3 Research Links

1. Minimising Misery: A New Strategy for Public Policies Instead of Maximising Happiness?
2. Return-Migration, Race, and Political Trust.
3. Scholars' physical appearance, research performance and feelings of happiness.

HT: Viviana Di Giovinazzo.

Religiosity and Happiness

Our basic result is a conditional U‐shaped relation between happiness and religiosity. Countries with high levels of religiosity and countries with low levels of religiosity report higher levels of well‐being than countries with medium levels of religiosity, conditional on the level of income. We argue that this outcome reflects network and long‐run transition effects. P. 18. 

That is from the conclusions of this new published paper by Gundlach and Opfinger (Review of Development Economics, August 2013). A draft (2011) is here. 

China's Life Satisfaction, 1990-2010

The surveys used are: The World Values Survey - WVS- (www.worldvaluessurvey.org), the Asiabarometer - AB - (www.asiabarometer.org), two surveys by Gallup (10, 11) available at (www.gallup.com), a survey by Horizon Research Consultancy Group.

That is from the new paper, "China's Life Satisfaction, 1990-2010," by Easterlin, Morgan, Switek (January 2013). 

A very interesting comparison in China would be between the pre- and post-Xiaoping reforms, but that is very difficult for the lack of data. 

Don't miss the summary and implications of the paper. 

Happiness Research: The importance of Absolute Income

Tow recently published paper in the journal Emotion look at the link between (absolute and relative) income and subjective well being. It seems that absolute income is more important than previously thought.

The first paper is by Sacks, Stevenson, and Wolfers:

Economists in recent decades have turned their attention to data that asks people how happy or satisfied they are with their lives. Much of the early research concluded that the role of income in determining well-being was limited, and that only income relative to others was related to well-being. In this paper, we review the evidence to assess the importance of absolute and relative income in determining well-being. Our research suggests that absolute income plays a major role in determining well-being and that national comparisons offer little evidence to support theories of relative income. We find that well-being rises with income, whether we compare people in a single country and year, whether we look across countries, or whether we look at economic growth for a given country. Through these comparisons we show that richer people report higher well-being than poorer people; that people in richer countries, on average, experience greater well-being than people in poorer countries; and that economic growth and growth in well-being are clearly related. Moreover, the data show no evidence for a satiation point above which income and well-being are no longer related. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

The second by Robert Frank:

The traditional view that well-being depends on both absolute and relative income was challenged in a 1974 paper by Richard Easterlin (Does economic growth improve the human lot? In P. David and M. Reder (Eds.), Nations and households in economic growth: Essays in honor of Moses Abramovitz (pp. 89–125), New York: Academic Press). He noted that although individual well-being is strongly positively associated with income within any country at a given point in time, the average level of measured well-being for a country changes little over time, even in the face of substantial growth in average incomes. For decades, social scientists have struggled to explain this “Easterlin Paradox.” In a 2008 paper, Betsey Stephenson and Justin Wolfers (Economic growth and subjective well-being: Reassessing the Easterlin Paradox, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Vol. 39, pp. 1–87) argued that the Easterlin Paradox was a statistical illusion. Using richer data sets that facilitate more precise estimates of the various links between income and well-being, they assert that average well-being in a country does, in fact, rise as average income rises over time, and that rich countries are happier than slightly poorer ones. They also suggest that the link between income and well-being may run through absolute income alone—that is, that individual well-being may be completely independent of relative income. In this article, I argue that there have always been good reasons to believe that well-being is positively linked to absolute income. I also argue, however, that there is no reason to believe that individual well-being is independent of relative income. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).

Alas, the full papers are not online.  

Hierarchy and Life Satisfaction

A graph from the paper

People live happier in the Northern countries of Europe than in the Latin countries. This difference in happiness is paralleled by a difference in degree of social hierarchy; Latin countries are more hierarchical and probably so because feudalism has been more prominent in their history. The negative correlation between happiness and hierarchy is likely to reflect a causal effect, humans being hierarchy averse by nature.

Source: Brule & Veenhoven (2012). 
HT: Matthew Baker.

How is happiness economics doing?

Pretty well recently:

From the new published paper "Happiness Economics from 35 000 Feet" (Journal of Economic Surveys - which is becoming one of my favorites) by George MacKerron. An early draft (November 2010) is here. 

Institutional economics is doing pretty well too.