is a novel addition to this list, and not many measure its existence. Ed Diener’s Flourishing Scale was used with working-aged Finns (n = 1886) to answer three research questions: 1) what is the level of flourishing in different age-groups, 2) how does flourishing relate to living circumstances and 3) how does flourishing relate to other measures of happiness and subjective well-being? The results show that the profile of flourishing at different ages corresponds with other subjective indicators. We found emotional, psychological, and social well-being to be important domains of flourishing. The effect of social life, at different stages of aging, on flourishing, is stronger than the effect of chronological age.