The Happiness Trade‐Off between Unemployment and Inflation

Blanchflower, David G.; Bell, David; Montagnoli, Alberto; Moro, Mirko

doi:10.1111/jmcb.12154

Cited by 89 publications

(64 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…Among other factors, unemployment status systematically lowers happiness in China, particularly among men. This is consistent with evidence from the international literature on happiness (Clark and Oswald, 1994;Helliwell, 2003;Blanchflower, Bell, Montagnoli and Moro, 2014) as well as the experience of transition economies where job insecurity has been identified as a significant determinant of happiness loss (Namazie and Sanfey, 2001;Hayo, 2007;Selezneva, 2011;Rodriguez-Pose and Maslauskaite, 2012;Ivlevs, 2014).…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 79%

Subjective well-being in China, 2005–2010: The role of relative income, gender, and location

Asadullah

Xiao

Yeoh

2018

China Economic Review

138

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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. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I EIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. We use data from two rounds of the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) to study the determinants of subjective well-being in China over the period 2005-2010 during which selfreported happiness scores show an increase across all income groups. Ordered probit regression analysis of well-being reveals large influence of gender, rural residency and household income. After controlling for demographic attributes, health, unemployment status, household size, agricultural hukou (household registration identity) and education status, household assets, the influence of past and future income and province dummies, we find that women, urban residents and people with higher income are happier in China. More schooling, better health and being employed are positively and significantly correlated with well-being. Sub-sample s reveals that the rich only care about relative income whereas the effect of absolute income dominates in case of the poorer section. The influence of absolute income is larger among women compared to men and in turn explains why women, despite being poorer, are happier in China, conditional on socio-economic differences. On the other hand, rural residents are poorer than urban residents so that conditional on having the same income, there is no rural-urban happiness gap. Our results suggest that while further decline in poverty will enhance well-being in China, policies that reduce rural-urban and gender inequalities are also likely to boost well-being. JEL C...

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 79%

Subjective well-being in China, 2005–2010: The role of relative income, gender, and location

Asadullah

Xiao

Yeoh

2018

China Economic Review

138

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“…In general, females are found to be happier than males in advanced economies (Graham and Felton, 2006;Senik, 2004). In recent years, because of the economic depression, unemployment has become a major cause of unhappiness; in most countries, the negative effect of unemployment is greater than that of inflation (Blanchflower et al, 2014).…”

Section: Non-income Determinants Of Happinessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Subjective Well-being and Its Determinants in China: An Empirical Study Based on Survey Data

Liang¹,

Shen

2016

RAE

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Using household survey data collected in 2013, this paper empirically investigates the determinants of individual subjective well-being in China, where there has been rapid economic development over the past three decades. The main results are as follows. First, factors such as good health, marital status, life satisfaction, body mass index, physical exercise, and expectations of inflation are all significantly correlated with the reported level of happiness. Second, income has no significant effect on the level of happiness, and happiness has an inverted U-shaped relationship to wealth. Third, increased education decreases the level of happiness. To some extent, these findings can explain why subjective well-being has declined in China, despite its spectacular economic growth.

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“…While others have begun to show that central banks decisions might influence psychological health indirectly (Blanchflower et al, 2014) we are the first to show a direct pathway to mental health. Our work therefore fits with the literature highlighting the stressful effects of adverse macroeconomic conditions (Faresjö et al, 2013;Katikireddi et al, 2012).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Central bank interest rate decisions, household indebtedness, and psychiatric morbidity and distress: Evidence from the UK

Boyce

Delaney

Ferguson

et al. 2018

Journal of Affective Disorders

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Background: Central banks set economy-wide interest rates to meet exclusively economic objectives. There is a strong link between indebtedness and psychiatric morbidity at the individual level, with interest rates being an important factor determining ability to repay debt. However, no prior research has explored whether central bank interest rate changes directly influence mental health, nor whether this varies by levels of indebtedness. Methods: We use British data (N = 93,255) to explore whether the Bank of England base-rate affected how perceived burden of non-mortgage debt (low, medium, and high) influenced psychiatric morbidity. Psychiatric morbidity was measured using the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12). Our primary outcome measure was a binary indicator of "psychiatric caseness" (> 3 on a 0-12 scale). We also used the GHQ-12 as a continuous measure of distress. Results: When interest rates are high (low) there is an increased (decreased) risk of psychiatric morbidity only among those with a high debt burden (b = 0.026, p = 0.02). This result was robust to alternative explanations. Thus a 1 percentage point base-rate increase is associated with a 2.6% increase that someone with a high debt burden will experience psychiatric morbidity. Limitations: Our study uses subjective indicators of debt burden. We were unable to determine the mechanism behind our effect. Conclusions: Changes in central bank interest rates to meet economic objectives pose a threat to mental health. Mental health support is needed for those in debt and central banks may need to consider how their decisions influence population mental health.

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The Happiness Trade‐Off between Unemployment and Inflation

Cited by 89 publications

References 64 publications

Subjective well-being in China, 2005–2010: The role of relative income, gender, and location

Subjective well-being in China, 2005–2010: The role of relative income, gender, and location

Subjective Well-being and Its Determinants in China: An Empirical Study Based on Survey Data

Central bank interest rate decisions, household indebtedness, and psychiatric morbidity and distress: Evidence from the UK

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