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.

This study analyzes the strategies displayed by non-governmental organizations in the social services sector to face the resource dependence on public administration in Southern Spain. We focus on the reorganization of the public subsidies system in Spain and its specific impact on the entities registered in Andalusia. In 2017, the Autonomous Communities assumed the management of a proportion of the subsidies with a charge to the Personal Income Tax for “social purposes,” which was previously managed by the General State Administration in its entirety. The case study combines the description of (a) the process of transferring the management of a line of subsidies from the state to the regional level, (b) the strategies of non-governmental organizations to face the context of instability and financial uncertainty, and (c) the impact of the regulatory bases of grant calls on programs implementation. First, the database with all the applications submitted in the calls of 2017 and 2018 is analyzed ( n = 11,610 applications). Second, we describe the perception of the change in the management system, from the point of view of the third-sector social services entities. The combination of both strategies allows us to examine in detail the response of social service organizations to ensure the continuity of the budget and the continuity of services. The results show that the change in the management system gave rise to a wide debate among non-governmental social services organizations about the calls for grants managed by the regional government. However, the qualitative case study showed that the reaction of the entities has more to do with the needs of adaptation to an unstable, uncertain, and highly competitive financial environment, than with specific characteristics of grant calls.

Population ageing and low birth rates are two problems of the EU that have an impact on employment, production, and economic growth. Against this background, immigration, health expenditure, and the health of migrants must become a key element of European policy. For this reason, this paper focused on identifying the effect of immigration, health, and ageing on economic growth in order to highlight their importance from an economic perspective. We constructed different econometric models with Eurostat data for 27 countries and 13 years (2008–2020), whose dependent variable was gross domestic product. Independent variables were the number of immigrants by gender and age, health expenditure per capita (total and by function), immigrants’ perception of their health as very good, and the proportion of the population aged 65 years and over. The model selected to analyze the results was Prais–Winsten regression heteroskedastic panels corrected standard errors modeled by applying the option (ar1) to correct for autocorrelation, using Stata software (version 16). The results show that health expenditure has a significant positive effect on economic growth, higher in hospital services, followed by medical products; immigrants’ perception as very good is only significant in some models. The number of immigrants has a (positive) effect, although less significant than public expenditure on health. Its effect is larger when the immigrant is aged between 15 and 64 years and smaller for male immigrants than for female immigrants. Without the ageing variable, immigration is not significant. Moreover, there are significant differences between European countries in relation to the variables analyses (immigration, immigrants’ perception of their health, ageing and public expenditure on health, and public expenditure on health according to function). This may be due to the different regulations on both immigration and public health in the countries that make up the European Union.

Las plataformas sociales son nuevos instrumentos de captación de información y de concienciación, una oportunidad para que, a través del marketing social, se utilicen estos recursos en toma de decisiones de la gobernanza. Por medio de estas plataformas, como por ejemplo por Twitter, los gobiernos pueden obtener información de otros usuarios útil en la toma de decisiones para mejorar el bienestar de la sociedad y potenciar un desarrollo sostenible. Así mismo puede concienciar a los ciudadanos sobre aquellas políticas que son necesarias para el bienestar y el desarrollo sostenible. Por ello, este trabajo examina de forma descriptiva el contenido de los mensajes publicados por @desdelamoncloa, la cuenta oficial del gobierno de España, y su relación con los objetivos de desarrollo sostenible (ODS) y el Indicador de Bienestar Sostenible. Utilizando la metodología del análisis de contenido, desde los puntos de vista cualitativo y cuantitativo, los resultados muestran que los ODS más publicados no son los más populares. Así mismo destacan los mensajes de conversación, en los que el objetivo del bienestar está relacionado con los de igualdad de género y desigualdades. Además, de los tres elementos (Bienestar, Economía y Sostenibilidad) del Indicador de Bienestar Sostenible, se ha podido constatar que el impacto ha sido mayor en los ODS incluidos en el elemento de Bienestar.

This paper studies the relationship of factors such as ageing, gender and environmental problems included in the quality of life (QoL) with the subjective well-being represented by the life satisfaction (LS) indicator of the citizens of 33 European countries. To do so, it uses the LS of a country’s citizens as the dependent variable; ageing, gender and environmental variables as independent variables; and other factors included in the QoL indicators and macroeconomic factors as control variables. Analysis uses data from the World Values Survey (WVS) and the European Values Study (EVS) for LS, from Eurostat for QoL indicators and World Bank for macroeconomic indicators. The values of LS have been treated based on the individual data from WVS and EVS in percentages according to their levels by country, and we present four robust models (two logit model and two OLS model). The results show that arrears of people aged 65 and over are a relation of positive significative in models with low levels of LS. The opposite is true for the income of people aged 65 and over. On the other hand, pollution, grime or other environmental problems and inequality show an inverse relationship with life satisfaction in models with high levels of satisfaction and a positive relationship in models with low levels of satisfaction. Nonetheless, the study has also shown contradictions in the gender gap and poverty indicators that should be studied further.