Ethnicity and Subjective Well-being in the Republic of North Macedonia
TL;DR: This paper examined the nature of inter-ethnic relations in North Macedonia drawing on the 2008 European Quality of Life Survey (EQL) and found that the self-declared level of subjective well-being is Ceteris paribus.
Abstract: This paper examines the nature of inter-ethnic relations in North Macedonia drawing on the 2008 European Quality of Life Survey. Ceteris paribus, the self-declared level of subjective well-being is...
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TL;DR: In this article, a national household survey for 2002, containing a specially designed module on subjective well-being, is used to estimate pioneering happiness functions in rural China, finding that relative income within the village and relative income over time, both in the past and expected in the future, are important for current happiness.
Abstract: A national household survey for 2002, containing a specially designed module on subjective well-being, is used to estimate pioneering happiness functions in rural China. The variables that are predicted by economic theory to be important for happiness prove to be relatively unimportant. Our analysis suggests that we need to draw on psychology and sociology if we are to understand. Rural China is not a hotbed of dissatisfaction with life, possibly because most people are found to confine their reference groups to the village. Relative income within the village and relative income over time, both in the past and expected in the future, are shown to be important for current happiness, whereas current income is less so. Even amidst the poverty of rural China, attitudes, social comparisons and aspirations influence subjective well-being. The implications of the findings for the future and for policy are considered.
618 citations
"Ethnicity and Subjective Well-being..." refers background in this paper
...…income relative to the income of the reference group significantly increases a person’s SWB, after controlling for absolute income and other factors correlated with SWB (Ball and Chernova 2008; Clark, Frijters, and Shields 2008; Diener et al. 1993; Knight, Song, and Gunatilaka 2009; McBride 2001)....
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TL;DR: This paper found that the relationship between religion and wellbeing is mediated by factors ranging from intrinsic purpose to its social aspects, to its role as an insurance mechanism for people who face great adversity.
Abstract: A number of studies find that religious people are happier than non-religious ones. Yet a number of fundamental questions about that relationship remain unanswered. A critical one is the direction of causality: does religion make people happier or are happier people more likely to have faith in something that is beyond their control? We posit that the relationship between religion and wellbeing is mediated by factors ranging from intrinsic purpose, to its social aspects, to its role as an insurance mechanism for people who face great adversity. We explore a number of related questions, using world-wide data from the Gallup World Poll. As these data are cross- section data, we cannot establish causality; we do, however, explore: how or if the relationship between religion and wellbeing varies across the two distinct wellbeing dimensions (hedonic and evaluative); how social externalities mediate the relationship; how the relationship changes as countries and people within them become more prosperous and acquire greater means and agency; and how the relationship between religion and wellbeing varies depending on where respondents are in the wellbeing distribution. We find that the positive relation between religion and evaluative wellbeing is more important for respondents with lower levels of agency, while the positive relation with hedonic wellbeing holds across the board. The social dimension of religion is most important for the least social respondents, while the religiosity component of religion is most important for the happiest respondents, regardless of religious affiliation or service attendance. As such, it seems that the happiest are most likely to seek social purpose in religion, the poorest are most likely to seek social insurance in religion, and the least social are the most likely to seek social time in religion.
300 citations
TL;DR: This paper investigated how an individual's self-reported happiness is related to the level of her income in absolute terms, and relative to other people in her country, and found that both absolute and relative income are positively and significantly correlated with happiness, quantitatively, changes in relative income have much larger effects on happiness than do changes in absolute income.
Abstract: This paper uses data from the World Values Survey to investigate how an individual’s self-reported happiness is related to (i) the level of her income in absolute terms, and (ii) the level of her income relative to other people in her country. The main findings are that (i) both absolute and relative income are positively and significantly correlated with happiness, (ii) quantitatively, changes in relative income have much larger effects on happiness than do changes in absolute income, and (iii) the effects on happiness of both absolute and relative income are small when compared to the effects several non-pecuniary factors.
181 citations
TL;DR: The approach is to look at several subjective wellbeing (SWB) findings that are, on the face of it, internally contradictory, or that appear to contradict well-based if conventional judgments about what is or is not good for people.
Abstract: Economists, as well as psychologists and philosophers, have become increasingly interested in self-reported measures of wellbeing, what they mean, and whether they might be used for policymaking. This interest parallels a renewed awareness of the limitations of standard measures of GDP (and allied measures), as well as a wish to redirect measurement away from GDP in an era when growth rates are diminishing across much of the rich world. Various subjective wellbeing (SWB) measures have been used to provide new insights and to capture a number of difficult-to-measure phenomena, such as the trade-off between inflation and unemployment, the costs of air pollution, or the values attached to environmental amenities.
In spite of those successes, the measures are neither fully accepted nor fully understood. Traditional economics has been skeptical of measures whose content is unclear, is largely up to the respondent, and is sometimes deeply affected by the wording of the questions or by the context in which they are put. Although cognitive testing in the laboratory can provide insights about how people understand well-being questions, more often the interpretation is deduced by analyzing the correlates of the answers ex post. This poses a problem: we cannot use a correlation between a SWB measure and a variable X both to validate the measure and to claim that we have demonstrated the welfare consequences of X. One symptom is the “happiness fork:” that results that conform to standard welfare analysis (left fork)—that income, education and health are positively linked to SWB—are taken as support for SWB measures, while results that do not so conform (right fork)—that unemployment is much worse than the loss of income would imply, or that people hate to commute—are also taken as supportive and indeed demonstrative of the superiority of the SWB measures. Such interpretations are unlikely to persuade skeptics.
Our approach is to look at several SWB findings that are, on the face of it, internally contradictory, or that appear to contradict well-based if conventional judgments about what is or is not good for people. Those who see happiness as the only good, and who believe that SWB measures capture it, simply see these conventional judgments as mistaken. For those of us not so committed, we are likely to modify our interpretation of the measures, or the place that happiness plays in wellbeing, or both. From whatever perspective, internal contradictions need to be worked out, a process that is likely to be productive. One distinction that helps reduce confusion is that between evaluative and hedonic wellbeing which we maintain throughout.
164 citations
"Ethnicity and Subjective Well-being..." refers background in this paper
...…income, employment status, occupation, age, health, gender, and marital status.8 Numerous studies also have included additional variables such as civil liberties, race and religion (e.g., Cummings 2020; Deaton and Stone 2013; Graham and Crown 2014; Hayward and Krause 2014; OkuliczKozaryn 2019)....
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors provide an overview of a recent literature which has compared how well different subjective well-being measures predict future behaviour, and address the issue of the temporality of wellbeing measures, and whether they should be analysed ordinally or cardinally.
Abstract: There is much discussion about using subjective well-being measures as inputs into a social welfare function, which will tell us how well societies are doing. But we have (many) more than one measure of subjective well-being. I here consider examples of the three of the main types (life satisfaction, affect, and eudaimonia) in three European surveys. These are quite strongly correlated with each other, and are correlated with explanatory variables in pretty much the same manner. I provide an overview of a recent literature which has compared how well different subjective well-being measures predict future behaviour, and address the issue of the temporality of well-being measures, and whether they should be analysed ordinally or cardinally.
51 citations
"Ethnicity and Subjective Well-being..." refers background in this paper
...The findings on the influence of other correlates such as age, education, marital status, and gender are fairly robust across SWB studies (Clark 2016; Dolan, Peasgood, and White 2008; Helliwell, Layard, and Sachs 2012)....
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...See Dolan, Peasgood, and White (2008) and Clark (2016) for detailed reviews of the literature on subjective well-being....
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