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Income, Health, and Well-Being around the World: Evidence from the Gallup World Poll

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Author Info
Angus Deaton

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Abstract

During 2006, the Gallup Organization conducted a World Poll that used an identical questionnaire for national samples of adults from 132 countries. I analyze the data on life satisfaction and on health satisfaction and look at their relationships with national income, age, and life-expectancy. The analysis confirms a number of earlier findings and also yields some new and different results. Average life satisfaction is strongly related to per capita national income. High-income countries have greater life-satisfaction than low-income countries. Each doubling of income is associated with almost a one-point increase in life satisfaction on a scale from 0 to 10 and, unlike most previous findings, the effect holds across the range of international incomes; if anything, it is slightly stronger among rich countries. Conditional on the level of national per capita income, the effects of economic growth on life satisfaction are negative, not positive as would be predicted by previous discussion and previous micro-based empirical evidence. Neither life satisfaction nor health satisfaction responds strongly to objective measures of health, such as life expectancy or the prevalence of HIV infection, so that neither provides a reliable indicator of population well-being over all domains, or even over health.

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Publisher Info
Article provided by American Economic Association in its journal Journal of Economic Perspectives.

Volume (Year): 22 (2008)
Issue (Month): 2 (Spring)
Pages: 53-72
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Handle: RePEc:aea:jecper:v:22:y:2008:i:2:p:53-72

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  1. Ulrich Schimmack, 2008. "Measuring Wellbeing in the SOEP," SOEPpapers 145, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). [Downloadable!]
  2. John F. Helliwell & Christopher P. Barrington-Leigh & Anthony Harris & Haifang Huang, 2009. "International Evidence on the Social Context of Well-Being," NBER Working Papers 14720, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. Andreas Knabe & Steffen Rätzel & Ronnie Schöb & Joachim Weimann, 2009. "Dissatisfied with Life, but Having a Good Day: Time-Use and Well-Being of the Unemployed," CESifo Working Paper Series CESifo Working Paper No. , CESifo Group Munich. [Downloadable!]
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  4. Arie Kapteyn & James P. Smith & Arthur van Soest, 2008. "Comparing Life Satisfaction," Working Papers 623, RAND Corporation Publications Department. [Downloadable!]
  5. Easterlin, Richard A. & Angelescu, Laura, 2009. "Happiness and Growth the World Over: Time Series Evidence on the Happiness-Income Paradox," IZA Discussion Papers 4060, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). [Downloadable!]
  6. Talya Miron-Shatz, 2009. ""Am I going to be happy and financially stable?": How American women feel when they think about financial security," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 4(1), pages 102-112, February. [Downloadable!]
  7. Richard Layard & Guy Mayraz & Stephen Nickell, 2009. "Does Relative Income Matter?: Are the Critics Right?," SOEPpapers 210, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). [Downloadable!]
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  8. Arie Kapteyn & James P. Smith & Arthur van Soest, 2008. "Are Americans Really Less Happy With Their Incomes?," Working Papers 591, RAND Corporation Publications Department. [Downloadable!]
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This page was last updated on 2009-10-30.

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