This paper reviews the happiness-health relationship from an economics perspective, highlighting the role of adaptation. People's expectations for health standards influence their reported health and associated happiness, a finding that roughly mirrors the Easterlin paradox in income and happiness. Research on unhappiness and obesity shows that norms and stigma vary a great deal across countries and cohorts, mediating the related well-being costs. Better understanding this variance and its effects on incentives for addressing the condition is important to policy design. More generally, the paper discusses how happiness surveys can-and cannot-inform public health policy.

happiness, inequality, Latin America, subjective well-being,

To date the literature on subjective well-being has focused on the developed economies. We provide empirical evidence from two emerging market countries, Peru and Russia. Our results - and in particular a strong negative skew in the assessments of the respondents with the greatest income gains - support the importance of relative rather than absolute income differences. Among other factors, we attribute our results to shifts in reference norms and to macroeconomic volatility. Relative differences seem to matter more for those in the middle of the distribution than for the very wealthy or the very poor. Our respondents were more critical in assessing their progress vis-a-vis others in their country versus those in their community. The large and consistent gap we find between objective income trends and the subjective assessments of the upwardly mobile may have implications for the future economic and political behaviour of a group that is critical to the sustainability of market policies.subjective well-being, Peru, Russia, relative income differences, sustainability of market policies,

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu Life evaluations and emotional states are distinct subjective well-being (SWB) components. We explore the relationship between opportunities and SWB dimensions, distinguishing between actual capabilities and means (education, employment, and income) and perceived opportunities (autonomy and health perceptions and belief in hard work). We find a link between capabilities and SWB (particularly, life evaluations), which varies across world regions. Capabilities can also be associated with stress and anger and seem to matter the least for the happiest respondents. We also explore the determinants of the least studied well-being dimension: eudaimonia, or life purpose, which is an underlying objective of the development process. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E S