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What really makes us happy?
ckground: In recent years there have been numerous attempts to define and measure happiness in various contexts and pertaining to a wide range of disciplines, ranging from neuroscience and psychology to philosophy, economics and social policy. This article builds on recent work by economists who attempt to estimate happiness regressions using large random samples of individuals in order to calculate monetary ‘compensating amounts’ for different life ‘events’. Methods: We estimate happiness regressions using the ‘major life event’ and ‘happiness’ data…
2 minutes
Why unemployed people should play sports:
investigate the relationship between participation in physical activity and self reported happiness in the United States. IV estimates based on data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System and County Business Patterns indicate that individuals living in a county with greater access to sports facilities are more likely to participate in physical activity and also report higher life satisfaction. The contribution of participation in physical activity to increased happiness is three times the size of the loss in happiness…
1 min read
Does marriage really make people happier?
. Good marriages make people happier. Bad marriages make people miserable. Sounds obvious but our culture is very pro-marriage: One of the most common findings in contemporary empirical social science is that being married is associated with higher measured levels of happiness, or life satisfaction. The result seems to be consistent across both countries and time, and is apparently robust to statistical method, including with respect to econometric specification and fixed effects modeling. Our contribution is to propose that quality…
2 minutes
Does college football affect who gets elected President of the United States? How about the Final Four?
lcome to the horrors of democracy, part 3: According to what criteria do citizens make political decisions, and what do these criteria say about democratic competence? An impressive body of evidence suggests that voters competently evaluate diagnostic information such as macroeconomic trends and their personal financial circumstances to reward good performance while ridding themselves of leaders who are corrupt, incompetent, or ineffective. However, what if some voters’ personal emotional reactions to events completely unrelated to public affairs influence their voting…
2 minutes
Does money reduce your ability to enjoy life?
is study provides the first evidence that money impairs people’s ability to savor everyday positive emotions and experiences. In a sample of working adults, wealthier individuals reported lower savoring ability (the ability to enhance and prolong positive emotional experience). Moreover, the negative impact of wealth on individuals’ ability to savor undermined the positive effects of money on their happiness. We experimentally exposed participants to a reminder of wealth and produced the same deleterious effect on their ability to savor as…
1 min read
When you’re unemployed is it better to have friends with jobs or friends who are out of work?
u'll be happier if you have unemployed friends. You'll also be likely to remain unemployed longer: This paper uses 16 waves of panel data from the British Household Panel Survey to evaluate the role of subjective well-being in determining labor market transitions. It confirms a previous finding in the literature: individuals report a fall in their happiness when they lose a job, but they report a smaller fall when they are surrounded by unemployed peers, an effect called the"social norm".…
1 min read
You just committed murder. What should you do now?
u may want to know how long it takes to dissolve a body. Some insight on how to reduce that aggression level of yours could be useful and along those lines, guys, you should definitely stay away from guns -- unless you use them a lot, that is. (Honestly, there may not be much you can do; you and your family may all have serious brain problems. I'm guessing you were probably a pretty fearless kid.) Now there are some…
4 minutes
Why does (nearly) everyone want to be taller?
cording to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index daily poll of the US population, taller people live better lives, at least on average. They evaluate their lives more favorably, and they are more likely to report a range of positive emotions such as enjoyment and happiness. They are also less likely to report a range of negative experiences, like sadness, and physical pain, though they are more likely to experience stress and anger, and if they are women, to worry. These findings…
2 minutes
