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"Clark, Andrew E."
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The origins of happiness : the science of well-being over the life course
\"What makes people happy? Why should governments care about people's well-being? How would policy change if well-being was the main objective? The Origins of Happiness seeks to revolutionize how we think about human priorities and to promote public policy changes that are based on what really matters to people. Drawing on a uniquely comprehensive range of evidence from longitudinal data on over one hundred thousand individuals in Britain, the United States, Australia, and Germany, the authors consider the key factors that affect human well-being. The authors explore factors such as income, education, employment, family conflict, health, childcare, and crime -- and their findings are not what we might expect. Contrary to received wisdom, income inequality accounts for only two percent or less of the variance in happiness across the population; the critical factors affecting a person's happiness are their relationships and their mental and physical health. More people are in misery due to mental illness than to poverty, unemployment, or physical illness. Examining how childhood influences happiness in adulthood, the authors show that academic performance is a less important predictor than emotional health and behavior, which is shaped tremendously by schools, individual teachers, and parents. For policymakers, the authors propose new forms of cost-effectiveness analysis that places well-being at center stage. Groundbreaking in its scope and results, The Origins of Happiness offers all of us a new vision for how we might become more healthy, happy, and whole\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
A Natural Experiment on Job Insecurity and Fertility in France
Job insecurity can have wide-ranging consequences outside of the labour market. A 1999 rise in the French layoff tax paid by large private firms when they laid off older workers made younger workers less secure; this insecurity reduced their fertility by 3.7 percentage points (with a 95% confidence interval between 0.7 and 6.6 percentage points). Reduced fertility is only found at the intensive margin: job insecurity reduces family size but not the probability of parenthood itself. Our results also suggest negative selection into parenthood, as this fertility effect does not appear for low-income and less-educated workers.
Paper
Who Compares to Whom? The Anatomy of Income Comparisons in Europe
This article provides unprecedented direct evidence from large-scale survey data on both the intensity (how much?) and direction (to whom?) of income comparisons. Income comparisons are considered to be at least somewhat important by three-quarters of Europeans. They are associated with both lower levels of subjective well-being and a greater demand for income redistribution. The rich compare less and are happier than average when they do, which latter is consistent with relative income theory. With respect to the direction of comparisons, colleagues are the most frequently-cited reference group. Those who compare to colleagues are happier than those who compare to other benchmarks.
Journal Article
Pandemic Policy and Life Satisfaction in Europe
We use data from the COME-HERE longitudinal survey collected by the University of Luxembourg to assess the effects of the policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic on life satisfaction in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden over the course of 2020. Policy responses are measured by the Stringency Index and the Economic Support Index from the Blavatnik School of Government. Stringency is systematically associated with lower life satisfaction, controlling for the intensity of the pandemic itself. This stringency effect is larger for women, those with weak ties to the labor market, and in richer households. The effect of the Economic Support is never statistically different from zero.
Paper
Back to Baseline in Britain: Adaptation in the British Household Panel Survey
We look for evidence of adaptation in wellbeing to major life events using eighteen waves of British panel data. Adaptation to marriage, divorce, birth of child and widowhood appears to be rapid and complete; this is not so for unemployment. These findings are remarkably similar to those in previous work on German panel data. Equally, the time profiles with life satisfaction as the wellbeing measure are very close to those using a twelve-item scale of psychological functioning. As such, the phenomenon of adaptation may be a general one, rather than being found only in German data or using single-item wellbeing measures.
Journal Article
A happy choice: wellbeing as the goal of government
In this article, we lay out the basic case for wellbeing as the goal of government. We briefly review the history of this idea, which goes back to the ancient Greeks and was the acknowledged ideal of the Enlightenment. We then discuss possible measures on which a wellbeing orientation could be based, emphasizing the importance of acknowledging the political agency of citizens and thus their own evaluations of their lives. We then turn to practicalities and consequences: how would one actually set up wellbeing-oriented decision-making and what difference should we expect from current practice? We end by discussing the current barriers to the adoption of wellbeing as the goal of government, both in terms of what we need to know more about and where the ideological barriers lie.
Journal Article
Relative Income, Happiness, and Utility: An Explanation for the Easterlin Paradox and Other Puzzles
The well-known Easterlin paradox points out that average happiness has remained constant over time despite sharp rises in GNP per head. At the same time, a micro literature has typically found positive correlations between individual income and individual measures of subjective well-being. This paper suggests that these two findings are consistent with the presence of relative income terms in the utility function. Income may be evaluated relative to others (social comparison) or to oneself in the past (habituation). We review the evidence on relative income from the subjective well-being literature. We also discuss the relation (or not) between happiness and utility, and discuss some nonhappiness research (behavioral, experimental, neurological) related to income comparisons. We last consider how relative income in the utility function can affect economic models of behavior in the domains of consumption, investment, economic growth, savings, taxation, labor supply, wages, and migration.
Journal Article
Characteristics associated with COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy
Understanding what lies behind actual COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy is fundamental to help policy makers increase vaccination rates and reach herd immunity. We use June 2021 data from the COME-HERE survey to explore the predictors of actual vaccine hesitancy in France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Spain and Sweden. We estimate a linear-probability model with a rich set of covariates and address issues of common-method variance. 13% of our sample say they do not plan to be vaccinated. Post-Secondary education, home-ownership, having an underlying health condition, and one standard-deviation higher age or income are all associated with lower vaccine hesitancy of 2–4.5% points. Conservative-leaning political attitudes and a one standard-deviation lower degree of confidence in the government increase this probability by 3 and 6% points respectively. Vaccine hesitancy in Spain and Sweden is significantly lower than in the other countries.
Journal Article
Well-being and working from home during COVID-19
PurposeThe authors track the well-being of individuals across five European countries during the course of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and relate their well-being to working from home. The authors also consider the role of pandemic-policy stringency in affecting well-being in Europe.Design/methodology/approachThe authors have four waves of novel harmonised longitudinal data in France, Italy, Germany, Spain and Sweden, covering the period May–November 2020. Well-being is measured in five dimensions: life satisfaction, a worthwhile life, loneliness, depression and anxiety. A retrospective diary indicates whether the individual was working in each month since February 2020 and if so whether at home or not at home. Policy stringency is matched in per country at the daily level. The authors consider both cross-section and panel regressions and the mediating and moderating effects of control variables, including household variables and income.FindingsWell-being among workers is lower for those who work from home, and those who are not working have the lowest well-being of all. The panel results are more mitigated, with switching into working at home yielding a small drop in anxiety. The panel and cross-section difference could reflect adaptation or the selection of certain types of individuals into working at home. Policy stringency is always negatively correlated with well-being. The authors find no mediation effects. The well-being penalty from working at home is larger for the older, the better-educated, those with young children and those with more crowded housing.Originality/valueThe harmonised cross-country panel data on individuals' experiences during COVID-19 are novel. The authors relate working from home and policy stringency to multiple well-being measures. The authors emphasise the effect of working from home on not only the level of well-being but also its distribution.
Journal Article
The fall in income inequality during COVID-19 in four European countries
We here use panel data from the COME-HERE survey to track income inequality during COVID-19 in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. Relative inequality in equivalent household disposable income among individuals changed in a hump-shaped way between January 2020 and January 2021, with an initial rise from January to May 2020 being more than reversed by September 2020. Absolute inequality also fell over this period. Due to the pandemic some households lost more than others, and government compensation schemes were targeted towards the poorest, implying that on average income differences decreased. Generalized Lorenz domination reveals that these distributive changes reduced welfare in Italy.
Journal Article