Wealth and Happiness Revisited: Growing wealth of nations does go with greater happiness

“Will raising the incomes of all increase the happiness of all?” Intuition says 'yes' but theories of relative utility caution that the answer may be ‘no’. The theory of relative utility holds that rises in income will produce at best short-lived gains in happiness. If people’s happiness depends on income relative to others (social comparisons), or on income relative to their own past income (adaptive expectations) then raising the incomes of all may not increase average happiness. In contrast, the theory of absolute utility predicts that additional income allows each person to fill additional needs, thus increasing average happiness. We test the absolute utility theory against both types of relative utility theories. Previous tests have been plagued by low statistical power, which has been incorrectly interpreted as evidence against absolute utility models. The current study improves statistical power by including longer time series, by adding 9 nations with low GDP/capita and (in some analyses) by pooling countries into income tiers. We also apply a model by VanPraag and Kapteyn (1973), which can estimate separate effects for social comparisons, adaptive expectations, and absolute income theories. The results show no effect for social comparison across countries, but show support for partial adaptation to new income over a two-year period. Most importantly, increasing national income does go with increasing national happiness, but the short-term effect on happiness is higher than the long-term effect for a given rise in income

Rising happiness in nations,1946-2004. A reply to Easterlin

ABSTRACT The ‘Easterlin paradox’ holds that economic growth does not add to the quality-of-life and that this appears in the fact that average happiness in nations has not risen in the last few decades. The latest trend data show otherwise. Average happiness has increased slightly in rich nations and considerably in the few poor nations for which data are available. Since longevity has also increased, the average number of happy life years has increased at an unprecedented rate since the 1950s

Quality of Life from the Voting Booth: The Effect of Crime Rates and Income on Recent U.S. Presidential Elections

election forecasting, quality of life, responsibility hypothesis, violent crime rate,

Utilizing conjoint analysis to design modern crop varieties: Empirical example for groundnut in Niger

Preferences for monetary and non-monetary plant traits influence modern crop variety adoption decisions of farmers. To enhance adoption probability of modern crop varieties, it is necessary to identify and focus research on traits that significantly contribute to utility while de-emphasizing insignificant plant attributes. This paper illustrates the potential for applying conjoint analysis to aid the design and targeting of client-responsive modern crop varieties. Farmers ranked eight orthogonally-derived plant trait combinations used in an illustrative example. Utilities were estimated using the choice-probability-based method of ordered probit. Results showed that conjoint analysis can differentiate significant and non-significant traits of modern crop varieties. The usefulness of applying conjoint analysis over identifiable disaggregated groups of a sample was also evident. Future application of conjoint analysis to the design and targeting of modern crop varieties should carefully consider sample composition and size to permit the estimation of relevant sub-models for desired farmer segment

Subjective Well-Being, Societal Condition and Social Policy – The Case Study of a Rich Chinese Society

attitude study, life satisfaction, social policy, subjective well-being, welfare indicators,