Talk:Happiness economics

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Implication of Sexual Activities in Measuring Happiness
This section looks fairly bogus to me and is disproportionately long. Ben Finn (talk) 13:32, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

"Well-established measurements include the National Index of Sexual Health. Its sub-indices include utility levels of different sex acts, such as homosexual sex and ocular penetration.

Notable supporters of using happiness economics on promotion of safe teen sex include former New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer, journalist and anchor Alice Cooper, and TV show host and comedian Jimmy Kimmel."

Ocular Penetration???? Pretty bizarre to use that as an example, also no citations for Eliot spitzer, which seems like a joke reference. Deviant83 (talk) 11:18, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree. Googling "National Index of Sexual Health" doesn't turn up ANY references to such an index. I strongly recommend deleting this whole section. JPMorgan2 (talk) 19:35, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Agree on deleting whole section. "Ocular Penetration" sounds pretty fishy to me. Anonymous user appears to have arguably vandalized other pages. Too bad, aside from the eye socket sex part, the section isn't too badly written, but it seems bogus. I'm going to be bold and go ahead and get rid of it stephan.com (talk) 23:06, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

All of the material under GNP and GDP that uses the Cato Institute as a source is unreliable (sources 8-10). One of the related claims needs a citation and another uses a term (Happy Life Years) that is not in general usage. This section seems to have been vandalized by a think tank with an agenda. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.55.216.237 (talk) 20:20, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

1st paragraph of Criticisms section (on cardinality) moved here
The following first paragraph of the Criticisms section was moved here:
 * The most fundamental criticism of happiness economics lies in its dependence on the concept of cardinal utility—that is, that personal preferences are measurable and comparable in an objective fashion by an outside observer. Cardinal utility is, however, a discredited and largely discarded concept in economics.fn.:Cardinal utility.

Perhaps it can be reworled to save it. But the following argue against it. The footnote link above does not support the alleged criticism. Yes, cardinal utility was largely abandoned beyond introductory texts after the 1930s, displaced by ordinal utility functions, which do not require cardinality. But (1) it is not a criticism of HE if the latter has found a use for such cardinal-like measures, and (2) measures of happiness can be ordinal and qualitative, not cardinal per fn. 1-link http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/graham/2005graham_dict.pdf  (ctrl-F search for cardinal). I have not come up with Google scholar-link criticisms of HE as such as to cardinality. Rather, there is a contrary argument in http://www.colorado.edu/Economics/morey/4999Ethics/Dixon1997.pdf. Thanks. --Thomasmeeks (talk) 14:44, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Very contradictory interview
So I am listening to a interview that flatly contradicts everything about income threshholds for increasing happiness. The interview is an Econ Talk Podcast. They flatly state that there is no threshhold, and go on to say that the Easterlin paradox was a hypothesis that didn't have data to support it. They say that Easterlin drew his conclusions based on the fact that he failed to find evidence of a link between happiness and income within countries. They say Easterlin simply didn't have a big enough data set.

Dr. Russ Roberts interviews Dr. Betsey Stevenson and Dr. Justin Wolfers. Russ Roberts is a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Stevenson is the former Chief Economist of the U.S. Department of Labor, and a former Assistant Professor of Business and Public Policy, at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Wolfers is a professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan, and a former associate professor of business and public policy at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. These guys are well credentialed and they claim most other economists agree with them. I have heard from other sources that getting "most economists" to agree to anything is impossible, so I am personally skeptical of this last statement. However if that statement is true, half of the Happiness Economics page is bogus. I am going to have to try to rewrite the article to include both sides. Marcusyoder (talk) 19:08, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

GDP and GNP
All of the material under GNP and GDP that uses the Cato Institute as a source is unreliable (sources 8-10). One of the related claims needs a citation and another uses a term (Happy Life Years) that is not in general usage. This section seems to have been vandalized by a think tank with an agenda. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.55.216.237 (talk) 20:23, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

American happiness vs. global happiness
This article continually conflates studies that compare the happiness of individual americans with comparisons of the happiness of nations as a whole worldwide. 216.55.216.237 (talk) 20:41, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Relationships and children
This section does not belong in this article. It has nothing to do with economic well-being.216.55.216.237 (talk) 20:44, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Dr. Proto's comment on this article
Dr. Proto has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

"New Paragraph GDP and GNP

Typically national financial measures, such as gross domestic product (GDP) and gross national product (GNP), have been used to test the welfare effect of economic development. In a cross-country analysis there is a significant association between GDP and Subjective Wellbeing (SWB) with citizens in wealthier nations being happier than those in poorer nations. (Inglehart 1990, Deaton 2008, Stevenson and Wolfers 2008). On one other hand, no significant relationship between happiness and aggregate income is usually found in time-series analysis. For example, Easterlin shows that US income per capita during the period 1974–2004 almost doubled, but the average level of happiness showed no appreciable upward trend. This puzzling finding, appropriately called the Easterlin Paradox, has been confirmed in similar studies by psychologists (Diener et al. 1995) and political scientists (Inglehart 1990), and has been confirmed for European countries (Easterlin 1995).

To reconcile the cross-sectional evidence with the Easterlin Paradox, some have suggested that the positive relation in happiness vanishes beyond some value of income (Layard 2005, Inglehart 1990, Inglehart et al. 2008, Di Tella et al. 2010). This last interpretation has been questioned by Deaton (2008) and Stevenson and Wolfers (2008), who claim that there is a positive relation between GDP and life satisfaction in developed countries. From the opposite perspective, it is being questioned by Easterlin et al. (2010), who provide some evidence that there is no long-run effect even for developing countries. The functional forms used in the econometric model to assess this effect is typically logarithmic with tests for structural changes.

Recently, Proto and Rustichini (2013) have undertaken the econometric analysis without imposing a particular functional form on the econometric model and controlling for country fixed-effect. Using data from the World Value Survey they found that most of the variation of life satisfaction due to GDP is explained by the effect in countries with per capita GDP below $10,000 (PPP-adjusted). Countries with GDP per capita over $20,000 see a much less obvious link between GDP and happiness. (see here for the full references of the cited articles http://voxeu.org/article/gdp-and-life-satisfaction-new-evidence ) In Individual income, at the end I would add.

Recent analysis (eg Proto and Rustichini ) have shown that the effect of individual income on subjective wellbeing is entirely modulated by Neuroticism, one of the top 5 personality trait.

Proto, Eugenio & Rustichini, Aldo, 2015. "Life satisfaction, income and personality," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 17-32.

in Neoclassical economics

I would add that Happiness Economics involves the relaxation of the ordinality assumption of the Utility function. Introducing the possibility that Utility and Welfare can have a cardinal valence. As it has been stated by the Arrow's Impossibilty theorem, the aggregation of ordinal utility function in order to create an index of aggregate welfare is very problematic. Relaxing this assumption allows to aggregate the individual levels of SWB to create a national well-being index."

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

Dr. Proto has published scholarly research which seems to be relevant to this Wikipedia article:


 * Reference 1: Proto, Eugenio & Oswald, Andrew J., 2014. "National Happiness and Genetic Distance: A Cautious Exploration," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 196, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).


 * Reference 2: Sgroi, Daniel & Proto, Eugenio & Oswald, Andrew J. & Dobson, Alexander, 2010. "Priming and the Reliability of Subjective Well-being Measures," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 935, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 12:37, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

Dr. Powdthavee's comment on this article
Dr. Powdthavee has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

"Overall, I think it's a good article on happiness economics. There are some significant omissions, one in particular being how data on well-being can be used to inform policy makers (which is one of the key reasons as to why economists should care about well-being data in the first place). For example, data on happiness has been used to estimate monetary values of non-market goods such as social relationships, air quality, and even bereavement, something that cannot be directly measured using other methods in economics.

References:

Clark, A.E. and Oswald, A.J., 2002. A simple statistical method for measuring how life events affect happiness. International Journal of Epidemiology, 31(6), pp.1139-1144.

Luechinger, S., 2009. Valuing Air Quality Using the Life Satisfaction Approach*. The Economic Journal, 119(536), pp.482-515.

Oswald, A.J. and Powdthavee, N., 2008. Death, happiness, and the calculation of compensatory damages. The Journal of Legal Studies, 37(S2), pp.S217-S251.

Powdthavee, N., 2008. Putting a price tag on friends, relatives, and neighbours: Using surveys of life satisfaction to value social relationships. The Journal of Socio-Economics, 37(4), pp.1459-1480."

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

Dr. Powdthavee has published scholarly research which seems to be relevant to this Wikipedia article:


 * Reference 1: Drouvelis, Michalis & Powdthavee, Nattavudh, 2013. "Are Happier People Less Judgmental of Other People's Selfish Behaviors? Laboratory Evidence from Trust and Gift Exchange Games," IZA Discussion Papers 7495, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).


 * Reference 2: Nattavudh Powdthavee & Warn N. Lekfuangfu & Mark Wooden, 2013. "The Marginal Income Effect of Education on Happiness: Estimating the Direct and Indirect Effects of Compulsory Schooling on Well-Being in Australia," Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series wp2013n16, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne.

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 12:46, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

Dr. Borowiecki's comment on this article
Dr. Borowiecki has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

"Comments: Determinants of well-being are are believed to consist of the following three fundamental factors: income/labor market related factors, personal relationship and health. See, for example, Borowiecki (2016) for a review of the literature. While health does not appear in the article, other factors (e.g., freedom and control) are mentioned. These are of course also shown to matter, but are not believed to be "fundamental".

Revisions: Another milestone in 2013 added.

The remainder reads very well."

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

Dr. Borowiecki has published scholarly research which seems to be relevant to this Wikipedia article:


 * Reference : Borowiecki, Karol Jan, 2013. "How Are You, My Dearest Mozart? Well-being and Creativity of Three Famous Composers Based on their Letters," Discussion Papers of Business and Economics 20/2013, Department of Business and Economics, University of Southern Denmark.

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 18:52, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

Dr. van Praag's comment on this article
Dr. van Praag has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

"As it stands now it does not give due credit to others like Easterlin, Kapteyn, the late Hagenaars, Oswald, and Clark. The edited article using track changes is attached: Happiness economics2.pdf ."

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

We believe Dr. van Praag has expertise on the topic of this article, since he has published relevant scholarly research:


 * Reference : van Praag, Bernard M. S. & Romanov, Dmitri & Ferrer-i-Carbonell, Ada, 2010. "Happiness and Financial Satisfaction in Israel: Effects of Religiosity, Ethnicity, and War," IZA Discussion Papers 5184, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 19:52, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

Expanding on the Criticism Happiness economics
Some have suggested that establishing happiness as a metric is only meant to serve political goals. Recently there has been concern that happiness research could be used to advance authoritarian aims. As a result, some participants at a happiness conference in Rome have suggested that happiness research should not be used as a matter of public policy but rather used to inform individuals.

Even on the individual level there is discussion on how much effect external forces can have on Happiness. Less than 3% of happiness levels is from external sources such as employment, education level, marital status, and socioeconomic status. To go along with this, four of the Big Five Personality Traits are substantially associated with life satisfaction, openness to experience is not associated. Having high levels of internal locus of control lead to higher reported levels of happiness.

Even when happiness can be affected by external sources happiness has high hedonic adaptation, specify some events such as an increase in income, disability, unemployment, and loss (bereavement) only have short-term (about a year) effects on a person’s overall happiness after a while happiness may return to levels similar to unaffected peers.

What has the most influence over happiness are internal factors such as genetics, personality traits, and internal locus of control It is theorized that 50% of the variation in happiness levels is from genetic sources and is known as the genetic set point. The genetic set point is assumed to be stable over time, fixed, and immune to influence or control. This goes along with findings that well-being surveys have a naturally positive baseline. With such strong internal forces on happiness is it is hard to have an effect on a person’s happiness externally. This in turn lends it self back to the idea that establishing a happiness metric is only for political gain and has little other use. To support this even further it is believed that a country aggregate level of SWB is can account for more variance in government vote share than standard macroeconomic variables, such as income and employment.

Nadafreak (talk) 21:55, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

Expanding on Economics section
Generally, the well-being of those who are employed is higher than those who are unemployed. Employment itself may not increase subjective well-being, but facilitates activities that do (such as supporting a family, philanthropy, and education). While work does increase well-being through providing income, income level is not as indicative of subjective well-being as other benefits related to employment. Feelings of autonomy and mastery, found in higher levels in the employed than unemployed, are stronger predictors of subjective well-being than wealth. This may be why employment and income are separate variables in subjective well-being and happiness research, and is why this section will focus on employment.

When personal preference and the amount of time spent working do not align, both men and women experience a decrease in subjective well-being. The negative effect of working more or working less than preferred has been found across multiple studies, most finding that working more than preferred (over-employed) is more detrimental, but some found that working less (under-employed) is more detrimental. Most individuals’ levels of subjective well-being returned to “normal” (level previous to time mismatch) within one year. Levels remained lower only when individuals worked more hours than preferred for a period of two years or more, which may indicate that it is more detrimental to be over-employed than under-employed in the long-term. Employment status effects are not confined to the individual. Being unemployed can have detrimental effects on a spouse’s subjective well-being, compared to being employed or not working (and not looking for work). Partner life satisfaction is inversely related to the number of hours their partner is underemployed. When both partners are underemployed, the life-satisfaction of men is more greatly diminished than women. However, just being in a relationship reduces the impact unemployment has on the subjective well-being of an individual. On a broad scale, high rates of unemployment negatively affect the subjective well-being of the employed. Becoming self-employed can increase subjective well-being, given the right conditions. Those who leave work to become self-employed report greater life satisfaction than those who work for others or become self-employed after unemployment; this effect increases over time. Those who are self-employed and have employees of their own report higher life-satisfaction than those who are self-employed without employees, and women who are self-employed without employees report a higher life satisfaction than men in the same condition.

The effects of retirement on subjective well-being vary depending on personal and cultural factors. Subjective well-being can remain stable for those who retire from work voluntarily, but declines for those who are involuntarily retired. In countries with an average social norm to work, the well-being of men increases after retirement, and the well-being of retired women is at the same level as women who are homemakers or work outside the home. In countries with a strong social norm to work, retirement negatively impacts the well-being of men and women. LScotersen (talk) 22:14, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

Happiness and Leisure addition
Happiness and Leisure Much of the research regarding happiness and leisure relies on subjective well-being (SWB) as an appropriate measure of happiness. Research has demonstrated a wide variety of contributing and resulting factors in the relationship between leisure and happiness. These include psychological mechanisms, and the types and characteristics of leisure activities that result in the greatest levels of subjective happiness. Specifically, leisure may trigger five core psychological mechanisms including detachment-recovery from work, autonomy in leisure, mastery of leisure activities, meaning-making in leisure activities, and social affiliation in leisure (DRAMMA). Leisure activities that are physical, relational, and performed outdoors are correlated with greater feelings of satisfaction with free time. Research across 33 different countries shows that individuals who feel they strengthen social relationships and work on personal development during leisure time are happier than others. Furthermore, shopping, reading books, attending cultural events, getting together with relatives, listening to music and attending sporting events is associated with higher levels of happiness. Spending time on the internet or watching TV is not associated with higher levels of happiness as compared to these other activities., Research has shown that culture influences how we measure happiness and leisure. While SWB is a commonly used measure of happiness in North America and Europe, this may not be the case internationally. Quality of life (QOL) may be a better measure of happiness and leisure in Asian countries, especially Korea. Countries such as China and Japan may require a different measurement of happiness, as societal differences may influence the concept of happiness (i.e. economic variables, cultural practices, and social networks) beyond what QOL is able to measure. There seem to be some differences in leisure preference cross-culturally. Within the Croatian culture, family related leisure activities may enhance SWB across a large spectrum of ages ranging from adolescent to older adults, in both women and men. Active socializing and visiting cultural events are also associated with high levels of SWB across varying age and gender. Italians seem to prefer social conceptions of leisure as opposed to individualistic conceptions. Although different groups of individuals may prefer varying types and amount of leisure activity, this variability is likely due to the differing motivations and goals that an individual intends to fulfill with their leisure time. Research suggests that specific leisure interventions enhance feelings of SWB. This is both a top-down and bottom-up effect, in that leisure satisfaction causally affects SWB, and SWB causally affects leisure satisfaction. This bi-directional effect is stronger in retired individuals than in working individuals. Furthermore, it appears that satisfaction with our leisure at least partially explains the relationship between our engagement in leisure and our SWB. Broadly speaking, researchers classify leisure into active (e.g. volunteering, socializing, sports and fitness) and passive leisure (e.g. watching television and and listening to the radio). Among older adults, passive leisure activities and personal leisure activities (e.g. sleeping, eating, and bathing) correlate with higher levels of SWB and feelings of relaxation than active leisure activities. Thus, although significant evidence has demonstrated that active leisure is associated with higher levels of SWB, or happiness, this may not be the case with older populations., Both regular and irregular involvement in sports leisure can result in heightened SWB. Serious, or systematic involvement in certain leisure activities, such as Taekwondo, correlates with personal growth and a sense of happiness. Additionally, more irregular (e.g. seasonal) sports activities, such as skiing, are also correlated with high SWB. Furthermore, the relationship between pleasure and skiing is thought to be caused in part by a sense of flow and involvement with the activity. Leisure activities, such as meeting with friends, participating in sports, and going on vacation trips, positively correlate with life satisfaction. It may also be true that going on a vacation makes our lives seem better, but does not necessarily make us happier in the long term. Research regarding vacationing or taking a holiday trip is mixed. Although the reported effects are mostly small, some evidence points to higher levels of SWB, or happiness, after taking a holiday.,

Nadafreak (talk) 22:36, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

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Merger proposal
I propose that part of the *determinants* section of Happiness economics be merged into Well-being contributing factors or vice-versa. Both the Happiness Economics and Well-being Contributing Factors articles are of a reasonable size that the merging of Foo will not cause major problems as far as article size or undue weight is concerned. ArunAustralia (talk) 10:00, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose as Well-being contributing factors does not relate exclusively to Economics, and is far too large, at 245k, to be a suitable merge candidate (see WP:TOOBIG). Klbrain (talk) 17:45, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Having another look at this one ... The Determinants section is an important part of the Happiness economics page, and while there is overlap of scope with the rest of the Well-being contributing factors article, this certainly isn't complete. Perhaps Well-being contributing factors should remain a short summary linked by a main template to Happiness economics. Then Happiness economics could also have a template:see also to the top of Well-being contributing factors.  Klbrain (talk) 16:21, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
 * ✅ Klbrain (talk) 07:22, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Hedonic psychology
should no longer redirect here. The fields have diverged. JCJC777 (talk) 01:00, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Timeline here needs updating
it abruptly stops at 2017. JCJC777 (talk) 01:01, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Income & Happiness: definition of income?
Hi, Kahneman & Deaton 2010, found a threshold in annual household income of $75,000 after which happiness stays constant (cf. High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being, Daniel Kahneman, Angus Deaton, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Sep 2010, 107 (38) 16489-16493; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1011492107, read online, cited in the article). However: Said otherwise, does it mean that such a household is at the threshold: 2 adults and 2 kids, with only one parent working, with an annual gross salary of $75k? A455bcd9 (talk) 11:41, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Because the study measures happiness of individuals, did they divide the household income by the number of adults in the household?
 * Is it pre-tax or after-tax income? Kahneman & Deatan mention the ACS in their article and apparently the ACS defines household income as "the income of every resident of that house that is over the age of 15, including pre-tax wages and salaries, along with any pre-tax personal business, investment, or other recurring sources of income, as well as any kind of governmental entitlement such as unemployment insurance, social security, disability payments or child support payments received", so I think it's pre-tax and added this to the (Wikipedia) article, even though it's not written in Kahneman & Deaton's article.


 * Hello. Kahneman & Deaton 2010 also spoke of two different types of happiness, experienced happiness and reflective happiness.  As far as the $75,000 income threshold, that is only concerning experienced happiness according to their model.  But reflective happiness seems to be unlimited as they found no definitive point where reflective happiness and income would max out.   Wsampson1974 (talk) 01:33, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

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