Inequality of Happiness in the U.S.: 1972–2010

It is well accepted that a country's GDP may not fully reflect its level of well‐being. In recent years, happiness has emerged as an alternative indicator of well‐being, and research has mainly focused on determining the level of happiness. While it is important to look at the level, the distribution of happiness is also a salient aspect in any evaluation of inequality. There has been a growing interest in the distribution of happiness, although the ordinal nature of the data makes the use of standard inequality measures problematic. Our paper contributes to the literature by exploring the distributions for the U.S. from 1972 to 2010. Based on new methods developed for ordinal data, we are able to overcome the problems associated with ordinality and obtain unambiguous rankings of happiness distributions. We also compute the level of happiness inequality using existing measures based on median centred approaches. Further, we decompose the median based inequality measures of happiness by gender, race, and region.     

幸福,赚钱还是花钱??

文章从理论和实证角度研究了幸福函数,对比考察了货币因素中的消费与收入对个人主观幸福感的影响。研究发现,货币因素的具体数值以及相对变化对个人主观幸福感均具有显著影响,无论是消费还是收入的增加都能显著提升个人幸福感,而花钱比赚钱更有利于提升个人幸福感。由于家庭的初始货币因素存在差异,以及受环境适应惯性和棘轮效应影响,相对于收入不平等的变动,个人幸福感对消费不平等的变动更加敏感;相对于就业样本,非就业样本对货币因素的变动更加敏感。“幸福没有那么容易,才会特别让人着迷”,在收入分配与再分配过程中注重居民家庭相对地位的改善,引导理性消费,满足消费需求,考虑异质性,则有利于提升国民幸福。     

雇主品牌与员工创新行为关系研究

把员工创新行为作为因变量,把雇主品牌作为自变量,把工作幸福感作为中介变量,把职业韧性作为调节变量,构建了一个揭示雇主品牌对员工创新行为的影响效果及影响机制的模型。通过对81家企业的946名在职员工进行问卷调查,采用多层线性模型技术对样本数据进行统计分析,研究发现：（1）雇主品牌正向影响员工工作幸福感与创新行为;（2）工作幸福感显著正向影响创新行为,工作幸福感在雇主品牌与员工创新行为之间起部分中介作用;（3）职业韧性在工作幸福感与创新行为的关系中起正向调节作用,职业韧性越强,工作幸福感对创新行为的影响作用越强。     

The Lasting Well-Being Effects of Early Adulthood Macroeconomic Crises

This paper studies the effects of macroeconomic crises experienced in early adulthood on subjective well-being (SWB) later in life. Using repeated cross-sectional survey data of over 100,000 individuals from 38 countries around the world combined with historical data on macroeconomic circumstances, I find that having experienced a macroeconomic crisis at ages 18–25 is detrimental to SWB. This result is in line with earlier literature that focuses on other individual-level outcomes. However, the analysis presented in this paper reveals that outcomes related to individual’s earnings, employment status, family life, and religion cannot fully explain the lasting effect of macroeconomic crises on well-being. Results on heterogeneous responses show that the negative effect is largest for females and for individuals with low educational attainment.     

Effect of grandchildren on the happiness of grandparents: Does the grandparent's child's gender matter?

Using a representative sample from Japan and a difference-in-differences strategy, we investigate whether the effect of having grandchildren on the happiness of grandparents varies with the gender of their (own) single child. In line with our expectations, we find that maternal grandmothers have more to lose or less to gain from having grandchildren than paternal grandmothers. In contrast, grandfathers’ changes in happiness do not depend on their own child's gender. This result is explained by the fact that grandmothers are more likely to be involved in childrearing when their daughter has a child.     

Twitter’s daily happiness sentiment,economic policy uncertainty,and stock index fluctuations

This research applies quantile Granger causality and impulse-response analyses to evaluate the causal linkages among Twitter’s daily happiness sentiment, economic policy uncertainty (EPU), and S&P 500 indices across the U.S. stock market cycles. We present notable evidence of bi-directional causality among cyclical components of Twitter’s daily happiness sentiment, economic policy uncertainty, and S&P 500 indices for most quantiles. The causal linkage of Twitter’s daily happiness sentiment and S&P 500 indices identified in this study reconciles the so-called Easterlin Paradox and Easterlin Illusion arguments from previous studies on income-happiness relationship. Moreover, given a high (low) EPU level, the positive (negative) impulse-response effects between the Twitter’s daily happiness sentiment and the S&P 500 indices are justified during a stock market bust cycle, but the signs of these correlations change to negative (positive) during a stock market boom cycle. These findings imply that investors’ hedging strategies can be linked to the surveillance of the Twitter’s daily happiness sentiment index.     

What Does Dynamic Panel Analysis Tell Us About Life Satisfaction?

Static fixed effects estimation of life satisfaction often gives rise to serial correlation in the residuals, indicating omitted dynamics. Rather than correcting the standard errors, “to make them robust,” this study explores dynamic panel analysis to incorporate the otherwise omitted dynamics into the estimation of life satisfaction models. The analysis utilizes the System General Method of Moments approach to dynamic analysis. The results indicate that overall life satisfaction is largely (though not wholly) contemporaneous; correspondingly, the persistence of satisfaction from previous periods is limited. This finding is robust to a variety of different specification choices. Accordingly, the issue of omitted dynamics in a life satisfaction context is a minor one. This use of dynamic panel analysis, therefore, offers support for the ongoing use of static models (like fixed effects), even though they omit dynamics. Given the highlighted challenges of dynamic panel analysis, static fixed effects analyses will often be preferred.     

自由时间、收入与幸福感——基于中国家庭追踪调查数据的经验分析

在对时间、收入与幸福感进行理论分析的基础上，利用中国家庭追踪调查数据研究中国家庭时间、收入与个体主观幸福感之间的关系，并使用生活满意度法估计时间自由的货币价值，结果表明：对于全部家庭来讲，自由时间、收入的增加均能够增加个体的主观幸福感，且这种正向影响的显著程度比较强；自由时间每增加1个百分点带来的主观幸福感的增加相当于个体当月总收入增加5.89个百分点。这一结论蕴含的政策含义是：以人的发展为最终目的的经济发展既要着眼于提高个体收入，又要通过改革来增加自由时间以提升人们的幸福感。     

健康扶贫政策提升农村贫困老人主观幸福感了吗？

随着我国脱贫攻坚结束进入过渡期，健康扶贫政策对巩固脱贫攻坚提高农村贫困人口健康水平具有重要的意义。基于2015年和2018年中国健康与养老追踪调查（CHARLS）数据，运用倾向得分匹配和双重差分模型（PSM-DID），分析健康扶贫政策对农村贫困老人幸福感的影响及作用机制。研究结果表明，健康扶贫政策在5%的显著水平下提升了农村贫困老人的积极情感，并在1%的显著水平下降低了其消极情感；机制检验发现，健康扶贫政策通过提升农村贫困老人实际健康状况、降低医疗费用支出的路径提升了农村贫困老人主观幸福感；通过异质性分析发现，健康扶贫政策在5%的显著性水平下提升了健康状况较差的农村贫困老人积极情绪。最后提出逐步完善医疗保障体系、拓宽健康帮扶边界、提升医疗服务水平、树立大健康理念等建议。