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on Economics of Happiness |
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Issue of 2009‒01‒24
seven papers chosen by |
| By: | Shiqing Jiang; Ming Lu; Hiroshi Sato |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the impact of income inequality on the subjective well-being of different social groups in urban China. We classify urban social groups according to their hukou status: rural migrants, gbornh urban residents, and gacquiredh urban residents who once changed their hukou identity from rural to urban. We focus on how the horizontal inequality-income disparity between migrants and urban residents-affects individual happiness. The main results are as follows. First, migrants suffer from unhappiness when the horizontal inequality increases, but urban residents show a much smaller aversion to the horizontal inequality. Second, migrants will not be happier if their relative incomes within their migrant group increase, while urban residents do become happier when their incomes increase within their groupfs income distribution. Third, gacquiredh urban residents have traits of both migrants and gbornh urban residents. They have an aversion to the horizontal inequality like migrants, and they also favor higher relative income among urban residents. Fourth, gbornh urban residents have lower happiness scores when they are old. People who are Communist Party members strongly dislike the horizontal inequality. Our findings suggest that migrants, gacquiredh urban residents, elderly people and Party members from gbornh urban residents are the potential proponents of social integration policies in urban China. |
| Keywords: | Horizontal inequality, Happiness, Hukou identity, Migration, Social integration |
| JEL: | I31 O15 R23 |
| Date: | 2009–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hst:ghsdps:gd08-020&r=hap |
| By: | Dreger, Christian (DIW Berlin); Erber, Georg (DIW Berlin); Glocker, Daniela (DIW Berlin) |
| Abstract: | The accumulation of the human capital stock plays a key role to explain the macroeconomic performance across regions. However, despite the strong theoretical support for this claim, empirical evidence has been not very convincing, probably because of the low quality of the data. This paper provides a robustness analysis of alternative measures of human capital available at the level of EU NUTS1 and NUTS2 regions. In addition to the univariate measures, composite indicators based on different construction principles are proposed. The analysis shows a significant impact of construction techniques on the quality of indicators. While composite indicators and labour income measures point to the same direction of impact, their correlation is not overwhelmingly high. Moreover, popular indicators should be applied with caution. Although schooling and human resources in science and technology explain some part of the regional human capital stock, they cannot explain the bulk of the experience. |
| Keywords: | human capital indicators, regional growth |
| JEL: | I20 O30 O40 O52 |
| Date: | 2009–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp3919&r=hap |
| By: | Furtado, Delia (University of Connecticut) |
| Abstract: | A common perception about immigrant assimilation is that association with natives necessarily speeds the process by which immigrants become indistinguishable from natives. Using 2000 Census data, this paper casts doubt on this presumption by examining the effect of an immigrant's marriage to a native, a measure of social integration, on dropout rates of children from these marriages. Although second-generation immigrants with one native parent generally have lower dropout rates than those with two foreign-born parents, the relationship reverses when steps are taken to control for observable and unobservable background characteristics. That is, immigrants that marry natives have children that are more likely to dropout of high school than immigrants that marry other immigrants. Moreover, gender differences in the effect of marriage to a native disappear in specifications which control for the endogeneity of the marriage decision. |
| Keywords: | intermarriage, immigration, education |
| JEL: | J12 J61 Z13 |
| Date: | 2009–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp3931&r=hap |
| By: | Clark, Andrew E. (PSE) |
| Abstract: | This paper uses repeated cross-section data ISSP data from 1989, 1997 and 2005 to consider movements in job quality. It is first underlined that not having a job when you want one is a major source of low well-being. Second, job values have remained fairly stable over time, although workers seem to give increasing importance to the more "social" aspects of jobs: useful and helpful jobs. The central finding of the paper is that, following a substantial fall between 1989 and 1997, subjective measures of job quality have mostly bounced back between 1997 and 2005. Overall job satisfaction is higher in 2005 than it was in 1989. Last, the rate of self-employment has been falling gently in ISSP data; even so three to four times as many people say they would prefer to be self-employed than are actually self-employed. As the self-employed are more satisfied than are employees, one consistent interpretation of the above is that the barriers to self-employment have grown in recent years. |
| Keywords: | employment, unemployment, self-employment, life satisfaction, job quality, job satisfaction |
| JEL: | J21 J28 J3 J6 J81 L26 |
| Date: | 2009–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp3940&r=hap |
| By: | Vanessa Mertins (Institute for Labour Law and Industrial Relations in the EC, University of Trier) |
| Abstract: | By reporting data from a laboratory experiment, we provide clear evidence that people value procedures apart from their effects on consequences. We implement a game with one proposer who has distributive power over a pie and four responders who can invest in resistance against the proposer's demand. The proposer is appointed by the use of one of two feasible appointment procedures. We elicit participants' preferences and fairness evaluations over both procedures and study whether responders' resistance against various demands are affected by their procedural judgments. Although the fair process effect, describing the finding that people are more likely to accept outcomes when they feel that they are made via fair procedures, is said to be exceedingly robust, we do not find support for any significant behavioral dfferences according to people's fairness evaluations. In contrast, we show that procedural satisfaction matters. Surprisingly, responders whose procedural preferences are satiffed offer significantly more resistance than those whose procedural preferences are violated. |
| Keywords: | experiment, fair process effect, frustration effect, procedural fairness, procedural preferences, resistance, threshold public good |
| JEL: | C72 C91 J52 D23 |
| Date: | 2008–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iaa:wpaper:200807&r=hap |
| By: | Nattavudh Powdthavee; |
| Abstract: | There is a long tradition of psychologists finding small income effects on life satisfaction (or happiness). Yet the issue of income endogeneity in life satisfaction equations has rarely been addressed. This paper aims to do just that. Instrumenting for income and allowing for unobserved heterogeneity result in an estimated income effect that is almost twice as large as the estimate in the basic specification. The results call for a reexamination on previous findings that suggest money buys little happiness, and a reevaluation on how the calculation of compensatory packages to various shocks in the individual's life events should be designed. |
| Date: | 2009–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:yor:yorken:09/02&r=hap |
| By: | Paul Frijters (QUT); Amy Y.C. Liu (ANU); Xin Meng (ANU) |
| Abstract: | In this paper we study the e¤ect of optimistic income expectations on life satisfaction amongst the Chinese population. Using a large scale household survey conducted in 2002 we find that the level of optimism about the future is particularly strong in the countryside and amongst rural-to-urban migrants. The importance of these expectations for life satisfaction is particularly pronounced in the urban areas, though also highly significant for the rural area. If expectations were to reverse from positive to negative, we calculate that this would have doubled the proportion of unhappy people and reduced proportion of very happy people by 48%. We perform several robustness checks to see if the results are driven by variations in precautionary savings or reverse causality. |
| Keywords: | Expectations; Happiness; Consumption and Savings; China; Political Economy |
| JEL: | C35 D63 D91 P2 |
| Date: | 2008–11–24 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qut:auncer:2008-26&r=hap |