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on Economics of Happiness |
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Issue of 2019‒02‒25
four papers chosen by |
| By: | Michel, Chloe; Oswald, Andrew; Proto, Eugenio; Sovinsky, Michelle |
| Abstract: | Advertising is ubiquitous in modern life. Yet might it be harmful to the happiness of nations? This paper blends longitudinal data on advertising with large-scale surveys on citizens' well-being. The analysis uses information on approximately 1 million randomly sampled European citizens across 27 nations over 3 decades. We show that increases in national advertising expenditure are followed by significant declines in levels of life satisfaction. This finding is robust to adjustments for a range of potential confounders -- including the personal and economic characteristics of individuals, country fixed-effects, year dummies, and business-cycle influences. Further research remains desirable. Nevertheless, our empirical results are some of the first to be consistent with the hypothesis that, perhaps by fostering unending desires, high levels of advertising may depress societal well-being. |
| Date: | 2019–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:13532&r=all |
| By: | Joachim Merz; Normen Peters |
| Abstract: | Neither market income nor consumption expenditure provides an adequate picture of individual standard of living. It is time which enables and restricts individual activities and is a further brick to a more comprehensive picture of individual well-being. In our study we focus on a prominent part of time use in non-market services: it is parental child care which contributes not only to individual but also to societal well-being. Within a novel approach we ask for multidimensional polarization effects of parental child care where compensation/substitution of time for parental child care versus income is interdependently evaluated by panel estimates of society’s subjective well-being. The new interdependent 2DGAP measure thereby provides multidimensional polarization intensity information for the poor and the rich and disentangles the single time and income contribution to subjective well-being ensuring at the same time the interdependence of the polarization dimensions. Socio-economic influences on the polarization pole risk and intensity will be quantified by two stage Heckman estimates. The analyses are based on the German Socio-Economic Panel with 21 waves and robust fixed effects estimates of subjective well-being as well as the German Time Use Surveys 1991/92 and actual 2012/13 with detailed diary time use data. The empirical results discover the interdependent relations between parental child care and income under a common evaluation frame and contribute to the question of dimension specific targeted policies in a multidimensional polarization approach. Prominent result: compensation between parental child care time and income proved to be significant, but there are multidimensional regions with no compensation, where parental child care time deficit is not compensated by income. Interdependent multidimensional polarization by headcount and intensity increased significantly over the twenty years under investigation with remarkable risk and intensity differences between the polarization poles with different disentangled parental child care time and income contributions to subjective well-being. |
| Keywords: | Parental child care, multidimensional polarization of interdependent time and income, subjective well-being, poverty and affluence, minimum multidimensional 2DGAP risk and intensity, German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), German Time Use Study (GTUS 1991/92 and 2012/13) |
| JEL: | I31 I32 J22 D10 D31 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp1021&r=all |
| By: | Rodríguez-Pose, Andrés; Tselios, Vassilis |
| Abstract: | European nations allocate public sector resources with the general aim of increasing the well-being and welfare of their citizens through a fair and efficient distribution of these public goods and services. However, 'who' delivers these goods and services and 'how well' they are delivered are essential in determining outcomes in terms of well-being. Drawing on data from the European Social Survey database, this paper uses Amartya Sen's social welfare index framework - accounting for the trade-off between the maximization of public sector resources and an equitable distribution of these resources - to examine the influence of political decentralisation ('who' delivers the resources) and whether this influence is moderated by governance quality ('how well' they are delivered) on individual subjective well-being. The findings of the econometric analysis reveal that decentralisation does not always lead to higher well-being, as the benefits of political decentralisation are highly mediated by the quality of national governance. In countries with high governance quality, political decentralisation results in a greater satisfaction with health provision, while in lower quality governance countries, a more decentralized government can increase the overall satisfaction with life, the economy, government, democracy and the provision of education, but not necessarily with health-related services. |
| Keywords: | Europe; European Social Survey; political decentralisation; quality of governance; Well-being |
| JEL: | H11 H70 I31 |
| Date: | 2019–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:13423&r=all |
| By: | Le-Yu Chen; Ekaterina Oparina; Nattavudh Powdthavee; Sorawoot Srisuma |
| Abstract: | Econometric analyses in the happiness literature typically use subjective well-being (SWB) data to compare the mean of observed or latent happiness across samples. Recent critiques show that comparing the mean of ordinal data is only valid under strong assumptions that are usually rejected by SWB data. This leads to an open question whether much of the empirical studies in the economics of happiness literature have been futile. In order to salvage some of the prior results and avoid future issues, we suggest regression analysis of SWB (and other ordinal data) should focus on the median rather than the mean. Median comparisons using parametric models such as the ordered probit and logit can be readily carried out using familiar statistical softwares like STATA. We also show a previously assumed impractical task of estimating a semiparametric median ordered-response model is also possible by using a novel constrained mixed integer optimization technique. We use GSS data to show the famous Easterlin Paradox from the happiness literature holds for the US independent of any parametric assumption. |
| Date: | 2019–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:1902.07696&r=all |