This suggests that wellbeing is an umbrella concept, embracing at least
‘objective wellbeing’ and ‘subjective wellbeing’, although this very distinction
is contentious and potentially problematic. Gasper (2007) defines the former
as ‘externally approved, and thereby normatively endorsed, non-feeling
features of a person’s life, matters such as mobility or morbidity’; and SWB
as ‘feelings of the person whose wellbeing is being estimated’. He goes on
to make finer distinctions between seven categories and eleven
subcategories of wellbeing, including ‘wellbeing as activity’ (Bruton 1997).
The conclusion of his and our mapping work is to accept plurality; wellbeing
is still a novel category in applied social science, such that no settled consensus on its meaning has yet emerged.1 It is, however, a useful
umbrella term, beneath which a variety of related ideas and concepts can
shelter.