When income differences hurt or excite: The nonlinear effect of regional inequality on subjective wellbeing

Combining information from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions and the European Social Survey, we investigate the relationship between subjective well-being and income inequality using regional inequality indicators and individual data. We assume that inequality aversion and perception of social mobility affect the impact of regional inequality on subjective well-being in opposite directions. We find evidence of an inverse U-shaped effect of inequality, where inequality starts to have a positive effect on subjective well-being that becomes negative with a switch point before the average of the Gini index for the entire sample. The rationale for our nonlinear finding is that Hirschman's tunnel effect (and the positive effect of perceived social mobility) prevails for low levels of inequality, while inequality aversion and negative relative income effects are relatively stronger when inequality is higher. Robustness checks on different sample splits are consistent with the hypothesis of the two drivers.     

Macroeconomic conditions and well-being: do social interactions matter?

We investigate the role played by social interactions in the transmission of the effects of macroeconomic conditions on well-being. Using survey data for a representative sample of Italian individuals, we find that social interactions play a dual role. On the one hand, the well-being of people who spend more time with their friends or go out more often is less sensitive to macroeconomic fluctuations. On the other hand, social interactions are negatively affected by worsening macroeconomic conditions, thus playing a relevant role in the transmission of macroeconomic shocks to subjective well-being. More specifically, the negative impact of downturns on the frequency of going out and active participation in associations significantly contributes to the adverse effects of recessions on satisfaction with life and with individual life domains.     

Dust storms and human well-being

Dust storms are extreme weather events that can lead to sharp short-duration reductions in environmental quality. Is the US and elsewhere, dust storms are becoming more frequent due to climate change and altered land-use patterns. However, our present understanding of their impacts to social welfare is limited. To address this gap, I undertake the first nationwide US study of dust storm impacts on subjective well-being using life satisfaction (LS) data from the CDC Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) over 2005–2010. I find that LS is lower by 0.008 points on a 4-point scale on days when a dust storm occurred in a respondent’s county-of-residence, as identified by the National Weather Service. The observed LS impact is precisely estimated; occurring only on a dust storm event day and not the days immediately before or after. I calculate that individuals are willing-to-pay $111 to avoid a single dust storm event day, on the basis of the estimated well-being externality. I also show that public dust storm alerts on event days can offset more than 50% of the negative LS effect, suggestive of an important role for public risk communication.     

Competitive rivalry,social disposition,and subjective well-being: An experiment

This paper experimentally studies the effects of competitive rivalry in a social dilemma where people's actions cannot be contractually fixed. We find that, in comparison with no rivalry, the presence of rivalry does neither increase efficiency nor does it yield any gains in earnings for the short side of the exchange relation. Moreover, rivalry has a clearly negative impact on the disposition towards others and on the experienced well-being of those on the long side. Since subjective well-being improves only for those on the short side rivalry contributes to larger inequalities in experienced well-being. All in all rivalry does not show up as a positive force in our environment.     

Life satisfaction and air quality in Europe

Concerns for environmental quality and its impact on people's welfare are fundamental arguments for the adoption of environmental legislation in most countries. In this paper, we analyze the relationship between air quality and subjective well-being in Europe. We use a unique dataset that merges three waves of the European Social Survey with a new dataset on environmental quality including SO₂ concentrations and climate in Europe at the regional level. We find a robust negative impact of SO₂ concentrations on self-reported life satisfaction.     

Income inequality,corruption and subjective well-being

ABSTRACT

Based on the data of CGSS2013, we analyse the relationship between income inequality, corruption and subjective well being using an Ordered Probit model. Our results indicate that income inequality and corruption significantly reduces the subjective well-being of our country’s residents. Furthermore, corruption is an important channel for the negative effect of income inequality on subjective well-being, the impact of income inequality on subjective well-being is mainly achieved by the role of corruption. Specifically, the impacts vary according to hukou. Higher degree of income inequality indeed reduces the subjective well-being of urban residents, while it has a positive effect on subjective well-being of rural residents. Corruption has a significant negative impact on the subjective well-being of urban and rural residents. There is heterogeneity in the influence of different income levels in rural areas. The study in this paper shows that anti-corruption and narrowing the income gap are the two major grippers to improve the well-being of the residents.     

Shocked by therapy? Unemployment in the first years of the socio-economic transition in Poland and its long-term consequences

We examine the long-term implications of unemployment for material conditions and well-being using the Polish sample from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Retrospective data from the SHARELIFE survey are used to reconstruct labour market experiences across the threshold of the socio-economic transformation from a centrally planned to a free market economy in Poland. These individual experiences are matched with outcomes observed in the survey about 20 years later to examine their correlation with unemployment at the time of the transition. We find that becoming unemployed in the early 1990s correlates significantly with income, assets and a number of measures of well-being recorded in 2007 and 2012. Using plant closures to reflect exogenous changes to labour market status at the time of the transition, we are able to confirm the causal effect of unemployment on income and house ownership 20 years later, but find no evidence for a long-term causal relationship between unemployment and such measures of well-being as life satisfaction, depression and subjective assessment of material conditions.     

Natural capital, subjective well-being, and the new welfare economics of sustainability: Some evidence from cross-country regressions

The measurement of natural capital and its management during the economic development process are important aspects of the capital approach to sustainable development. However, the assessment of social welfare in terms of genuine savings (or changes in total wealth per capita) is arguably too limited. This paper tries to make a case for the incorporation of subjective well-being measures in debates about sustainable development by exploring the macro-level relationship between subjective well-being and natural capital in a cross-country setting. It is tested whether natural capital per capita is correlated with subjective well-being in a sample of fifty-eight developed and developing countries, using natural capital data from the World Bank's Millennium Capital Assessment. Bivariate regressions indicate that it is. When multiple regression models are estimated that include (a) major country-level determinants of subjective well-being (GNI per capita, social capital, income distribution, unemployment, inflation), and (b) regional dummy variables for ex-Soviet Union and Latin American countries, the positive correlation remains. The role of data outliers is carefully explored, and the sensitivity of the results to the use of alternative subjective well-being measures (i.e. life satisfaction, happiness, and a combined life satisfaction and happiness index) is investigated. This does not change the nature of the results. The findings arguably strengthen the case for a ‘new welfare economics of sustainability’ that takes subjective well-being measures into account.     

Do natural disasters increase the likelihood that a government is replaced?

We examine the impact of natural disasters on the likelihood that a government is removed from office using panel data for 156 countries over the period 1975–2010. Employing a conditional logit model, we find that the occurrence of natural disasters, the number of natural disasters and disaster-related losses increase the chances that a government will be replaced. The magnitudes of these effects differ widely across natural disaster types, but are robust to the inclusion of economic and political variables and to model specifications. Overall, these findings are consistent across our sample of OECD and non-OECD countries.     

Valuing flood disasters using the life satisfaction approach

This paper argues that life satisfaction data can be used to value natural disasters. We discuss the strengths of this approach, compare it to traditional methods and apply it to estimate and monetize utility losses caused by floods in 16 European countries between 1973 and 1998. Using combined cross-section and time-series data, we find a negative impact of floods on life satisfaction that is sizeable, robust and significant. The estimates are comparable to price discounts found in housing markets. In an exploratory analysis, we find that risk transfer mechanisms such as mandatory insurance have large mitigating effects.     

Suffer the little children: Measuring the effects of parenthood on well-being worldwide

This paper investigates the relationship between parenthood and well-being in a large sample of individuals from 94 countries worldwide. We find that having children is negatively related to well-being. Conditioning on economic and socio-demographic characteristics can only partially help to explain this finding. We show that the negative effect of parenthood on well-being is explained by a large adverse impact on financial satisfaction, that dominates the positive impact on non-financial satisfaction. The results are robust to the use of alternative empirical specifications and to the inclusion of the reported ideal number of children as a proxy variable to account for the endogeneity of parenthood decisions.     

基于低温雨雪冰冻灾害的农业损失分析与防灾避灾对策

2008年1月中下旬发生在我国南方大部分地区的低温雨雪冰冻天气,是我国近50年来极为罕见的一次大范围极端气象灾害,给灾区农业产业的生产经营造成了较大的影响和巨大的损失,值得总结与深思.本文就此分析了此次灾害对农业产业的不利影响,提出了应对农业重大自然灾害的防灾避灾对策.     

Economic development and losses due to natural disasters: The role of hazard exposure

Our contribution is to show that the relationship between wealth and disasters is mainly formed by the exposure to disaster hazard. We first build a simple analytical model that demonstrates how countries that face a low hazard of disasters are likely to see first increasing losses and then decreasing ones with increasing economic development. At the same time, countries that face a high hazard of disasters are likely to experience first decreasing losses and then increasing ones with increasing economic development. We then use a cross-country panel dataset in conjunction with a hazard exposure index to investigate whether the data is consistent with the predictions from the model. In line with our model, we find that the relationship of losses with wealth crucially depends on the level of hazard of natural disasters faced by countries.     

Do natural resources help or hinder development? Resource abundance,dependence, and the role of institutions

The resource curse literature presents conflicting evidence on the relationship between natural resources and development. We evaluate the direct effect of resources on developmental outcomes vis-à-vis their indirect effect through the weakening of political institutions using a 3SLS instrumental variable setup that simultaneously estimates development outcomes and institutions. We find that resource abundance and resource dependence affect development outcomes through different channels. While resource abundance generally has a direct positive effect on developmental outcomes, resource dependence has a stronger negative indirect effect that operates through its negative impact on institutional quality. The results also depend on the type of development outcome considered, with more consistent positive direct effects found for physical capital measures and stronger negative indirect effects for human capital development. The use of a simultaneous framework and dual measures of resources reconciles seemingly contradictory findings in earlier work.     

A human well-being approach for assessing the value of natural land areas

To decide on the policy measures to be implemented, policymakers need comprehensive information on the costs and benefits of land conversion for society. Accordingly, the EU Biodiversity Strategy requires the member countries to assess their ecosystems and the economic value of their ecosystem services by 2020. This paper takes up and extends the subjective well-being approach to valuing changes in natural land cover, which provides information on willingness-to-pay for landscape amenities such as scenic views or recreational opportunities. Results at the NUTS 2 level for European countries indicate (a) that marginal willingness-to-pay estimates tend to be higher for natural areas that are scarcer, and (b) that a nonlinear relationship between land cover and well-being is preferred to a linear relationship indicating decreasing benefits from individual landscape amenities.     

Economic reforms and human development: evidence from transition economies

Do market-oriented economic reforms result in higher levels of human well-being? This article studies the impact of macro-level institutional and infrastructure reforms on the economic, educational and health dimensions of human well-being among 25 transition economies. We use panel data econometrics based on the LSDVC technique to analyse the effects of market-oriented reforms on the human development index (HDI), as a measure of human well-being, from 1992 to 2007. The results show the complexity of reform impacts in transition countries. They show that institutional and economic reforms led to positive economic effect and significant impacts on other dimensions of human development. We find some positive economic impacts from infrastructure sectors reforms. However, not every reform measure appears to generate positive impacts. Large-scale privatizations show negative effects in health and economic outcomes. The overall results show the importance of the interaction among different reform measures and the combined effect of these on human development.     

Welfare to work and subjective well-being: Evidence from a randomized control trial

I examine the effect of transitioning from welfare to full-time employment on a variety of measures of subjective well-being for a sample of long-term welfare recipients in British Columbia and New Brunswick who participated in the Self-Sufficiency Project (SSP). Individuals randomly assigned to the treatment group could receive a generous time-limited earnings supplement if they found full-time work. I use random assignment to estimate the local average treatment effect of working full time on well-being. For the complier subpopulation, I find large, positive effects on subjective well-being that persist over the longer run for New Brunswick and through roughly three years for British Columbia. Policy changes made during the experiment may explain the provincial differences.     

气候变化对湖南省农业水旱灾害的影响研究方法探讨

随着全球气候变化的不断加剧,区域气温、降水、辐射等都发生了重大变化,其对农业发展也具有重要影响,研究气候变化对湖南农业水旱灾害的影响及适应性对策有利于减小灾害性天气及气候系统对湖南省农业的影响,适时找出适合湖南区域特点的应对措施,并进一步完善当前全球气候变化对农作物生长研究的不足。基于英国哈德莱气候中心的区域气候模式PRECIS系统的区域尺度气候情景模拟结果,借助于GIS技术运用EPIC和SWAT模型分别模拟未来不同气候情景下湖南水稻产量和水资源的变化,通过对过去50年气候变化及其对水稻模拟产量的影响研究,可以总结湖南省应对气候变化引发的水旱灾害的策略和方法,并进一步提出未来气候变化情景下的适应性对策,可以为政府和相关决策部门应对未来水旱灾害的适应性对策提供参考依据。     

Natural disasters and university enrolment: evidence from L’Aquila earthquake

Although there are several studies looking at the effect of natural disasters on economic growth, less attention has been dedicated to their impact on educational outcomes, especially in more developed countries. We use the synthetic control method to examine how the L’Aquila earthquake affected subsequent enrolment at the local university. This issue has wide economic implications as the University of L’Aquila made a large contribution to the local economy before the earthquake. Our results indicate that the earthquake had no statistically significant effect on first-year enrolment at the University of L’Aquila in the three academic years after the disaster. This natural disaster, however, caused a compositional change in the first-year student population, with a substantial increase in the number of students aged 21 or above. This is likely to have been driven by post-disaster measures adopted in order to mitigate the expected negative effects on enrolment triggered by the earthquake.     

短期经济波动如何影响长期增长趋势?

短期经济波动如何影响长期经济平均增长趋势已成为一个新的研究热点。本文研究我国省际数据发现,波动性对长期增长趋势有显著影响:1978年前,波动性与平均增长呈负相关的特征在多数省份出现;1978年后,两者关系主要表现为正相关。本文通过建立内生随机增长模型,研究波动与增长之间的内在关联,提出了实际波动与增长关系的一种合理解释。模型的基本思想是:人力资本形成过程分为自然形成和主观形成,教育投入等决定主观形成过程的因素的多少是决定波动性如何影响长期经济增长方向的关键。当教育投入较高,以致主观过程占优时,波动性对长期增长趋势有正效应;反之,当自然过程占优时,波动性对平均增长有负效应。模型结论与建国后的发展历史相印证:1978年前,生产水平低,教育投入少,人力资本形成中干中学比例占优,因而波动性同增长呈负相关;1978年恢复高考后,教育正常化,生产发展,教育投入增加,因而波动性与增长逐渐呈现正相关。