Environmental Awareness and Happiness

The focus of this paper is on the relationship between an individual's environmental attitudes (or awareness) and well-being. We use an ordered probit model to examine the relationship between individual measures of subjective well-being and environmental attitudes regarding ozone pollution and species extinction. Using data from the British Household Panel Survey we find a negative correlation between well-being and concern about ozone pollution and a positive correlation between well-being and concern about species extinction. These relationships hold when explanatory variables are included indicating whether or not the person lives in a polluted environment and whether or not the person engages in outdoor leisure activities. These relationships also hold when we control for individual psychological traits. Our results are an important step in clarifying some of the subtleties of the relationship between environmental quality and well-being. This research area is important in addressing the related issues of sustainability and environmental policy design.

Income Satisfaction Inequality and Its Causes

In this paper, the concept of Income Satisfaction Inequality is operationalized on the basis of individual responses to an Income Satisfaction question posed in the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP). Income satisfaction is the subjective analogue of the objective income concept and includes objective income inequality as a special case. The paper introduces a method to decompose Income Satisfaction Inequality according to the contributions from variables such as income, education, and the number of children. Given the panel structure of the data, inequality may be attributed partly to permanent individual circumstances and partly to transitory changes. The paper shows that by far the largest part of the satisfaction inequality has to be ascribed to unobserved heterogeneity. Distinguishing between a structural and an unexplained part of inequality we find that income explains the largest part of structural Income Satisfaction Inequality together with household membership; for non-working individuals, the age distribution is very relevant as well.Equivalent Income, Financial Satisfaction, Income Satisfaction, Income Inequality, Variance Decomposition.

The Subjective Costs of Health Losses Due to Chronic Diseases: An Alternative Model for Monetary Appraisal

This paper proposes a method to evaluate health losses or gains by looking at the impact on well-being of a change in health status. The paper presents estimates of the equivalent income change that would be necessary to change general satisfaction with life to the same extent as a change in health satisfaction would do. In other words, we estimate the income equivalent of health changes. Next, the health satisfaction changes are linked to specific diseases in order to estimate the income equivalent for various diseases. This method uses answers to well-being and health satisfaction questions as posed in a large German data set. We distinguish between workers and non-workers and between inhabitants of East- and West- Germany. We find, for instance, that for West-workers hearing impediments are on average equivalent to an income reduction of about 20%, and that heart blood difficulties are for the same group equivalent to a 47% income reduction.chronic diseases, equivalent income, health damages, health satisfaction, well-being.

Commemoration of the Eighth Centenary of the Birth of James I: Conference Organized by the History and Archeology Section of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans in Barcelona

We are commemorating this year, 2008, the eighth centenary of the birth of James I 'the Conqueror', the son of King Peter I 'the Catholic' and Mary of Montpellier, who was born in Montpellier during the night of 1-2 February 1208. The History and Archeology Section of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans, independently or in cooperation with other bodies, has organized a series of conferences as part of these commemorations. The conference the Section held at the Institut d'Estudis Catalans in Barcelona from 31 March to 4 April, in partnership with the Institut Europeu de la Mediterrània, was the first in the series. It focussed on two major topics: "El poder reial i les institucions administratives i representatives" (Royal Power and Administrative and Representative Institutions) and "Les relacions internacionals" (International Relations). A total of two lectures and twenty-four papers were given