Happiness and health: Lessons - And questions - For public policy

Health Affairs

Volumn 27, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 72-87

  Graham, Carol ^a,b  

^a BROOKINGS INSTITUTION   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ADAPTATION; ADAPTIVE BEHAVIOR; ATTITUDE TO HEALTH; CULTURAL FACTOR; DEPRESSION; DEVELOPED COUNTRY; DEVELOPING COUNTRY; DISEASE ASSOCIATION; ECONOMICS; HAPPINESS; HEALTH CARE POLICY; HEALTH ECONOMICS; HEALTH STATUS; HUMAN; INCOME; MENTAL HEALTH; OBESITY; POVERTY; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; QUALITY OF LIFE; REGRESSION ANALYSIS; REVIEW; SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY; SOCIAL WELFARE; SOCIOECONOMICS; STATISTICAL MODEL; STATISTICS; STIGMA;

ADAPTATION, PSYCHOLOGICAL; ATTITUDE TO HEALTH; CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISON; DEVELOPED COUNTRIES; DEVELOPING COUNTRIES; HAPPINESS; HEALTH POLICY; HEALTH STATUS; HEALTH STATUS DISPARITIES; HUMANS; INCOME; MODELS, ECONOMETRIC; POVERTY; QUALITY OF LIFE; REGRESSION ANALYSIS; SOCIAL WELFARE; STEREOTYPING; VALUE OF LIFE;

EID: 38849130743     PISSN: 02782715     EISSN: 02782715     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1377/hlthaff.27.1.72     Document Type: Review

References (56)

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2. A. Clark and A. Oswald, "Unhappiness and Unemployment," Economic Journal 104, no. 424 (1994): 648-659;
3. J.F. Helliwell, "How's Life? Combining Individual and National Variables to Explain Subjective Well-Being," Economic Modeling 20, no. 2 (2003): 331-360;
4. and A. Leigh and J. Wolfers, "Happiness and the Human Development Index: Australia Is Not a Paradox," CEPR Discussion Paper no. 5476 (London: Center for Economic Policy Research, 2005).
5. D. Blanchflower and A. Oswald, "Well-Being over Time in Britain and the USA," Journal of Public Economics 88, no. 7-8 (2004): 1359-1387;
6. and C. Graham and S. Pettinato, Happiness and Hardship: Opportunity and Insecurity in New Market Economies (Washington: Brookings Institution, 2002).
7. M. Bertrand and S. Mullainathan, "Do People Mean What They Say? Implications for Subjective Survey Data," American Economic Review 91, no. 2 (2001): 67-72;
8. and B. Frey and A. Stutzer, "What Can Economists Learn from Happiness Research?" Journal of Economic Literature 40, no. 2 (2002): 401-435.
9. E. Diener and M. Seligman, "Beyond Money: Toward an Economy of Well-Being," Psychological Science in the Public Interest 5, no. 1 (2004): 1-31.
10. The scale on the Latin America and Russia questions is 1 to 4; in the U.S. General Social Survey it is 1 to 3, making direct comparison between the coefficients difficult.
11. B. Van Praag and A. Ferrer-i-Carbonell, Happiness Quantified: A Satisfaction Calculus Approach (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2004).
12. Blanchflower and Oswald, "Well-Being over Time."
13. R. Easterlin, "Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? Some Empirical Evidence," in Nations and Households in Economic Growth, ed. P. David and M. Reder (New York: Academic Press, 1974).
14. A. Oswald, "Happiness and Economic Performance," Economic Journal 107, no. 445 (1997): 1815-1831;
15. and E. Diener et al., "The Relationship between Income and Subjective Well-Being: Relative or Absolute?" Social Indicators Research 28, no. 3 (2003): 195-223.
16. J. Duesenberry, Income, Saving, and the Theory of Consumer Behavior (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1949).
17. See, for example, R. Frank, Luxury Fever: Money and Happiness in an Era of Excess (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999).
18. C. Graham and A. Felton, "Does Inequality Matter to Individual Welfare? Some Insights from Latin America," Journal of Economic Inequality 4, no. 1 (2006): 107-122.
19. R.A. Easterlin, "Explaining Happiness," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (U.S.) 100, no. 19 (2003): 11176-11183.
20. D. Kahneman, E. Diener, and N. Schwarz, Well-Being: The Foundations of Hedonic Psychology (New York: Russell Sage, 1999).
21. R. Easterlin, "Life Cycle Welfare: Trends and Differences," Journal of Happiness Studies, Vol. 2 (2001): 1-12.
22. See, for example, A. Eggers, C. Gaddy, and C. Graham, "Well-Being and Unemployment in Russia in the 1990s: Can Society's Suffering Be Individuals' Solace?" Journal of Socioeconomics 35, no. 2 (2006): 209-242.
23. Graham and Pettinato, Happiness and Hardship, chap. 2.
24. P. Dolan, "Happiness and Policy: A Review of the Literature," DEFRA Report (Whitehall, U.K.: Department of Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, 2006).
25. For the effects of happiness on income and health in Russia, see C. Graham, A. Eggers, and S. Sukhtankar, "Does Happiness Pay? An Initial Exploration Based on Panel Data from Russia," Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 55, no. 3 (2004): 319-342.
26. Blanchflower and Oswald, "Well-Being over Time."
27. B. Adrianzen and G.G. Graham, "The High Cost of Being Poor," Archives of Environmental Health 28, no. 6 (1974): 312-315.
28. A. Deaton, "Globalization and Health," in Brookings Trade Forum: Globalization, Poverty, and Inequality, ed. S.M. Collins and C. Graham (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2004);
29. and S. Preston, "The Changing Relation between Mortality and Level of Economic Development," Population Studies 29 (1975): 231-248.
30. A. Deaton, "Income, Aging, Health, and Well Being around the World: Evidence from the Gallup World Poll" (Unpublished paper, Princeton University and National Bureau of Economic Research, July 2007).
31. D. Blanchflower and A. Oswald, "Hypertension and Happiness across Nations" (Mimeo, NBER, February 2007).
32. On quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs), see J. Broome, Ethics and Economics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999);
33. and D.M. Hausman, "What's Wrong with Health Inequalities?" Journal of Political Philosophy 15, no. 1 (2007): 296-305.
34. Dolan, "Happiness and Policy."
35. Ibid.
36. C. Graham and A. Felton, "Variance in Obesity across Countries and Cohorts: A Norms-Based Explanation Using Happiness Surveys," CSED Working Paper Series no. 42 (Washington: Brookings Institution, September 2005).
37. Ibid.
38. D. Carr and M. Friedman, "Is Obesity Stigmatizing? Body Weight, Perceived Discrimination, and Psychological Well-Being in the United States," Journal of Health and Social Behavior 46, no. 3 (2005): 244-259.
39. N.A. Christakis and J.H. Fowler, "The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over Thirty-two Years," New England Journal of Medicine 357, no. 4 (2007): 370-379;
40. and C. Graham, R. Hammond, and P. Young, "Obesity and the Influence of Others,"Washington Post, 21 August 2007.
41. A. Oswald and N. Powdthavee, "Obesity, Unhappiness, and the Challenge of Affluence: Theory and Evidence," Economic Journal 117, no. 521 (2007): 441-454.
42. Graham and Felton, "Variance in Obesity."
43. We find that lagged obesity is correlatedwith future periods of depression,while lagged depression is not correlated with future obesity. See ibid.
44. Depression is measured in standard deviations using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) variable. The mean is zero andmeasured over the entire population, not just particular reference groups. Thus, if a depression variable reads 1, it is one standard deviation more depressed than the average. Exhibit 5 shows that for every extra BMI increment a respondent had in period 1, he or she was 0.024 standard deviations more depressed in period 2.
45. Graham and Pettinato, Happiness and Hardship;
46. and A. Bannerjee and E. Duflo, "The Economic Lives of the Poor," Journal of Economic Perspectives 21, no. 1 (2007): 141-156.
47. P. Gertler and J. Gruber, "Insuring Consumption against Illness," American Economic Review 92, no. 1 (2002): 50-70.
48. A. Bannerjee and E. Duflo, "The Economic Lives";
49. Deaton, "Globalization and Health";
50. and A. Case and A. Deaton, "Health and Wealth among the Poor: India and South Africa Compared," American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 95, no. 2 (2005): 229-233.
51. Graham and Pettinato, Happiness and Hardship.
52. Based on the author's participation in the Scientific Advisory Board of the Nutrition Research Institute in Lima, Peru. For a discussion of how modest changes in mean weight can shift the overall norm up, see R. Hammond and J. Epstein, "Exploring Price Independent Mechanisms in the Obesity Epidemic,"Center on Social and Economic Dynamics Working Paper no. 48 (Washington: Brookings Institution, July 2007).
53. M. Marmot, The Status Syndrome (London: Bloomsbury Press, 2004).
54. Graham and Felton, "Does Inequality Matter?"
55. A. Kenny and C. Kenny, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Utility: Happiness in Philosophical and Economic Thought (London: Imprint Academic, 2006).
56. Preference utilitarianism, which underpins standard definitions of utility, does not resolve this. See M. Kelman, "Hedonic Psychology and the Ambiguities of Welfare," Philosophy and Public Affairs 33, no. 4 (2005): 391-412.