Challenges in Constructing a Survey-Based Well-Being Index

Benjamin, Daniel J.; Cooper, Kristen B.; Heffetz, Ori; Kimball, Miles S.

doi:10.1257/aer.p20171099

Cited by 33 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Well-being indices based on surveys, especially when concerning subjective well-being, come with several challenges as discussed by Benjamin et al (2017): Authors have to critically assess whether the question (or set of questions) available truly cover the relevant aspects of well-being that the index should capture (comprehensiveness). They also have to evaluate whether individuals can indeed accurately assess their own state of well-being (accessibility).…”

Section: Conceptual Issues In Constructing An Indexmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender Differences in Active Ageing: Findings from a New Individual-Level Index for European Countries

2020

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We use data from wave 6 of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) to construct an individual-level index of active ageing for people aged between 50 and 90 years. We develop nine sub-indices for different dimensions, which are then aggregated to the final index. This individual-level index allows to analyze inequalities between age cohorts, dimensions, countries, and other individual-characteristics that are covered by SHARE. We focus on differences between the sexes. Overall women score lower than men with 54.9 index-points compared to 57.7 for men. We present gender differences in active ageing for some sub-populations as a showcase for this new individual-level index.

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Section: Conceptual Issues In Constructing An Indexmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender Differences in Active Ageing: Findings from a New Individual-Level Index for European Countries

2020

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“…To prevent any manipulation by the choice of indicators, this would preferably start from the largest meaningful set, as for instance proposed by Benjamin et al . (). Then, a prestudy would require a sufficient number of highly incentivized people to weight this large set of potentially relevant indicators.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Fleurbaey and Blanchet () and Benjamin et al . ()). Secondly, many purposes, such as comparing social welfare over time, create a need for information about how an indicator matters to people compared with all other indicators.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Embedding as a Pitfall for Survey-Based Welfare Indicators: Evidence from an Experiment

Hetschko

Reumont

Schöb

2018

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A: Statistics in Society

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Abstract How can we assess the welfare of a society, its evolution over time and predict its change due to particular policy interventions? One way is to use survey-based welfare indicators such as the OECD Better Life Index. It invites people to weight a variety of quality of life indicators according to their individual preferences. 11 broad dimensions aggregate these indicators. Our experiment shows that people do not provide consistent ratings across differently labelled dimensions that embed the same indicators. They also do not adjust the rating of equally named dimensions changing sets of indicators. These results show that survey-based measures might suffer from strong embedding effects and, as a result, may fail to measure citizens' true preferences for the indicators. Terms of use: Documents inJEL Classification Codes: B41, C43, C83, I31

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“…Innovative approaches are being tested to develop indices of SWB that would provide measures of societal well-being that go beyond measures such as the Gross Domestic Product and comprehensively include nonmarket goods. Recognizing that SWB is made up of many "fundamental aspects", well-being indices have been constructed using scale responses to SWB questions (e.g., "how happy have you been during the past year") and marginal utilities elicited for the "fundamental aspects" as obtained from stated-preference questions requiring trade-offs [43,44]. Inclusion of aspects such as "the condition of nature, animals, and the environment", such as done in [43], allows the marginal utility of nature to be compared with the marginal utility of other aspects that contribute to well-being.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bark Beetle Epidemics, Life Satisfaction, and Economic Well-Being

Holmes

Koch

2019

Forests

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Evidence of increased biotic disturbances in forests due to climate change is accumulating, necessitating the development of new approaches for understanding the impacts of natural disturbances on human well-being. The recent Mountain Pine Beetle (MPB) outbreak in the western United States, which was historically unprecedented in scale, provides an opportunity for testing the adequacy of the life satisfaction approach (LSA) to estimate the impact of large-scale forest mortality on subjective well-being. Prior research in this region used the hedonic method (HM) to estimate the economic impacts of the MPB outbreak, and results are used here to evaluate the reasonableness of economic estimates based upon the LSA. While economic estimates based upon the LSA model do not appear to be unreasonable, several limitations in using the LSA for nonmarket valuations are discussed. New avenues for research that link the LSA with stated preference methods are discussed that appear likely to address major concerns with standard LSA models as used in nonmarket valuation.

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Challenges in Constructing a Survey-Based Well-Being Index

Cited by 33 publications

References 5 publications

Gender Differences in Active Ageing: Findings from a New Individual-Level Index for European Countries

Gender Differences in Active Ageing: Findings from a New Individual-Level Index for European Countries

Embedding as a Pitfall for Survey-Based Welfare Indicators: Evidence from an Experiment

Bark Beetle Epidemics, Life Satisfaction, and Economic Well-Being

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