Too Educated to be Happy? An Investigation into the Relationship between Education and Subjective Well-being

While education has played a strong role in the ancient debate on the necessary preconditions for the good life, the contemporary literature on subjective well-being has not paid much attention to the possibility of education having an independent effect on happiness. Typically, education is mentioned only as having indirect effects, e.g., through its effect on income and wealth, employment status, health and mortality, marriage success, or as a proxy for socioconomic status. Also, the view that education - like income - mainly raises aspirations and therefore leads to lower levels of happiness is widespread in the literature, mostly without empirical evidence. Using data from the last five waves of the World Value Survey, the goal of this paper is to comprehensively study the empirical evidence by using logistic regression techniques to shed more light on the neglected role of education in happiness differentials. The results suggest that the relationship beteen education and happiness is distinct from the relationship between income and happiness. While there is evidence that higher income does not go hand in hand with higher happiness after a certain point, there is no evidence of a similar levelling off in the relationship between education and happiness. (author's abstract

Differential vulnerability to hurricanes in Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic: the contribution of education

The possible impacts of the level of formal education on different aspects of disaster management, prevention, alarm, emergency, or postdisaster activities, were studied in a comparative perspective for three countries with a comparable exposure to hurricane hazards but different capacities for preventing harm. The study focused on the role of formal education in reducing vulnerability operating through a long-term learning process and put particular emphasis on the education of women. The comparative statistical analysis of the three countries was complemented through qualitative studies in Cuba and the Dominican Republic collected in 2010-2011. We also analyzed to what degree targeted efforts to reduce vulnerability were interconnected with other policy domains, including education and science, health, national defense, regional development, and cultural factors. We found that better education in the population had clear short-term effects on reducing vulnerability through awareness about crucial information, faster and more efficient responses to alerts, and better postdisaster recuperation. However, there were also important longer term effects of educational efforts to reduce social networks for mutual assistance creating a general culture of safety and preparedness. Not surprisingly, took an intermediate position

Optimal Fertility

In this paper we challenge the widespread notion that replacement level fertility is the most desirable level of fertility both for countries currently above and below this level. We first discuss possible alternative criteria for choosing one fertility level over another. Dismissing for the time being the two extreme criteria of ever increasing national strength (which would imply unlimited population growth) and preservation of the environment (which would see human numbers converge to zero), we focus on age dependency as the sole criterion. But we do so by relaxing the strong assumption that all individuals of a given age are equal in terms of their economic contribution to society and introduce education as probably the most relevant observable source of population heterogeneity. Our criterion variable is the education weighted support ratio and we perform thousands of alternative simulations for different constant levels of fertility starting from empirically given populations. If education is assumed to present a cost at young age and results in higher productivity during working age then for most countries the optimal long-term total fertility rate turns out to be well below replacement level

Demographic Metabolism at Work

In this paper, we transform the age-old wisdom that societies change through generational replacement into a formalized model that allows for quantitative forecasts of such societal changes for decades into the future. Using the term “Demographic Metabolism” which was introduced by Norman Ryder 50 years ago, we show how the blend of this concept with the methods of multi-dimensional population dynamics results in a sophisticated model with strong predictive power, particularly for such characteristics that once established tend to be sticky along cohort lines. We evaluate this model empirically and give a comprehensive summary of recent applications to the reconstruction and projection of educational attainment distributions by age and sex for all countries of the world that already resulted in major new assessments of the societal level returns to education. We revisit the past application of the model for forecasting the future spread of the prevalence of European identity in the EU and show that despite of the recent European crisis, the Demographic Metabolism continued to work as projected. Finally, we apply the model to the changing attitudes towards homosexuality in Japan, Spain and the USA and produce projections of the average tolerance levels in those countries up to 2040

How does education change the relationship between fertility and age-dependency under environmental constraints? A long-term simulation exercise

Background: When asked what a desirable fertility level for populations might be, most politicians, journalists, and even social scientists would say it is around two children per woman, a level that has been labelled by demographers "replacement-level fertility." The reasons given for considering this level of fertility as something to aim at usually include maintaining the size of the labour force and stabilizing the old-age-dependency ratio. Objective: In this paper, we scrutinize this wide-spread view by introducing education in addition to age and sex as a further relevant source of observable population heterogeneity. We consider several criteria for assessing the long-term implications of alternative fertility levels and present numerical simulations with a view on minimizing the education-weighted total dependency ratio and complement this with the goal of reducing the amount of greenhouse gas emission in the context of climate change. Methods: We perform thousands of alternative simulations for different fertility levels (assumed to be constant over time) starting from empirically given population structures and derive the rate of fertility which yields the lowest level of our education-weighted dependency ratio. We study the sensitivity of our results to different parameter values and choose to focus on the actual populations of Europe and China over the course of the 21st century. Results: The results show that when education is assumed to present a cost at young age and results in higher productivity during adult age, then the fertility rate that on the long run keeps dependency at a minimum turns out to lie well below replacement fertility both in Europe and in China under a set of plausible assumptions. The optimal fertility level falls even lower when climate change is factored in as well. Conclusions: We conclude that there is nothing magical or particularly desirable about replacement level fertility. (authors' abstract

Under-Five Child Growth and Nutrition Status: Spatial Clustering of Indian Districts

Variation in human growth and the genetic and environmental factors that are influencing it have been described worldwide. The objective of this study is to assess the geographical variance of under-five nutritional status and its related covariates across Indian districts. We use the most recent fourth round of the Indian National Family Health Survey conducted in 2015–2016, which for the first time offers district level information. We employ principal component analysis (PCA) on the demographic and socio-economic determinants of childhood morbidity and conduct hierarchical clustering analysis to identify geographical patterns in nutritional status at the district level. Our results reveal strong geographical clustering among the districts of India, often crossing state borders. Throughout most of Southern India, children are provided with relatively better conditions for growth and improved nutritional status, as compared to districts in the central, particularly rural parts of India along the so called “tribal belt”. Here is also where girls are on average measured to have less weight and height compared to boys. Looking at average weight, as well as the proportion of children that suffer from underweight and wasting, north-eastern Indian districts offer living conditions more conducive to healthy child development. The geographical clustering of malnutrition, as well as below-average child height and weight coincides with high poverty, low female education, lower BMI among mothers, higher prevalence of both parity 4 + and teenage pregnancies. The present study highlights the importance of combining PCA and cluster analysis in studying variation in under-five child growth and of conducting this analysis at the district level. We identify the geographical areas, where children are under severe risk of undernutrition, stunting and wasting and contribute to formulating policies to improve child nutrition in India

Demography, Education, and the Future of Total Factor Productivity Growth

In this paper we present new data on total factor productivity for eight world regions over the period 1970 to 2001. The regions are North America, Western Europe, Japan/Oceania, the China Region, South Asia, Other Pacific Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Sub-Saharan Africa. We propose and estimate a new model of the determinants of total factor productivity based on the framework of conditional convergence. The model allows us to distinguish between factors that influence the level of the conditional productivity frontier and the speed of catching up to that frontier. We show that productivity stagnation in Latin America and the Caribbean and in Sub-Saharan Africa are not because they are trapped far below their potential, but rather that they are fully utilizing the low potential that they have. We found that education and age structure have independent and joint effects on productivity. The rate of capital formation, the quality of institutions, openness, and corruption also affect total factor productivity. The effects of specific variables on total productivity differ by context. They can be different depending on whether a country is catching up to its conditional productivity frontier or not. This provides the possibility of resolving some of the puzzles with respect to the effects of age structure and education that appear in the literature. The paper is based on the new IIASA/VID database on education

Effects of educational attainment on climate risk vulnerability

In the context of still uncertain specific effects of climate change in specific locations, this paper examines whether education significantly increases coping capacity with regard to particular climatic changes, and whether it improves the resilience of people to climate risks in general. Our hypothesis is that investment in universal primary and secondary education around the world is the most effective strategy for preparing to cope with the still uncertain dangers associated with future climate. The empirical evidence presented for a cross-country time series of factors associated with past natural disaster fatalities since 1980 in 125 countries confirms this overriding importance of education in reducing impacts. We also present new projections of populations by age, sex, and level of educational attainment to 2050, thus providing an appropriate tool for anticipating societies' future adaptive capacities based on alternative education scenarios associated with different policies