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on Economics of Happiness |
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Issue of 2024‒07‒08
two papers chosen by |
| By: | Frijters, Paul; Krekel, Christian; Ulker, Aydogan |
| Abstract: | Is wellbeing, measured by life satisfaction, higher if the same number of negative events is spread out rather than bunched in time? Is it better if positive events are spread out or bunched? We answer these questions empirically, exploiting biannual data on six positive and twelve negative life events in the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia panel. Accounting for selection, anticipation, and adaptation, we find a tipping point when it comes to negative events: once people experience about two negative events, their wellbeing depreciates disproportionally as more and more events occur in a given period of time. For positive events, effects are weakly decreasing in size. So for a person's wellbeing it is better if both the good and the bad is spread out rather than bunched in time. This corresponds better with the classic economic presumption of diminishing marginal effects rather than Machiavelli's prescript of inflicting all injuries at once, further motivating the use of life satisfaction as a suitable proxy for utility. Yet, differences are small, with complete smoothing of all negative events over all people and periods calculated to yield no more than a 12% reduction in the total negative wellbeing impact of negative events. |
| Keywords: | hedonic adaptation; life events; life satisfaction; non-Linearities; welfare analysis; wellbeing |
| JEL: | I31 D10 |
| Date: | 2023–01–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:117439&r= |
| By: | David G. Blanchflower; Alex Bryson; Anthony Lepinteur; Alan Piper |
| Abstract: | Prior to around 2011, there was a pronounced curvilinear relationship between age and wellbeing: poor mental health was hump-shaped with respect to age, whilst subjective well-being was U-shaped. We examine data from a European panel for France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden called, Come-Here, for 2020-2023, plus data from International Social Survey Program (ISSP) surveys for 2011 and 2021 and some country-specific data. Mental ill-health now declines in a roughly monotonic fashion with age, whilst subjective well-being rises with age. We also show that young people with poorer mental health spend more time daily in front of a screen on the internet or their smartphone, and that within-person increases in poor mental health are correlated with spending more time in front of a screen. This evidence appears important because it is among the first pieces of research to use panel data on individuals to track the relationship between screen time and changes in mental health, and because the results caution against simply using the presence of the internet in the household, or low usage indicators (such as having used the internet in the last week) to capture the role played by screen time in the growth of mental ill-health. |
| JEL: | I31 I38 |
| Date: | 2024–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32500&r= |