During 2006, the Gallup Organization collected World Poll data using an identical questionnaire from national samples of adults from 132 countries. This paper presents an analysis of the data on life-satisfaction (happiness) and health satisfaction and their relationships with national income, age, and life-expectancy. Average happiness is strongly related to per capita national income, with each doubling of income associated with a near one point increase in life satisfaction on a scale from 0 to 10. Unlike previous findings, the effect holds across the range of international incomes; if anything, it is slightly stronger among rich countries. Conditional on national income, recent economic growth makes people unhappier, improvements in life-expectancy make them happier, but life-expectancy itself has little effect. Age has an internationally inconsistent relationship with happiness. National income moderates the effects of aging on self-reported health, and the decline in health satisfaction and rise in disability with age are much stronger in poor countries than in rich countries. In line with earlier findings, people in much of Eastern Europe and in the countries of the former Soviet Union are particularly unhappy and particularly dissatisfied with their health, and older people in those countries are much less satisfied with their lives and their health than are younger people. HIV prevalence in Africa has little effect on Africans’ life or health satisfaction; the fraction of Kenyans who are satisfied with their personal health is the same as the fraction of Britons and higher than the fraction of Americans. The US ranks 81st out of 115 countries in the fraction of people who have confidence in their healthcare system, and has a lower score than countries such as India, Iran, Malawi, or Sierra Leone. While the strong relationship between life-satisfaction and income gives some credence to the measures, the lack of such correlations for health shows that happiness (or self-reported health) measures cannot be regarded as useful summary indicators of human welfare in international comparisons.
Deaton '07
1 comment:
Deaton says that
"While the strong relationship between life-satisfaction and income gives some credence to the measures, the lack of such correlations for health shows that happiness (or self-reported health) measures cannot be regarded as useful summary indicators of human welfare in international comparisons".
And also that:
"Average happiness is strongly related to per capita national income, with each doubling of income associated with a near one point increase in life satisfaction on a scale from 0 to 10. Unlike previous findings, the effect holds across the range of international incomes; if anything, it is slightly stronger among rich countries".
From a cursory glance, it might be suggeted that relationship between life-satisfaction and income might be lacking in rigour when compared across rich and poor countries. The people in richer countries might interpret the 0-10 scale for life-satisfaction quite differently, perhaps because they have higher expectations for life- satisfaction, or else have some form of cognitive dissonance in their reporting where they think that they ought to be more satisfied.
Deaton does point out that self-reported measures are difficult to compare across international settings, but he was very quick to suggest that the stronger relationship between income and life-satisfaction (in richer countries) is good support for the existence of a positive relationship between income and life-satisfaction.
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