Environmental issues, sustainability, and climate change have become the targets of many policies from international and governmental organizations including the EU’s European Green Deal action plan. This plan provides tools to address them—which include support for the circular economy, implementation of energy and environmental taxes, and investment in environmental protection—with the aim of favoring the well-being of EU citizens. In this context, this study analyses the impact of several parameters (environmental matters, global warming, circular economy, energy and environmental taxes, and expenditure and investment on the environment) on life satisfaction, or subjective well-being, and their effects on 33 European countries. For this purpose, four econometric models were carried out using data collected from the World Values Survey (WVS), the European Values Study (EVS), and the World Bank and Eurostat, reflecting subjective citizen satisfaction data. The findings present a highly significant inverse relationship between life satisfaction variables and both environmental problems and energy taxes. Additionally, there is a highly significant positive relationship between circular economy, environmental tax, and environmental protection expenditure parameters and life satisfaction variables, as well as, to a lesser degree of significance, with noise pollution from neighbours.

El Estado de Bienestar se concibe como un modelo político cuyo objeto principal es facilitar la igualdad de oportunidades y garantizar las necesidades básicas de los que tienen rentas menores por medio de políticas sociales. Existen posturas opuestas sobre su utilidad, necesidad, eficacia y eficiencia económica porque requiere de un volumen considerable de recursos financieros, principalmente aportados por los trabajadores y las empresas mediante impuestos en función de sus rentas. Por un lado, se encuentran aquellos que sostienen que la intervención del Estado se ha de reducir al mínimo para no perjudicar a la actividad económica y a la creación de empleo. Por otro lado, se hallan los que apoyan la existencia del Estado de Bienestar porque aumenta la productividad de la economía mediante las mejoras del capital humano y del capital social. Este trabajo analiza mediante técnicas estadísticas y econométricas las políticas sociales, la felicidad y la productividad para valorar el retorno del gasto público a los ciudadanos por dos vías, la individual (bienestar subjetivo) y la económica (producción per cápita) de los países de la UE en el año 2014.ABSTRACTThe welfare state is envisaged as a political model whose main objective is to ensure equality of opportunity and to guarantee basic needs of those on low incomes through social policies.There are opposing positions about the economic utility, necessity, effectiveness and efficiency because this model would require a considerable demand of financial resources, mainly contributed by workers and companies through the different taxes paid according to their income. On the one hand, those who argue that it should be reduce government intervention until minimum as not to harm the economic activity and creating jobs. On the other hand, there are those who support the existence of the welfare state because it increases the productivity of the economy with the best human capital and social capital. This paper analyses social policies, happiness and productivity to assess the return of public spending to citizens in two ways: individual (subjective well-being) and economic (per capita production) of the countries of the EU in the year 2014.