Toward an index of well-being for the fifty U.S. states

Pesta, Bryan J.; McDaniel, Michael A.; Bertsch, Sharon

doi:10.1016/j.intell.2009.09.006

Cited by 81 publications

(104 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Numerous studies have established a link between national, state and county-level average IQ and crime rates (Bartels et al, 2010;Beaver & Wright, 2011;McDaniel, 2006;Pesta et al, 2010;Rushton & Templer, 2009). However, the influence of the average IQ of those individuals that make up a person's daily social environment has not been assessed with respect to criminal activity.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual and group IQ predict inmate violence

Diamond¹,

Morris²,

Barnes³

2012

Intelligence

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual and group IQ predict inmate violence

Diamond¹,

Morris²,

Barnes³

2012

Intelligence

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…The exceptions to this are Hafer (2012, 2013) who make use of the well-being index for US states created by Pesta et al (2010). While their index has many strengths it does have some major shortcomings relevant to this study.…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Their research uses a well-being index developed by Pesta et al (2010) as the dependent variable. This index produces a well-being score for each US state for the year 2005.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Free to Be Happy: Economic Freedom and Happiness in US States

Jackson

2016

J Happiness Stud

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While the measurement of subjective well-being and its usefulness as a policy objective is a matter of contention, a burgeoning field of happiness economics is emerging. This paper examines the relationship between the institutions of economic freedom and happiness as reported by respondents to the Generalized Social Survey (GSS) in the United States. GSS responses are matched via geocode to state of residence. This allows individual responses in the GSS to be matched to institutional characteristics of the state of residence. A novel contribution of this study is that analysis of the effect of economic freedom on reported happiness is conducted both at the individual level and using state averages. It is found that the level of economic freedom in US states has a positive effect on both individual reported happiness and state average happiness. Dynamic panel analysis is also conducted both as a robustness check and in an effort to control for endogeneity. This confirms the relationship as positive and is suggestive of a causal positive impact of economic freedom on average state happiness.

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“…This raises the probability of engaging in antisocial behavior (Levine, 2011). All of these factors explain the negative correlations found between IQ and crime rates across individuals (e.g., Beaver et al, 2013;Diamond, Morris, & Barnes, 2012;Levine, 2011;McDaniel, 2006), states (e.g., Bartels, Ryan, Urban, & Glass, 2010;Kura, 2013;McDaniel, 2006;Pesta, McDaniel, & Bertsch, 2010;Templer & Rushton, 2011), and countries (Beaver & Wright, 2011;Rushton & Templer, 2009). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Crimes and the Bell curve: The role of people with high, average, and low intelligence

Burhan¹,

Kurniawan²,

Sidek³

et al. 2014

Intelligence

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The present study examines whether crime rates can be reduced by increasing the IQ of people with high, average, and low IQ. Previous studies have shown that as a determinant of the national level of income per capita growth and technological achievement, the IQ of the intellectual class (those at the 95 th percentile of the Bell curve distribution of population intelligence) is more important than the IQ of those with average ability at the 50 th percentile.Extending these findings, our study incorporates the non-intellectual class (IQ at the 5 th percentile) to examine the role of IQ classes in determining crime rates across countries. We conducted hierarchical multiple regression analyses with IQ, seven types of crimes, and nine control variables: urbanization, alcohol consumption, unemployment rate, young to old population ratio, income inequality, education attainment, drug consumption, police rate, and income per capita. Regardless of types of crimes, we found evidence that raising IQ will lessen crime rates, with raises in the 95 th percentile group having the most number of significant impacts, followed by the 50 th and then the 5 th percentile groups. Furthermore, none of the nine control factors was stronger than the 95 th percentile group in predicting crime rates. We conclude that the intellectual class influences rates of more types of crime than the non-intellectual class does. The intellectual class has the highest authority in 2 determining law enforcement and development policies. Therefore, increasing the IQ of politicians and leaders from this class than other social classes will have a more significant influence in reducing crime rates, through enhanced functionality and quality of institutions across countries.

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Toward an index of well-being for the fifty U.S. states

Cited by 81 publications

References 27 publications

Individual and group IQ predict inmate violence

Individual and group IQ predict inmate violence

Free to Be Happy: Economic Freedom and Happiness in US States

Crimes and the Bell curve: The role of people with high, average, and low intelligence

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