  This paper applies a novel technique of opinion analysis over social media
data with the aim of proposing a new indicator of perceived and subjective
well-being. This new index, namely SWBI, examines several dimension of
individual and social life. The indicator has been compared to some other
existing indexes of well-being and health conditions in Italy: the BES
(Benessere Equo Sostenibile), the incidence rate of influenza and the abundance
of PM10 in urban environments. SWBI is a daily measure available at province
level. BES data, currently available only for 2013 and 2014, are annual and
available at regional level. Flu data are weekly and distributed as regional
data and PM10 are collected daily for different cities. Due to the fact that
the time scale and space granularity of the different indexes varies, we apply
a novel statistical technique to discover nowcasting features and the classical
latent analysis to study the relationships among them. A preliminary analysis
suggest that the environmental and health conditions anticipate several
dimensions of the perception of well-being as measured by SWBI. Moreover, the
set of indicators included in the BES represent a latent dimension of
well-being which shares similarities with the latent dimension represented by
SWBI.
