IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mib/wpaper/140.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Geography of Economics and Happiness

Author

Listed:
  • Luca Stanca

Abstract

This paper investigates the spatial pattern of the e®ects of eco- nomic conditions on subjective well-being, using a large sample of in- dividuals from 81 countries throughout the world. We ¯nd evidence of substantial spatial heterogeneity and spatial dependence in the cross- country distribution of the e®ects of income and unemployment on happiness. We examine the impact of macroeconomic conditions on country-level sensitivities of subjective well-being to microeconomic conditions. The e®ect of income on well-being is found to be signif- icantly stronger in countries with lower GDP per capita and higher unemployment rate. The e®ect of unemployment on well-being is in- stead signi¯cantly stronger in countries with higher GDP per capita and higher unemployment rate.

Suggested Citation

  • Luca Stanca, 2008. "The Geography of Economics and Happiness," Working Papers 140, University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics, revised Jun 2008.
    • Handle: RePEc:mib:wpaper:140
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://repec.dems.unimib.it/repec/pdf/mibwpaper140.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2008
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stutzer, Alois, 2004. "The role of income aspirations in individual happiness," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 89-109, May.
    2. Clark, Andrew E & Oswald, Andrew J, 1994. "Unhappiness and Unemployment," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 104(424), pages 648-659, May.
    3. Luigino Bruni & Luca Stanca, 2006. "Income Aspirations, Television and Happiness: Evidence from the World Values Survey," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(2), pages 209-225, May.
    4. Oswald, Andrew J, 1997. "Happiness and Economic Performance," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 107(445), pages 1815-1831, November.
    5. Bruno S. Frey & Alois Stutzer, 2002. "What Can Economists Learn from Happiness Research?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 40(2), pages 402-435, June.
    6. David G. Blanchflower, 2009. "International Evidence on Well-Being," NBER Chapters, in: Measuring the Subjective Well-Being of Nations: National Accounts of Time Use and Well-Being, pages 155-226, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Helliwell, John F., 2003. "How's life? Combining individual and national variables to explain subjective well-being," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 331-360, March.
    8. Easterlin, Richard A., 1974. "Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? Some Empirical Evidence," MPRA Paper 111773, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Brereton, Finbarr & Clinch, J. Peter & Ferreira, Susana, 2008. "Happiness, geography and the environment," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(2), pages 386-396, April.
    10. Bruno S. Frey, 2008. "Happiness: A Revolution in Economics," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262062771, December.
    11. Frey, Bruno S & Stutzer, Alois, 2000. "Happiness, Economy and Institutions," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 110(466), pages 918-938, October.
    12. Aslam, A. & Corrado, L., 2007. "No Man is an Island, the Inter-personal Determinants of Regional Well-Being in Europe," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 0717, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    13. Robert J. MacCulloch & Rafael Di Tella & Andrew J. Oswald, 2001. "Preferences over Inflation and Unemployment: Evidence from Surveys of Happiness," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(1), pages 335-341, March.
    14. Ferrer-i-Carbonell, Ada & Gowdy, John M., 2007. "Environmental degradation and happiness," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(3), pages 509-516, January.
    15. Bruni, Luigino & Stanca, Luca, 2008. "Watching alone: Relational goods, television and happiness," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 65(3-4), pages 506-528, March.
    16. Rafael Di Tella & Robert J. MacCulloch & Andrew J. Oswald, 2003. "The Macroeconomics of Happiness," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(4), pages 809-827, November.
    17. Rafael Di Tella & Robert MacCulloch, 2006. "Some Uses of Happiness Data in Economics," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 20(1), pages 25-46, Winter.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Migheli, Matteo, 2009. "Religiosity and happiness: an ever-winning couple? An answer from India," POLIS Working Papers 126, Institute of Public Policy and Public Choice - POLIS.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Luca Stanca, 2010. "The Geography of Economics and Happiness: Spatial Patterns in the Effects of Economic Conditions on Well-Being," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 99(1), pages 115-133, October.
    2. Francesco Sarracino, 2014. "Richer in Money, Poorer in Relationships and Unhappy? Time Series Comparisons of Social Capital and Well-Being in Luxembourg," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 115(2), pages 561-622, January.
    3. Chun-Hung Lin & Suchandra Lahiri & Ching-Po Hsu, 2014. "Happiness and Regional Segmentation: Does Space Matter?," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 15(1), pages 57-83, February.
    4. Stanca, Luca, 2009. "With or without you? Measuring the quality of relational life throughout the world," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 38(5), pages 834-842, October.
    5. O'Donnell, Gus & Oswald, Andrew J., 2015. "National well-being policy and a weighted approach to human feelings," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 59-70.
    6. Andrew E. Clark & Paul Frijters & Michael A. Shields, 2006. "Income and happiness: Evidence, explanations and economic implications," PSE Working Papers halshs-00590436, HAL.
    7. Stutzer, Alois & Frey, Bruno S., 2010. "Recent Advances in the Economics of Individual Subjective Well-Being," IZA Discussion Papers 4850, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Ary José A. Souza-Jr., 2021. "Climate change and behavior: Do environmental attitudes and perceptions impact on subjective well-being in Europe?," Working Papers REM 2021/0207, ISEG - Lisbon School of Economics and Management, REM, Universidade de Lisboa.
    9. Francesco Sarracino, 2012. "Money, Sociability and Happiness: Are Developed Countries Doomed to Social Erosion and Unhappiness?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 109(2), pages 135-188, November.
    10. BARTOLINI Stefano & SARRACINO Francesco, 2011. "Happy for How Long? How Social Capital and GDP relate to Happiness over Time," LISER Working Paper Series 2011-60, Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER).
    11. Graham, Liam & Oswald, Andrew J., 2010. "Hedonic capital, adaptation and resilience," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 372-384, November.
    12. Di Tella, Rafael & Haisken-De New, John & MacCulloch, Robert, 2010. "Happiness adaptation to income and to status in an individual panel," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 76(3), pages 834-852, December.
    13. Di Tella, Rafael & MacCulloch, Robert, 2008. "Gross national happiness as an answer to the Easterlin Paradox?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(1), pages 22-42, April.
    14. Blanchflower, David G & Oswald, Andrew, 2011. "International Happiness," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 39, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    15. Bruno S. Frey & Alois Stutzer, 2010. "Happiness: A New Approach in Economics," ifo DICE Report, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 8(4), pages 3-7, 01.
    16. Ada Ferrer-i-Carbonell, 2013. "Happiness economics," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 4(1), pages 35-60, March.
    17. Flèche, Sarah, 2015. "Distaste for centralization: evidence from a quasi-natural experiment in Switzerland," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 64999, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    18. Andrew E. Clark & Claudia Senik, 2010. "Will GDP growth increase happiness in developing countries?," PSE Working Papers halshs-00564985, HAL.
    19. Paul Frijters & Harry Greenwell & John P. Haisken‐DeNew & Michael A. Shields, 2009. "How well do individuals predict their future life satisfaction? Evidence from panel data following a nationwide exogenous shock," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 42(4), pages 1326-1346, November.
    20. Leonardo Becchetti & Alessandra Pelloni, 2013. "What are we learning from the life satisfaction literature?," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 60(2), pages 113-155, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    subjective well-being; economic geography; spatial econometrics;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A12 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Relation of Economics to Other Disciplines
    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mib:wpaper:140. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Matteo Pelagatti (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dpmibit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.