Friday, November 9, 2012

David. G. Blanchflower, Andrew J. Oswald

2 comments:

  1. Is Well-being U-Shaped over the Life Cycle?

    by David G. Blanchflower and Andrew J. Oswald

    Social Science & Medicine 2008

    http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/academic/oswald/2008ushapeblanoswald.pdf

    We present evidence that psychological well-being is U-shaped through life. A difficulty with research on this issue is that there are likely to be omitted cohort effects (earlier generations may have been born in, say, particularly good or bad times). First, using data on 500,000 randomly sampled Americans and West Europeans, the paper designs a test that can control for cohort effects. Holding other factors constant, we show that a typical individual’s happiness reaches its minimum — on both sides of the Atlantic and for both males and females — in middle age. Second, evidence is provided for the existence of a similar U-shape through the life-course in East European, Latin American and Asian nations. Third, a U-shape in age is found in separate well-being regression equations in 72 developed and developing nations. Fourth, using measures that are closer to psychiatric scores, we document a comparable well-being curve across the life cycle in two other data sets: (i) in GHQ-N6 mental health levels among a sample of 16,000 Europeans, and (ii) in reported depression and anxiety levels among 1 million U.K. citizens. Fifth, we discuss some apparent exceptions, particularly in developing nations, to the U-shape. Sixth, we note that American male birth-cohorts seem to have become progressively less content with their lives. Our paper’s results are based on regression equations in which other influences, such as demographic variables and income, are held constant.

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  2. Who are the happiest people?

    http://spinewave.co.nz/tag/happiness/

    Research on ageing and happiness by US researchers, David G. Blanchflower and Andrew J. Oswald, suggests a chart of happiness throughout a lifetime would look like the figure, an upside-down U: born happy little babies, dipping into depressed mid-life crisis adults, and curving back to our happy place after we’ve had our pensioner’s card for a while. The tentative reasons for the rough regularity of this mathematical curve are posed as follows:

    1. Individuals learn to adapt to their strengths and weaknesses and in mid-life quell their infeasible aspirations.

    2. Cheerful people live systematically longer than the miserable, for reasons not currently understood, and that the well being U-shape in age thus traces out in part a selection effect.

    3. A kind of comparison process is at work, e.g. “I have seen school friends die and come eventually to value my blessings during my remaining years”.

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