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Promoting well-being is a central concern in both private and public life. Yet, what that amounts to is contested and the disagreements run deep. In this dissertation, I argue that analyses of well-being should take into account more features of doing well and doing badly than is typically recognised. I put special emphasis on hitherto under-researched ideas about what makes a life go badly, thereby identifying further well-being policy interventions. To arrive at my conclusion, this dissertation contains an introductory chapter and four articles that relate to well-being. In the introductory chapter, I first give an overview of my arguments. Second, I present my analytical framework: the capability approach. Third, I detail general features of well-being theories. Fourth, I introduce the most traditional well-being theories. Fifth, I compare the traditional theories to analyses of well-being based on my chosen framework. The framework, i.e., the capability approach, focuses on genuine opportunities, beings, and doings. An opportunity to a being or doing, X, is considered genuine when a person satisfies conditions that are jointly sufficient to achieve X if she chooses to do so. I use these concepts to identify what well-being is.

I contribute to four debates. Namely: (1) the extent to which expert opinions and public opinions on well-being policies can be reconciled, (2) whether doing badly is fully accounted for by failures to attain well-being goodness, (3) the different ways in which a person can be doing badly, and (4) whether well-being is one single thing. My four main contributions are as follows. First, I argue that, and show how, expert opinions and public opinions that diverge can be equitably reconciled. Second, I argue that, and show how, prudentially negative beings and doings should be assessed, by analysing cases of homelessness. Third, I argue that the capability approach can be used to offer a complementary account to the predominant philosophical analyses of addiction, taking into account that it can arise in various ways. Fourth, I defend a view stating that well-being is context-sensitive and that different analyses apply in different contexts.

It is my firm, considered, belief that theoretical analyses of well-being and practical policy work should be done in tandem and influence each other. Through my series of arguments, I conclude that, in order to promote well-being, we need more conceptual tools and a clearer view of specific life situations than what is standardly acknowledged in the literature.