Thanks to Chris Sibley for sending this on
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14969
Stephenson and Wolfers NBER Paper
Abstract
By many objective measures the lives of women in the United States have improved over the past 35 years, yet we show that measures of subjective well-being indicate that women's happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men. The paradox of women's declining relative well-being is found across various datasets, measures of subjective well-being, and is pervasive across demographic groups and industrialized countries. Relative declines in female happiness have eroded a gender gap in happiness in which women in the 1970s typically reported higher subjective well-being than did men. These declines have continued and a new gender gap is emerging -- one with higher subjective well-being for men.
7 comments:
So much for the washing machine effect then? One is tempted to correlate the cross country evıdence wıth some data on the extent of feminism:was it worth it?
I doubt there are many feminist who would accept that subjective well-being scores measured in this fashion would be a conclusive test of the overall worth of feminism. The same is true of things like the civil rights movement in the states. I doubt it had a direct effect on subjective well-being in the way measured in the literature but people may still value freedom. I am obviously someone who respects and is interested in the SWB literature but I really dislike the conclusion that people valuing things that dont make them happy demonstrates that they are demonstrating illusionary thinking. I think this is certainly sometimes the case. But there are also sorts of ethical and spiritual reasons why people may be willing to fight hard for something that wont neccesarily increase their SWB.
I agree with Liam's first conclusion but I would not expect many feminists to have an objective assessment of the overall worth of feminism (likewise capitalists & capitalism, Impressionists & Impressionism etc etc).
To be devil's advocate: if one values freedom and then gets more of it, as in the US civil rights movement for example, why would that not increase measured subjective well-being: is it just hedonic adaption? If extra money doesn't make you happy, except temporarily or at very low levels, why can't the same be true of freedom, civil rights etc?
Lots of tricky issues here - one, of course, is loss aversion the endowment effect. Once you have gained and experienced various types of rights and freedoms then they become more valuable in the sense that losing them would be more painful than the benefit of gaining them. Hedonic adaptation is of course a possibility. Having said that, i reiterate that an argument of the form - people overestimate the hedonic gains of increased rights therefore they overinvest in getting those rights - is flawed as the the value of freedom may be independent of its effect on well-being. Though we shouldnt discount the idea that post-freedom (in whatever form) people may be disappointed that the holy land they were promised is not delivered. South Africa is a very good example where the realities of government took over pretty quickly and Im sure many were disappointed that the streets were not suddenly paved with gold. I doubt, however, that many of the black south africans would go back to being treated like second class citizens in terms of their rights. While freedom may not bring happiness changes per se, people still value it.
I think Kris Kristofferson put it best "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. Nothing ain't worth nothing but its free".
Or as Leonard Cohen would put "like a bird on a wire, like a drunk in an old midnight choir, I have tried in my way to be free"
Not to mention the Hasselhof classic:
One morning in june some twenty years ago
I was born a rich man�s son
I had everything that money could buy
But freedom - I had none
I�ve been lookin� for freedom
I�ve been lookin� so long
I�ve been lookin� for freedom
Still the search goes on
I�ve been lookin� for freedom
Since I left my home town
I�ve been lookin� for freedom
Still it can�t be found
Post a Comment