Are Americans Really Less Happy with Their Incomes?

Recent economic research on international comparisons of subjective well‐being suffers from several important biases due to the potential incomparability of response scales within and across countries. In this paper we concentrate on self‐reported satisfaction with income in two countries: the Netherlands and the U.S. The comparability problem is addressed by using anchoring vignettes. We find that in the raw data, Americans appear decidedly less satisfied with their income than the Dutch. It turns out however that after response scale adjustment based on vignettes, the distribution of satisfaction in the two countries is essentially identical. In addition, we find that the within‐country cross‐sectional effect of income on satisfaction—a key parameter in the recent debate in the economic literature—is significantly underestimated, especially in the U.S., when differences in response scales are not taken into account.     

Valuing the social cost of corruption using subjective well being data and the technique of vignettes

Corruption can have an effect on people's happiness and satisfaction, and therefore, can generate a social cost. However, the perceptions of corruption and satisfaction can also vary across subjects, due to socioeconomic and cultural characteristics. This article studies the differences in the perceptions of corruption and satisfaction across subjects, utilizing the technique of vignettes for the correction of the bias that follows from the differences in the response scale across individuals. The evidence comes from a sample of citizens in Spain, who are asked about their perceptions of corruption and personal satisfaction. The results show that there exists a response scale bias, both for corruption and satisfaction. These results are utilized to approximate the social cost of corruption.     

The determinants of marital happiness

This study contributes to the literature by providing an empirical analysis of the determinants of marital and general happiness. The empirical analysis is conducted using US data from the General Social Survey (GSS) and an Ordered Probit Model. We also attempt to overcome the endogeneity problem between marital happiness and infidelity using a recursive bivariate probit model. One of the advances of this study is to show that the determinants of marital happiness differ between men and women in interesting ways. While infidelity has similar effects for both sexes, we find that women have a detectable preference for a traditional division of labour within the household. In addition, social class, religion, age, children and income have differential effects between men and women. In particular, for marital happiness we find diminishing returns from household income for women and satiation for men. Hence, we find that most of the existing literature has left hidden important differences in the determinants of marital happiness between men and women.     

Changes in health-related quality of life: a compensating income variation approach

This paper investigates the relationship between negative changes in health and life satisfaction, using a sample from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics of Australia Survey. We use panel data models and estimate the life satisfaction impact of several different changes in health status to calculate the Compensating Income Variation (CIV) of them. Our work innovates with respect to the existing literature by using a more robust CIV method that takes account of the potential measurement error in income. Further, we produce the first set of monetary values for health losses using SF-6D utility values, one of the main measures used to estimate and value health change for economic evaluation. We show that negative changes in SF-6D are significantly associated with a reduction in life satisfaction, and the starting point matters: a drop of 0.1 in SF-6D score is associated with a decrease of 0.12 points in life satisfaction if the starting utility value is 0.8, but the effect is 100% higher if the SF-6D starting point is 0.7. More generally, we find that a 0.1 deterioration in SF-6D has a strong association with life satisfaction and that the CIV value is substantial (over US$ 120,000).     

浅谈幸福

在西方,从柏拉图的理念论世界观开始,经斯多葛派的宿命论到中世纪的宗教神学,有关幸福思想的相同之处均为片面强调幸福只是精神需求的满足,主观上贬低甚至排斥物质享受。历史上,各派哲学家关于幸福问题争论不休,提出了多种不同的观点和看法,形成了各执一词的幸福观,有禁欲主义、快乐主义、全面幸福论等幸福观。     

Mass Society and Political Conflict: Toward a Reconstruction of Theory

Many recent studies in economics have uncovered the economic and socio-economic factors that are most related to differences among nations in citizens' self-reported levels of well-being (SWB). However, these cross-country studies have generally not taken into account the fact that around the SWB national average, a considerable spread of scores exists within nations. In an extreme case, a country may be in the midst of a major social upheaval, with a large group of dispossessed and disadvantaged individuals, yet this fact is completely hidden by the arithmetical average. Using cross-country data with diverse economic and socio-economic characteristics and the latest available dataset on well-being, we uncover the factors that appear to be the most highly correlated with the inequality of well-being within nations. We find the inequalities in individual incomes and quality of health, and the level of institutional qualities to be most important in explaining the inequalities of well-being.     

A potential limit on competition

The paper analyzes the ambiguous interplay of some human cognitive dispositions and competitive forces: (a) people have a want for a certain amount of novelty—potentially induced by competition-driven innovation—but emotionally resist an excessive degree of novel mental experiences; and (b) competition-driven change introduces challenges to agents that may result in fluid life states when skills and cognitive resources enable an individual to meet these challenges or in strained life states if this is not the case. As a result, some affective constraints to economic development and potential implications for economic theory development and policy making are identified.      

An alternative to economic retrenchment

The remoteness and geography of Alaska create service access rigidities that are difficult to overcome. The delivery of basic services like healthcare, police protection, and justice are often inadequate in rural places. The continued employment of neoclassical assumptions in policy making is a primary reason policies fail to overcome the barriers. A broader scope of analysis can inform the issues faced by rural residents and provide insight into alternate solutions.     

论幸福悖论的成因与启示

从幸福与收入的关系来看,幸福悖论的成因是:达到临界收入后,收入的功能目的(必然性)向手段(可能性)的转换、收入边际效用递减与收入的负外部性凸显以致人们对收入的公平性和可持续性等需要递增、个人自我实现与带来收入的工作的偏离等导致幸福悖论。揭开幸福悖论的面纱,可以清楚地看到,我国现阶段只有大力发展经济,同时克服经济发展的负外部性,重建公共家园,即关注民生、创造社会财富,把社会进步与个人自我实现有机地结合起来,实现幸福的帕累托最优,才能真正踏上幸福经济之路。     

论企业行为对社会幸福的影响

改革开放以来,社会经济飞速发展,社会财富迅猛增加,人民生活水平也有了一定的提高。在这一背景下,虽然社会整体发展状况良好,社会成员的生活质量有了显著的提高,但是人们对于生活幸福度的感知及认同并不高,并表现出不同的状态。这有可能引发出各种社会问题。特别是对于工作待遇的担忧、食品安全的担心、生活环境的困扰,等等。因此,分析了企业行为对社会幸福的双重影响,并就这些影响做出了深入分析,提出了如何在企业行为与社会幸福之间建立起有机联系的思考。     

“包容性增长”镜像中的幸福问题省思

发展与幸福一直是人们关注的焦点。包容性增长不是一种纯粹经济发展理念或模式,它还关涉到政治、社会等方面的“和谐”、“共享”（包括发展共享、结果共享、权利共享和机会共享）、“公平”和“科学发展”等幸福伦理关怀。那种非纯粹追求经济性质的“包容性”与国民幸福感的“多维性”是相一致的,不仅创造了国民幸福感的政治条件（如机会、公共产品与服务获得以及安全保障等多维平等）,而且还提供了国民幸福感的经济条件和心理条件,并向外界传递一种“让人民过上一种幸福而有尊严的生活”基本价值。     

论企业组织的人性化管理

企业在竞争中,其他资源的无差异性导致人性化管理成为企业关注的焦点问题.人性化管理涵盖了行为管理、人本管理、能本管理、文化管理、和谐管理以及幸福管理等理论与思想.为此,企业组织应通过人性化管理建立以幸福为中心的价值观系统,使人的价值得以真正体现.     

不丹幸福发展模式对中国经济发展的启发

不丹被誉为世界上最幸福的国家之一。不丹根据自己的特色建立了国民幸福总值,走上追求幸福的发展模式。中国走有特色的发展道路也有三十多年,在经济发展的同时产生了一些问题。邻国不丹追求幸福的发展模式也许可以给中国的发展提供一些思考,中国可以吸收有利于中国的、可用于中国的经验,让中国国民幸福起来。     

The impact of terrorism on expectations,trust and happiness – the case of the November 13 attacks in Paris,France

I use quasi-experimental evidence to measure the impact of the 13 November 2015 attacks in Paris, France, on various channels through which terrorism can affect the economy. The evidence suggests the attacks reduced optimism and increased trust in the national government but did not affect current life satisfaction nor political orientation.