Michael R. Hagerty

Publications (11) View all

• Source

  Available from: ucr.edu

  Article: Constructing summary indices of quality of life: A model for the effect of heterogeneous importance weights

  Michael R Hagerty, Kenneth C Land
  03/2006;
• Source

  Available from: duke.edu

  Article: Constructing summary indices of social well-being: A model for the effect of heterogeneous importance weights

  Michael R Hagerty, Kenneth C Land
  07/2004;
• Article: Wealth and Happiness Revisited – Growing National Income Does Go with Greater Happiness

  Michael R. Hagerty, Ruut Veenhoven
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  ABSTRACT: ``Will raising the incomes of all increase the happiness of all?'' Intuitionsays `yes' but theories of relative utility caution that the answer may be`no'. The theory of relative utility holds that people's happiness dependson income relative to others (social comparisons), or on income relative totheir own past income (adaptive expectations) – so that raising the incomes ofall may not increase average long-term happiness. In contrast, the theoryof absolute utility predicts that additional income allows each person to filladditional needs, thus increasing average long-term happiness.Previous tests among these theories have been plagued by low statisticalpower, which has been incorrectly interpreted as evidence against absoluteutility models. The current study improves statistical power by includinglonger time series, by adding nine nations with low GDP/capita and (in someanalyses) by pooling countries into income tiers. We also apply a dynamicmodel by Van Praag and Kapteyn (1973), which can estimate separate effectsfor social comparisons, adaptive expectations, and absolute utility theories.The results show no effect for social comparison across countries, but showsupport for partial adaptation to new income over a two-year period.Most importantly, increasing national income does go with increasingnational happiness, but the short-term effect on happiness is larger thanthe long-term effect for a given rise in income.
  Social Indicators Research 01/2003; 64(1):1-27. · 1.13 Impact Factor
• Article: Declining Quality of Life Costs Governments Elections: Review of 13 OECD Countries

  Michael R. Hagerty
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  ABSTRACT: I review studies of national elections from 13OECD countries over 30 years to examine theeffect of declining or increasing Quality ofLife (QOL) on citizens' voting behavior. Theresults are consistent with the theory thatcitizens hold the incumbent party responsiblefor increases or decreases in QOL during theirterm in office, and vote against an incumbentparty that fails to deliver improved QOL. Studies show that this ``responsibilityhypothesis'' holds not only for economicvariables such as GDP/capita, but for murderrates, violent crime rates, nutrition, andinequality. The platform and qualification ofcandidates also has an effect on voting, butthe macro-variables composing QOL occur priorto and act to shape the platform and strategyof candidates. These results hold importantimplications for constructing indexes of QOL,because researchers can use national votingbehavior to recover the weights that voters usein combining domains of QOL. By using theseweights from the `representative voter',researchers can create a unified index of QOLfor social reports.
  Social Indicators Research 05/2002; 58(1):383-402. · 1.13 Impact Factor
• Article: Quality of Life Indexes for National Policy: Review and Agenda for Research

  Michael R. Hagerty, Robert A. Cummins, Abbott L. Ferriss, Kenneth Land, Alex C. Michalos, Mark Peterson, Andrew Sharpe, Joseph Sirgy, Joachim Vogel
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  ABSTRACT: A number of governments and public policy institutes have developed Quality of Life Indexes – statistics that attempt to measure the quality of life for entire states or regions. We develop 14 criteria for determining the validity and usefulness of such QOL indexes to public policy. We then review 22 of the most-used QOL indexes from around the world. We conclude that many of the indexes are successful in that they are reliable, have established time series measures, and can be disaggregated to study subpopulations. However, many fall short in four areas: (1) indexes vary greatly in their coverage and definitions of domains of QOL, (2) none of the indexes distinguish among the concepts of input, throughput, and output that are used by public policy analysts, (3) they fail to show how QOL outputs are sensitive to public policy inputs, and (4) none have examined convergent validity against each other. We conclude that many of these indexes are potentially very useful for public policy and recommend research to further improve them.
  Social Indicators Research 06/2001; 55(1):1-96. · 1.13 Impact Factor