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Full-Text Articles in Social Welfare Law
Happiness Research And Cost-Benefit Analysis, Matthew D. Adler, Eric Posner
Happiness Research And Cost-Benefit Analysis, Matthew D. Adler, Eric Posner
All Faculty Scholarship
A growing body of research on happiness or subjective well-being shows, among other things, that people adapt to many injuries more rapidly than is commonly thought, fail to predict the degree of adaptation and hence overestimate the impact of those injuries on their well-being, and, similarly, enjoy small or moderate rather than significant changes in well-being in response to significant changes in income. Some researchers believe that these findings pose a challenge to cost-benefit analysis, and argue that project evaluation decision-procedures based on economic premises should be replaced with procedures that directly maximize subjective well-being. This view turns out to …
Introducing A "Different Lives" Approach To The Valuation Of Health And Well-Being, Matthew D. Adler, Paul Dolan
Introducing A "Different Lives" Approach To The Valuation Of Health And Well-Being, Matthew D. Adler, Paul Dolan
All Faculty Scholarship
We introduce a new “different lives” survey format, which asks respondents to rank hypothetical lives described in terms of longevity, health, happiness, income, and other elements of the quality of life. In this short paper, we show that the format is of policy relevance whether a mental state, preference satisfaction or extra-welfarist account of well-being is adopted and discuss some of the advantages the format has over standard formats, such as contingent valuation surveys and QALY-type methods. An exploratory survey indicates that the format is feasible and that health and happiness might be more important than income and life expectancy.