• Happiness studies have become pretty standard parts of social science and governance in the last two decades. Helliwell, Huang, and Wang look at cross-country evidence concerning happiness and government quality; 150+ countries, 2005-2017, n≈1,500.
• One common measure of subjective well-being is the Cantril ladder, where respondents are asked to imagine a ladder with eleven numbered levels, from zero on the bottom (worst possible life for the respondent) to ten on the top (best possible life for the respondent).
• Life satisfaction (as measured, for instance, by the Cantril ladder) varies much more on a cross-country basis than do hedonic measures of happiness – and the long-run connection between public policy and life satisfaction seems more solid than the policy-emotions link. “Good government may or may not make you feel happy, but does… make you happier with your life as a whole [p. 5].”
• Some empirical results: the quality of delivery of government services contributes to life satisfaction; the extent of democracy does not, though the quality of democracy is fairly highly correlated with life satisfaction.
• Further, per-capita income is positively connected with life satisfaction; confidence in the government is closely connected to delivery quality, and significantly raises life satisfaction.
• In cross-country comparisons, health care spending seems to be associated with higher life satisfaction, while military spending is associated with lower life satisfaction.
• Conflict is bad for life satisfaction, though some of the connection arises from the harm that conflict imposes on per-capita income.
• Well-being inequality reduces average life satisfaction; raising well-being for those with the least does not have to come at the expense of the well-being of everyone else.
No comments:
Post a Comment