403 research outputs found
Sanitation and Hygiene
Using data from the Indian Human Development Survey, this chapter examines both toilet possession and personal hygiene in India. It shows that the strongest influences on households in India having a toilet were their standard of living, the highest educational level of adults in the households, and whether or not they possesses ancillary amenities like a separate kitchen for cooking, a pucca roof and floor, and water supply within the dwelling or its compound. However, in so doing, it also shows that whether households had toilets depended not just on household-specific factors but also on the social environment within which the households were located. More specifically, ceteris paribus households in more developed villages would be more likely to have a toilet than those in less developed villages. The chapter rejects the nihilism of the idea, put forward in several academic papers , that the problem of open defecation in India is an intractable one because caste, ritual pollution, and untouchability instil in rural Indians a preference for open spaces
Neighbors' income, public goods, and wellâbeing
How does neighbors' income affect individual wellâbeing? Our analysis is based on rich U.S. local data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, which contains information on where respondents live and their selfâreported wellâbeing. We find that the effect of neighbors' income on individuals' selfâreported wellâbeing varies with the size of the neighborhood included. In smaller areas such as ZIP codes, we find a positive relationship between median income and individuals' life satisfaction, whereas it is the opposite at the county, MSA, and state levels. We provide evidence that local public goods and local area characteristics such as unemployment, criminality, and poverty rates drive the association between satisfaction and neighbors' income at the ZIP code level. The neighbors' income effects are mainly concentrated among poorer individuals and are as large as one quarter of the effect of own income on selfâreported wellâbeing
A logistic map approach to economic cycles I. The best adapted companies
A birth-death lattice gas model about the influence of an environment on the
fitness and concentration evolution of economic entities is analytically
examined. The model can be mapped onto a high order logistic map. The control
parameter is a (scalar) "business plan". Conditions are searched for growth and
decay processes, stable states, upper and lower bounds, bifurcations, periodic
and chaotic solutions. The evolution equation of the economic population for
the best fitted companies indicates "microscopic conditions" for cycling. The
evolution of a dynamic exponent is shown as a function of the business plan
parameters.Comment: 10 pages, 5 postscript figure
Economic Backwardness and Social Tension
We propose that relative economic backwardness contributes to the build-up of social tension and non-violent and violent conflict. We test our hypothesis using data on organized mass movements and armed civil conflict. The findings show that greater economic backwardness is consistently linked to a higher probability of onset of violent and especially non-violent forms of civil unrest. We provide evidence that the relationship is causal in instrumental variables estimations using new instruments, including mailing speeds and telegram charges around 1900. The magnitude of the effect of backwardness on social tension increases in the two-stage least-squares estimations
Obesity, unhappiness, and the challenge of affluence : theory and evidence
Is affluence a good thing? The book "The Challenge of Affluence" by Avner Offer (2006) argues that economic prosperity weakens self-control and undermines human well-being. Consistent with a pessimistic view, we show that psychological distress has been rising through time in modern Great Britain. Taking over-eating as an example, our data reveal that half the British population view themselves as overweight, and that happiness and mental health are worse among fatter people in Britain and Germany. Comparisons also matter. We discuss problems of inference and argue that longitudinal data are needed. We suggest a theory of obesity imitation where utility depends on relative weight
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Home-ownership as a social norm and positional good: subjective well-being evidence from panel data
Much attention has been devoted to examining the absolute benefits
of home-ownership (e.g. security and autonomy). This paper by contrast is
concerned with conceptualising and testing the relative benefits of homeownership;
those benefits that depend on an individualâs status in society.
Home-ownership has previously been analysed as a social norm, implying that
the relative benefits (costs) associated with being an owner (renter) are
positively related to relevant othersâ home-ownership values. The theoretical
contribution of this paper is to additionally conceptualise home-ownership as a
positional good, implying that the status of both home-owners and renters is
negatively related to relevant othersâ home-ownership consumption.
The empirical contribution of this paper is to quantitatively test for these relative
benefits in terms of subjective well-being. We run fixed effects regressions on
three waves of the British Household Panel Study. We find that i) a strengthening
of relevant othersâ home-ownership values is associated with increases
(decreases) in the subjective well-being of home-owners (renters), and ii) an
increase in relevant othersâ home-ownership consumption decreases the life
satisfaction of owners but has no effect for renters.
Overall our findings suggest that i) the relative benefit of home-ownership are
both statistically significant and of a meaningful magnitude, and ii) homeownership
is likely to be both a social norm and a positional good. Without
explicitly recognising these relative benefits, policymakers risk overestimating
the contribution of home-ownership to societal well-being
Well-being over time in Britain and the USA
This paper studies happiness in the United States and Great Britain. Reported levels of well-being have declined over the last quarter of a century in the US; life satisfaction has run approximately flat through time in Britain. These findings are consistent with the Easterlin hypothesis [Nations and Households in Economic Growth: Essays in Honour of Moses Abramowitz (1974) Academic Press; J. Econ. Behav. Org., 27 (1995) 35]. The happiness of American blacks, however, has risen. White women in the US have been the biggest losers since the 1970s. Well-being equations have a stable structure. Money buys happiness. People care also about relative income. Well-being is U-shaped in age. The paper estimates the dollar values of events like unemployment and divorce. They are large. A lasting marriage (compared to widowhood as a ânaturalâ experiment), for example, is estimated to be worth $100,000 a year
Money, sex and happiness : an empirical study
The links between income, sexual behavior and reported happiness are studied using recent data on a sample of 16,000 adult Americans. The paper finds that sexual activity enters strongly positively in happiness equations. Higher income does not buy more sex or more sexual partners. Married people have more sex than those who are single, divorced, widowed or separated. The happinessâmaximizing number of sexual partners in the previous year is calculated to be 1. Highly educated females tend to have fewer sexual partners. Homosexuality has no statistically significant effect on happiness
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