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on Economics of Happiness |
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Issue of 2026–10–12
four papers chosen by Viviana Di Giovinazzo, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca |
| By: | Greyling, Talita; Rossouw, Stephanie |
| Abstract: | Life satisfaction (LS) and the Cantril ladder (CL) are widely used as measures of evaluative well-being. Because the two measures are strongly correlated, they are frequently treated as interchangeable when analysing the determinants of subjective well-being, comparing countries and informing public policy. However, recent evidence suggests that respondents may not interpret these questions similarly across regions. We examine whether LS and the CL measure the same underlying concept using pooled data from the first two waves of the Global Flourishing Study, covering 23 countries (including one territory). We first compare respondents' answers to the two measures across all regions by analysing country averages and individual-level correlations. We then examine the within-person LS-CL difference and estimate separate XGBoost models on pooled observations from Waves 1 and 2, alongside pooled OLS models with country and wave fixed effects, focusing on the two regions that display the largest contrast: Western countries and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Finally, we compare country rankings for all regions across our 23 countries. Our findings show that LS and the CL should not be treated as universally interchangeable measures of evaluative well-being. Correlation analyses between the two measures at the country and individual levels, both within and between regions, vary substantially. Focusing on the Western and SSA regions, respondents differ much more in their evaluations of the two measures in SSA than in the West. The features associated with each measure also differ. In the Western sample, mental health is the most important predictor of both measures, but is substantially more important for LS, while perceived income is relatively more important for the CL. Loneliness is considerably more important for LS in SSA, while country is among the most important features for both SSA outcomes. Perceived income is also important in both regions. Therefore, the distinction between LS and the CL is not simply that different variables matter in each case. Many of the same features are important for both measures, but the relative weight placed on them differs between the two measures and, more substantially, between the two regions. Furthermore, the standard set of variables used to explain LS and the CL accounts for substantially more variation in the West than in SSA, suggesting that important features of evaluative well-being in SSA remain unobserved or suffer from significant measurement error. Therefore, treating the two measures as interchangeable, particularly in country comparisons that extend beyond Western countries, risks drawing conclusions that are not representative of all countries and regions. We conclude that the choice of evaluative well-being measure has substantive consequences for conclusions and ranking of countries and should be guided by the research question and regional context. |
| Keywords: | Life satisfaction, Cantril ladder, XGBoost, SHAP, Global Flourishing Study |
| JEL: | C45 D91 I31 Z13 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:1825 |
| By: | Joan Costa-Font; Sergi Jiménez-Martín; Cristina Vilaplana-Prieto |
| Abstract: | We estimate the health and wellbeing effects of subsidized access to long-term care (LTC). Our analysis exploits the staggered implementation of Spain’s 2007 System of Autonomy and Care for Dependent People (SAAD), which expanded publicly funded and universal LTC subsidies and supports, as well as its subsequent reform. Using two decades worth of administrative and survey data and leveraging exogenous regional and individual-level variation in program exposure, we find that access to SAAD benefits reduces the care receiver’s depressive symptoms by about 1 percentage point, increases its survival probability by 2.6–3 percentage points, and raises its life satisfaction by 0.24–0.50 scale points. Cost-effectiveness estimates indicate that the implied cost per quality-adjusted life year (QALY) gained lies below commonly accepted efficiency thresholds for public health spending in Europe. These findings document sizeable health returns and efficiency gains from publicly subsidized LTC provision. |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fda:fdaeee:eee2026-30 |
| By: | Marie-Louise Leroux; Pierre Pestieau; Gregory Ponthiere |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the design of optimal family policies when children have unequal needs (in terms of material goods and parental time), leading to heterogeneous preferences, and have parents with unequal degrees of altruism. We examine the issue of interpersonal well-being comparisons between children by means of consumption-equivalent and time-equivalent indexes, and show that the conditions of existence of these equivalents — as well as their rankings across children — differ across the metric used. We also examine well-being comparisons across parents who differ in their children's preferences and in their altruism. Then, we derive the constrained egalitarian social optimum (where only children's well-being levels are equalized) and the double egalitarian social optimum (where both children's and parents' well-being are equalized). It is shown that the optimal allocation and the optimal family policy vary with the metric used for the measurement of children's well-being. |
| Keywords: | childhood, well-being, heterogeneity, interpersonal comparisons, family policies |
| JEL: | D13 I31 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_13017 |
| By: | von Borries, Alvaro (CIRCLE, Lund University); Grillitsch, Markus (CIRCLE, Lund University); Hall, Ola (CIRCLE, Lund University) |
| Abstract: | This paper develops and applies a multidimensional indicator of objective well-being grounded in the capabilities approach to analyze spatial and temporal patterns across Swedish municipalities from 2002 to 2020. Operationalizing well-being as a place-based capability environment across six dimensions – economic, health, education, safety, civic, and inclusion – the study moves beyond income-centered accounts of regional inequality and examines how different dimensions of well-being are jointly shaped by local institutional and socioeconomic contexts. The analysis reveals that well-being is persistently structured by municipality type and industrial composition, yet in ways that defy a simple urban advantage: large municipalities lead on economic and educational dimensions but score systematically lower on safety and inclusion, while rural and small municipalities display more balanced capability profiles. Over the study period, well-being improved broadly but unevenly, with rural and peripheral municipalities converging toward the national median while former industrial towns experienced broad-based capability decline across multiple dimensions. The geography of well-being has increasingly aligned with the geography of political discontent, with electoral support for the Sweden Democrats growing strongest in capability-disadvantaged municipalities. Together, these findings advance a spatially grounded, multidimensional understanding of territorial inequality and offer a framework for identifying where structural disadvantage and capability deprivation intersect most acutely. |
| Keywords: | local well-being; capabilities approach; regional opportunity structures; Sweden |
| JEL: | I31 O15 R11 |
| Date: | 2026–09–25 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:lucirc:2026_003 |