This conversation forms part of a Davos Accredited Programme
Debate: Well-being is elitist
Tue 20 Jan 2026 4:30 pm - 5:30 pm (CET/GMT+1)
Flourishing House (Rätia Center: Inspiration Room)
Has well-being been wrongly dismissed as elitist—or does it threaten systems built on extraction, inequality, and GDP as a proxy for human progress?
Curated by DEBATABLE.
The term “well-being” describes a journey inward toward coherence between self, society, and nature. Yet well-being is often criticised as elitist, associated with luxury and superfluous trends rather than a systemic necessity and a return to our most essential human nature. Framed through a materialist lens, well-being can seem out of touch with working lives as income disparity, war, and climate change heighten the challenge of meeting basic needs. But is well-being inherently elitist, or has consumer culture—and a deeper crisis of coherence—simply made it so? Is an economy that is driven by a true measure of enhanced well-being over the brute proxy for life satisfaction that is GDP an elitist concept or a symbol of true progress for all? Evidence from the Blue Zones—regions where people live longer, healthier lives—suggests that social cohesion, low stress, and a sense of purpose matter more for well-being than income or access to healthcare alone. As the world gets hotter, and resources become scarcer, can placing well-being at the centre of economic and societal design expand access to human flourishing across all social strata? Or, are established reactive systems too focused on material gain to nurture the social cohesion and foundations that well-being requires?
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