Does a Rising Tide Lift All the Boats? Explaining the National Inequality of Happiness

“…This includes Stevenson and Wolfers (2008b), Ovaska and Takashima (2010), Dutta and Foster (2011) and Becchetti et al (2011). Stevenson and Wolfers (2008b) and Dutta and Foster (2011) (Stevenson and Wolfers, 2008b, p.S34).…”

Section: Existing Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Ovaska and Takashima (2010) The main interest of this paper is the distribution of happiness, not the distribution of income.…”

Section: Existing Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

The Great Happiness Moderation

Clark

Flèche

Senik

2014

Happiness and Economic Growth

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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. Terms of use: Documents in SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research at DIW BerlinThis series presents research findings based either directly on data from the German SocioEconomic Panel Study (SOEP) or using SOEP data as part of an internationally comparable data set (e.g. CNEF, ECHP, LIS, LWS, CHER/PACO). SOEP is a truly multidisciplinary household panel study covering a wide range of social and behavioral sciences: economics, sociology, psychology, survey methodology, econometrics and applied statistics, educational science, political science, public health, behavioral genetics, demography, geography, and sport science.The decision to publish a submission in SOEPpapers is made by a board of editors chosen by the DIW Berlin to represent the wide range of disciplines covered by SOEP. There is no external referee process and papers are either accepted or rejected without revision. Papers appear in this series as works in progress and may also appear elsewhere. They often represent preliminary studies and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be requested from the author directly.Any opinions expressed in this series are those of the author(s) and not those of DIW Berlin.Research disseminated by DIW Berlin may include views on public policy issues, but the institute itself takes no institutional policy positions. AbstractThis paper shows that within-country happiness inequality has fallen in the majority of countries that have experienced positive income growth over the last forty years, in particular in developed countries. This new stylized fact comes as an addition to the Easterlin paradox, which states that the time trend in average happiness is flat during episodes of long-run income growth. This mean-preserving declining spread in happiness comes about via falls in both the share of individuals who declare low and high levels of happiness. Rising income inequality moderates the fall in happiness inequality, and may even reverse it after some point, for example in the US starting in the 1990s. Hence, if raising the income of all does not raise the happiness of all, it will at least harmonize the happiness of all, providing that income inequality does not grow too much. Behind the veil of ignorance, lower happiness inequality would certainly be considered as attractive by risk-averse individuals.

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“…While understanding the level of happiness is important, it would also seem to be valuable to understand the distribution of happiness in a population, particularly if the goal is to move to broader measures of well‐being . Distributional aspects of happiness have recently received considerable attention in the literature (Veenhoven, ; Kalmijn and Veenhoven, ; Becchetti et al ., ; Kalmijn, ; Kalmijn and Arends, ; Ovaska and Takashima, ; Veenhoven, ). Our paper contributes to this growing literature by measuring the distribution of happiness in the U.S. from 1972 to 2010 using a particularly appropriate method.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Dutta

Foster

2012

Review of Income and Wealth

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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. JEL Codes: D39, I393 For a good discussion of the different methods to cardinalize an ordinal variable, refer to Kalmijn and Arends (2010).Variance or standard deviation is an unsatisfactory measure of inequality under a cardinal scale (see Sen, 1973). Further, Foster and Ok (1999) show that even the more commonly used variance of logarithms might be unsuitable when it comes to measuring inequality.Note: NW refers to number of women in each year; NM refers to number of men in each year.

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Does a Rising Tide Lift All the Boats? Explaining the National Inequality of Happiness

Cited by 49 publications

References 18 publications

The drivers of happiness inequality: suggestions for promoting social cohesion

The drivers of happiness inequality: suggestions for promoting social cohesion

The Great Happiness Moderation

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

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