Other Economics Commons^™

The Happiness Study: Identifying Social And Economic That Make The U.S. Happier, Tatum Garrison

Undergraduate Honors Theses

As happiness is essential to overall well-being, understanding factors that affect it will inform policies designed to maximize people’s happiness within each state. This will have broad implications for economic research and policy. The wealth and general population income of a state determines an initial level of individual happiness. However, once a level of wealth is achieved, individual happiness does not increase proportionally. This paper examines the relationship of a state’s happiness, measured by computing a score based on an individual's health, wellbeing, and work environment, with economic factors such as GDP and median household income, and social factors including …

Happiness Index Methodology, Laura Musikanski, Scott Cloutier, Erica Bejarano, Davi Briggs, Julia Colbert, Gracie Strasser, Steven Russell

Journal of Sustainable Social Change

The Happiness Index is a comprehensive survey instrument that assesses happiness, well-being, and aspects of sustainability and resilience. The Happiness Alliance developed the Happiness Index to provide a survey instrument to community organizers, researchers, and others seeking to use a subjective well-being index and data. It is the only instrument of its kind freely available worldwide and translated into over ten languages. This instrument can be used to measure satisfaction with life and the conditions of life. It can also be used to define income inequality, trust in government, sense of community and other aspects of well-being within specific demographics …

Happiness In Communities: How Neighborhoods, Cities And States Use Subjective Well-Being Metrics, Laura Musikanski, Carl Polley, Scott Cloutier, Erica Berejnoi, Julia Colbert

Journal of Sustainable Social Change

This essay, the fourth and last of a series published by the Journal of Social Change, is intended as a tool for community organizers, local policy makers, researchers, students and others to incorporate subjective well-being indicators into their measurements and management of happiness and well-being in their communities, for policy purposes, for research and for other purposes. It provides case studies of community-based efforts in five different regions (São Paulo, Brazil; Bristol, United Kingdom; Melbourne, Australia; Creston, British Columbia, Canada; and Vermont, United States) that either developed their own subjective well-being index or used the Happiness Alliance’s survey instrument …

Essays In Applied Economics: Applications Of Transformed Ordinal Quantile Regression, Okila R. Elboeva

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three essays on the application of Transformed Ordinal Quantile Regression (TORQUE) developed by Hong and He (2010). TORQUE is based on jittered response, a nonparametric link function, a semiparametric quantile estimation. When the response variable is categorical an application of the standard quantile regression is not optimal. TORQUE technique generalizes ordinary quantile regression, and as a semiparametric method it is more robust than Maximum Likelihood Estimators.

In the first essay I estimate conditional quantiles of happiness using the data from British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) for 2006. I find the continuity assumption of happiness ranking does …

Measuring Happiness To Guide Public Policy Making: A Survey Of Instruments And Policy Initiatives, Laura Musikanski

Journal of Sustainable Social Change

This author examines subjective indicators of well-being as they relate to the happiness movement, a global effort to create a new economic paradigm. The essay focuses on the prominent international institutions that are developing happiness metrics as well as agencies exploring the use of happiness data for crafting supportive public policy. A definition of happiness metrics, based on international institutions, identifies the primary questions that compose perceived happiness and how this data can be used.

How Do Cultural Activities Influence Happiness? The Relation Between Self-Reported Well-Being And Leisure, Maximo Rossi, Victoria Ateca, Mariana Gerstenbluth, Irene Mussio

Maximo Rossi

Well-being, measured as self-reported happiness has many determinants, which range from gender to income and political affiliation. When it comes to more or less active ways of participating in cultural activities, leisure has a significant impact in the levels of reported happiness, which is in line with the proposed ideas of Stiglitz et al (2009). We also quantify the likelihood of being more or less happy in relation to different types of leisure activities. Our approach has the advantage that all these cultural activities can be considered at the same time, accounting for the individual impact of each on individual …

How Does Average Protein Consumption Affect Happiness?, Nina Wellander

Economics Honors Projects

This paper uses individual-level data to examine the potential link between average protein consumption and happiness within 87 countries between the years of 1981 and 2007. After controlling for other variables that influence happiness as outlined in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, I find that average protein consumption has a statistically significant effect on average subjective well-being. Specifically, the results show that as average protein consumption as a percentage of total caloric intake increases, happiness increases.