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The Impact of Modern Economic Growth on Urban–Rural Differences in Subjective Well-Being
Abstract
At low levels of economic development there are substantial gaps favoring urban over rural areas in income, education, and occupational structure, and consequently a large excess of urban over rural life satisfaction, despite important urban problems of pollution, congestion, and the like. At more advanced development levels, these economic differentials tend to disappear, and rural areas approach or exceed urban in life satisfaction. Both across-country and within-country regression analyses of 2005–08 data from the Gallup World Poll support these conclusions.
... Several studies analyze the disparity between urban parish and rural parish, in issues related to health [2], employ [3], voting intention [1], transport [4], land use [5], sports services [6], economic growth [7], life satisfaction [8]. ...
... Now, if only material goods such as clothing, housing or any other were everything that had an impact on satisfaction, then the solution would be simple, satisfaction would always be more excellent in urban parish compared to rural parish. However, life in urban regions entails difficulties that have unfavorable effects on joy such as: pollution, feelings of isolation and alienation [7]. ...
... The research points to the importance of heterogeneity in establishing public policies, with different propositions for citizens of rural and urban areas [7]. In addition, citizen satisfaction analysis studies contribute relevant information to local governments in designing strategies that generate territorial roots and loyalty to their authorities [1]. ...
The disparities in access to public assistances between rural and urban areas are analyzed in this study, corresponding to the intensity in which the constructs are related to expected quality, perceived quality and perceived value as influential factors in citizen satisfaction and loyalty. In Guayaquil, a survey is carried out at the household level, 428 valid questionnaires are obtained in the rural area of Tenguel and 521 Valid questionnaires in the urban area of Tarqui, applyingto the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). The research used a Structural Equation model (SEM) to evaluate the hypotheses raised, if they observe significant differences in citizen perception between inhabitants of urban and rural areas about the quality of community services, this as a determining cause in the level of citizen satisfaction and loyalty to choose their municipal authorities. The multigroup analysis allowed to identify inequalities in the observation of the quality of municipal or local communityassistances between rural and urban areas; the findings are considered to local public administrators for the design of public policy aimed at improving levels of citizen satisfaction and loyalty.
... Following most of the literature, the term SWB is used as synonymous to overall happiness, and as opposed to objective wellbeing as measured by economic indicators (e.g. Easterlin, Angelescu & Zweig, 2011). ...
... For rural/urban origin, however, the relation with SWB is less clear-cut, despite obvious differences in personal income between urban and rural areas. International findings showed that for developed countries, people living in rural areas approached or exceeded their urban counterparts in life satisfaction, whereas for less developed countries urban residents had significantly higher life satisfaction than rural residents (Easterlin et al., 2011). These differences between urban and rural residents for less developed countries, however, tended to disappear when correcting for personal characteristics like personal income, occupation, divorce or age (Berry & Okulicz-Kozaryn, 2009;Easterlin et al., 2011;Valente & Berry, 2016), except for Asia (Berry & Okulicz-Kozaryn, 2009). ...
... International findings showed that for developed countries, people living in rural areas approached or exceeded their urban counterparts in life satisfaction, whereas for less developed countries urban residents had significantly higher life satisfaction than rural residents (Easterlin et al., 2011). These differences between urban and rural residents for less developed countries, however, tended to disappear when correcting for personal characteristics like personal income, occupation, divorce or age (Berry & Okulicz-Kozaryn, 2009;Easterlin et al., 2011;Valente & Berry, 2016), except for Asia (Berry & Okulicz-Kozaryn, 2009). As pointed out above, for Mainland China, found that rural respondents were slightly happier than urban respondents, even if urban income was significantly higher than rural income, although found that urban residents in Mainland China were more satisfied with life than their rural counterparts, using more recent data from the Gallup World Poll and the GCSS. ...
The Chinese one-child policy was introduced in 1979 with the aim to reduce population growth in order to support and boost economic development. In the past 40 years, the policy has had profound impacts, and even though the one-child policy was finally abandoned in 2016, its effects will continue to be felt for generations. The one-child generation grew up with unprecedented economic prosperity, especially in the (ever-growing) cities, but prosperity may have come at a high social cost. This dissertation focuses on the sociological impact of the one-child policy, studying students born in the early-1990s, from one of the first generations of children born under the one-child policy. As they were attending university at the time of the research, and are coming of child-bearing age themselves, the dissertation describes research with those directly affected by the policy, including their own rational thoughts on the subject.
... Contemporary economic growth promotes the development of more urban civilizations (Easterlin et al., 2011, Glaeser, 2011. However, numerous studies suggest that life in cities may be linked to lower perceptions of well-being in developed countries (Berry and Okulicz-Kozaryn, 2011, Easterlin et al., 2011, Shucksmith et al., 2009, Knight and Gunatilaka, 2010, Okulicz-Kozaryn and R. Valente, 2021. ...
... Contemporary economic growth promotes the development of more urban civilizations (Easterlin et al., 2011, Glaeser, 2011. However, numerous studies suggest that life in cities may be linked to lower perceptions of well-being in developed countries (Berry and Okulicz-Kozaryn, 2011, Easterlin et al., 2011, Shucksmith et al., 2009, Knight and Gunatilaka, 2010, Okulicz-Kozaryn and R. Valente, 2021. On the contrary, city-dwellers in developing countries express subjective well-being (SWB) higher than that of rural populations in the same countries (Easterlin et al., 2011, Lenzi andPerucca, 2021). ...
... On the contrary, city-dwellers in developing countries express subjective well-being (SWB) higher than that of rural populations in the same countries (Easterlin et al., 2011, Lenzi andPerucca, 2021). Researchers explain the higher SWB in urban areas of developing countries by the absence of basic necessities in rural areas (for instance, lack of sanitation or access to safe water) (Okulicz-Kozaryn and R. Valente, 2021) or the demographic differences between urban and rural populations, with rural populations being younger (Easterlin et al., 2011). ...
In developing countries, research found that rural populations express levels of well-being lower than that of urban populations. However, previous investigations do not compare subjective well-being (SWB) between informal urban settlements, also known as slums, and rural areas despite the large migrations occurring between these two areas. The absence of surveys on SWB targeting slum areas impedes this type of investigation. Thus, this study aims to understand whether rural populations in developing countries have SWB different from those in urban areas' informal settlements. We use the results of an original questionnaire-based survey focusing on Greater Mumbai's slums and rural areas for this purpose. We also investigate whether the characteristics of respondents determined by their socioeconomic profiles, social capital, and economic situations in their area of residence explain the difference in SWB between areas. Our results show that populations in slums have, on average, happiness and life satisfaction higher than that of rural populations. Higher levels of happiness are linked to higher social trust and satisfaction with one's community, while higher satisfaction with life is linked to higher socioeconomic profiles in slums. Issues related to this difference in SWB and policy implications are discussed.
... Народження дітей підвищує вартість життя та накладає обмеження на кар'єрне зростання жінок. Варто зазначити, що відмінності між країнами також пояснюються різними методологічними підходами збору даних та розрахунку індикаторів, а також з безліччю регіональних специфічних факторів, які, у свою чергу, впливають на зміну показників народжуваності, такі як здоров'я, освіта, доходи, питання гендерної рівності тощо [15]. ...
... Багато дослідників вивчали відмінності між міськими та сільськими територіальними громадами без прив'язки до викликів прогресуючого демографічного старіння [15,16]. Наприклад, вони визначили, що в країнах з низьким рівнем економічного розвитку міські райони мають перевагу на сільськими за структурою доходів, рівнем зайнятості та освіти. ...
У статті визначено основні детермінанти прогресуючого демографічного старіння. Розглянуто сучасні тенденції демографічного розвитку країн світу, що сприймаються як загрози для досягнення цілей сталого розвитку у довгостроковій перспективі у контексті швидкої урбанізації. Визначено основні соціально-економічні виклики демографічного старіння, а також роль планування міст у подоланні негативних наслідків даного процесу.
... The core regions are Antioquia/Eje Cafeter, Bogotá, and the Central East; the periphery contains the North Caribbean, South West, and the National Territory. We use the Gallup classification (see also Easterlin et al., 2011;Burger et al., 2020) based on the respondent's self-reported type of settlement to define urban and rural areas. There are four self-reported types of settlements: (1) a rural area or farm; (2) a small town or village; (3) a large city; (4) a suburb of a large city. ...
... Compared to other studies (e.g.Easterlin et al., 2011;Burger et al., 2020), we classify peri-urban areas as rural areas. Hence, when we speak of rural areas, this encompasses (1) rural areas or farms and (2) a small town or village. ...
Despite being on average a relatively happy country, Colombia has a high level of inequality in subjective well-being (SWB). Using Gallup World Poll data for the period from 2010 to 2018, this paper tests the direction and strength of association of a range of objective and subjective factors with SWB and explains differences in SWB across individuals and space. The perceived welfare of the average Colombian is mainly influenced by conditions and expectations related to economic opportunities and education. However, quantile regressions, reveal substantial differences in the domains that matter to those at the bottom and top of the experienced welfare distribution. Standard-of-living improvements, housing affordability, and civic engagement matter more to the most fortunate top 20%, while having education, a job, sufficient income, economic security, and digital connectivity are much more strongly associated with the well-being of the bottom 20%. The life domains that matter more to the unhappiest respondents also explain the majority of the spatial differences in perceived welfare between residents in urban and rural areas as well as core and peripheral regions. Policy actions aimed at closing the gaps in these areas have the potential to increase well-being and reduce inequality in Colombia.
... This indicates that in times of high unemployment, the role of the social norm to work is smaller [44]. Moreover, life satisfaction and subjective wellbeing tend to be lower in urban areas compared to rural areas in Europe [58,59], which may also be a sign of a higher social norm to work, but also, more expensive living and life in general. A pathway between values and well-being can also be explained through social norms in general; when individuals live according to society's prevailing norms, their well-being is better because their values face no confrontation. ...
Youth unemployment is a problem that undermines young people's health and well-being and is also a concern for their immediate communities and society. Human values predict health-related behaviour; however, this relation is very little studied and not examined earlier among NEET (not in employment, education or training) young people. This study aimed to explore the association between four higher-order human values (conservation, openness to change, self-enhancement , self-transcendence), self-rated health (SRH) and subjective well-being (SW) among NEET young men and women (n = 3842) across European regions. Pooled European Social Survey data from 2010-2018 were used. First, we run linear regression analysis stratified by European socio-cultural regions and gender. Then, multilevel analyses by gender with interactions were performed. The results show expected variation in value profiles across genders and regions and corresponding differences in SRH and SW. Significant associations between values and SRH and SW were found among both genders and across the regions; however, the results did not entirely confirm the expectations about the "healthiness" of specific values. More likely, prevailing values in societies, such as the social norm to work, might shape these associations. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of the factors affecting NEETs' health and well-being.
... Workers with a higher level of subjective well-being are more likely to be healthy, married and consider their work valuable and the society equitable. Moreover, the positive effect of material pursuits (income) is decreasing, while spiritual pursuits (perceived value of work) are closely linked to higher subjective well-being [59,61]. This shows the significance of the non-materialistic pursuit of improving workers' happiness. ...
This paper examines the relationship between different types of employment and subjective well-being with a focus on informal employment. The China Labor-force Dynamics Survey (CLDS) for three selected years (2012, 2014 and 2016) shows an upward trend in the subjective well-being of urban workers in the 2010s. However, although the gap in subjective well-being between formal and informal workers narrowed, informal workers’ subjective well-being was still lower than their formal counterparts. Factors affecting the subjective well-being of formal and informal workers and their different effects were revealed to explain this difference. The subjective well-being of informal workers is significantly related to their informal status of employment, economic conditions (such as income and working hours), human capital, social capital (such as perceived social justice and perceived community connectedness) and urban environment. The paper enhances the understanding of people’s subjective well-being by differentiating informal/formal segments of working populations.
... Achieving this goal is especially important considering that the modern world is urbanized, and urbanization as a complex and continuous process has for years been the main trajectory of land cover changes around the world -changes that generally do not lead to sustainable development (Gerten et al. 2019;Keil 2018;Bielecka 2020). Scientists and environmental protection agencies have long warned that urbanization is irreversible, leads to landscape fragmentation, reduces the potential of ecosystems to provide ecological services (Antrop & Eetvelde 2000), causes irreversible loss of fertile soil (EEA 2018), contributes to climate change and, socially, to the deterioration of the living conditions and health of the population (Easterlin et al. 2011). However, urbanization should not be solely perceived in terms of negative and irreversible effects on the environment. ...
Monitoring land use efficiency (LUE) is of great importance for the sustainable development of each country. The identification of regions where land consumption prevails over demographic growth should prompt public administrations to act and establish a recovery programme. This paper took Europe as the research area, and CORINE Land Cover and statistical population data to assess changes and spatial diversity of the LUE status from 2006 to 2018. Results show that, during the 2006–2012 period, LUE was more diversified than in 2012–2018. The differences concern both values of the indicator and the spatial differentiation between regions. Between 2012 and 2018, the number of countries moving towards efficient land use doubled compared to 2006–2012. Great progress towards achieving SDG 11.3.1 was seen in Portugal and Germany, and almost all Balkan countries are moving towards more efficient land use.
... Adequate income was a strong predictor of higher happiness (Ala-Mantila et al., 2018, p. 8). The effect of income is stronger than education and occupation (Easterlin et al. 2011(Easterlin et al. , p.2194, but in countries with lower GDP per capita (Stanca, 2010, p. 127;Veenhoven, 2015, p. 385). Income comparison level was shown to have negative effect on life satisfaction when controlled for the effect of consumption and other individual characteristics (Dumludağ, 2013) According to the 2014 Adana Urban Problems Report by Adana Provincial Coordination Board, Adana residents were poor and deprived. ...
This article aims to find significant interaction effects of social
indicators and locations of living on general happiness. Hence, based on a social survey administered in stratified locations of Adana, interaction effects of social indicators and locations over general happiness were estimated. Results indicate that social indicators
and locations have significant interaction effects over general happiness. The evidences suggest that vehicle dependent neighborhoods are more livable for individuals with better health conditions. Secondary pedestrian zones are more livable for divorced�separated and widowed persons. Rural neighborhoods are happier with moderate to older age groups, thus has higher degree of livability compared to other locations of urban Adana. Rural neighborhoods are less livable for divorced or separated whereas
more livable for widowed persons compared to single persons
... Rural residents in developed countries tend to report higher levels of subjective happiness than in their urban areas. This point has proven to be the case in studies of rural vs. urban happiness surveys in counties worldwide (Berry and Okulicz-Kozaryn 2009;Requena 2016;Easterlin et al. 2011), Survey in EU (Sørensen 2014;Camilla and Giovanni 2016), Survey in the USA (Campbell et al. 1976;Berry and Okulicz-Kozaryn 2013;John and Yu 2017), Survey in Australia (Ida et al. 2018). In addition, Berry and Okulicz-Kozaryn (2009) find that for a sample of high-income countries, dissatisfaction with life is highest in large cities with populations over 500,000 and lowest in rural areas with people under 2000. ...
The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically changed urban life, and it can be said that the time is at hand when cities and rural areas should promote symbiotic projects. These projects are diverse and include medical conditions, socioeconomic activities, working conditions, information technology, food conditions, culture as well as education. According to previous studies, medical conditions are excellent, but well-being of the mental health of people in developed countries is higher in rural areas than in urban areas. Meanwhile, developing countries tend to have higher levels of well-being in urban life, while rural areas have lower levels of well-being and mental health, because of a focus on lagging economic activities and vulnerability in medical care. Preliminary interviews in Bali, Indonesia, the author's study area, revealed no livelihood change in subsistence farming villages during the COVID-19 disaster indicating no effects by the pandemic. Meanwhile, urban residents faced difficulties obtaining food due to the government curfew and halt in economic activities. Most workers lost their jobs and suffered hardships in the tourism industry. With this situation, the conditions are slightly different from the previous studies in developing countries mentioned above. Previous studies did not reveal any mental health and well-being assessment for life in the rural areas of developing countries during the corona disaster. This study aimed to clarify the reality of urban and rural well-being during the Corona Disaster in a developing country, namely Bali. The hypothesis is that in Bali, Indonesia, a developing country, the level of well-being under the corona disaster is higher for rural residents than for urban residents. Six groups were surveyed with 71 questions from the survey items of previous studies including the World Happiness Report conducted worldwide, WHR2020, AHI and The Oxford Happiness Survey. Face Sheet, Mental Health, Anxiety, Happiness, Good things due to corona, and Corona infection control behaviors were included. The questionnaire was categorical to allow for a quantitative analysis and began in September 2021. I collected 280 samples from two villages, each in rural and urban areas of Bali, and analyzed the results with simple cross-tabulations and a difference of means, factor analysis, multiple regression analysis and structural analysis of covariance. The analyses revealed a tendency toward inward self-loneliness in the urban areas and outward anxiety about one's surroundings in the rural areas. Under the corona disaster, subjects in rural areas stayed optimistic about external stress, in contrast to those in urban areas, who became inwardly oriented and negative. This point does not imply that well-being is higher among rural people, but it suggests that they are more mentally stress-tolerant because they are more likely to positively view the situation. Although the hypothesis was not proven, life in rural areas, where people have optimistic feelings and are not lonely, can be considered relatively humane and mentally healthy. This may indicate that the level of well-being of people living in rural areas is higher than people living in urban areas. The results of this study differ from previous studies in which people in rural areas of developing countries had lower levels of happiness and mental health. However, this study provides new knowledge about the situation of the corona disaster in developing countries by surveying the well-being of both rural and urban residents.
... Rural regions have become increasingly decoupled from the high speed of innovation and digital transformation in bigger cities and urban agglomerations. This decoupling is reinforced by an unfortunate combination of poor socio-economic environment and infrastructure, low population density, aging population, and distance from markets and services (Brown & Schafft, 2011;Easterlin et al., 2011;OECD, 2020). ...
This chapter examines the lack of entrepreneurial resources for venture development in rural regions and presents a study of how virtual business incubators (VBIs) can fill this gap and support rural entrepreneurial activities. The authors employ a single case study approach in which the empirical data builds on six interviews conducted with rural entrepreneurs and managers of VBIs. The data collection and data analysis follow the grounded theory approach set forth by Charmaz (2014). The main contribution of this research is the application of the VBI concept in the rural entrepreneurship context, with the aim of overcoming the challenges inherent to this context while conserving its benefits.
... We found that people moving from the metropole to new forest frontiers tend to experience significant improvements in their capabilities, benefiting their capacities to be and to do. We provide an important counterpoint to Easterlin et al (2011)'s finding that in the majority world, based on quantitative metrics, there tends to be a significant 'urban advantage' in development, including life satisfaction. But these improvements in capabilities were achieved in the absence of basic social rights, including the right to education, to infrastructure, to an adequate standard of living, and housing. ...
The lives of the urban poor in the majority world are unfree: blighted by social injustice in its manifold forms, from violence and ill-health to absent economic opportunities. We explore the pursuit of freedom through migration away from the metropole to ramais (colonisation tracks) at the rainforest frontier. Drawing on a case study in Brazilian Amazonia, we reveal urban-rural migration as a frontier dynamic driven by the search for a good life. We theorize freedom and the good life using the capabilities approach, starting from the observation that people in the ramais reported feeling better, and asking why that is. We find that frontiers provide a safer environment, which fosters individual and collective capabilities. A lower risk of violence reduces fears around bodily integrity, pervasive in Latin American cities. This safety fosters freedom and dignity by reducing worries and anxieties, leading to improvements in emotional well-being. We understand this increased sense of freedom as enhanced agency, that is, empowerment. In addition to new forms of political activity and subjectivity, we report a flourishing of senses, imagination and affiliation with others. Inequalities are reduced, positively influencing dignity and self-worth. These new freedoms are threatened by lack of rights provisioning by the State, however. We recommend that the Brazilian state should address social and environmental dimensions of these new forest frontiers. The state should recognize and support these settlements as valid forms of development, because they so clearly contribute to human wellbeing and flourishing. The state should guide and assist livelihood and landscape management toward more ecological approaches such as agroecology and agroforestry, to mitigate deforestation risks typical of forest frontiers.
... Some studies found higher levels of SWB in rural areas (Shucksmith et al., 2009, Knight and Gunatilaka, 2010, Davern and Chen, 2010; others found the reverse relationship (Millward and Spinney, 2013), while in some cases no sharp disparity emerged (Mookherjee, 1992; Best et al., 2000). This relation may depend on the stage of a country's development: in lessdeveloped countries happiness is considerably greater in urban settings, but this urban-rural differential tends to disappear in developed countries (Easterlin et al., 2011). ...
It is widely accepted that individual happiness is not, or not solely, related to material possessions, at least once basic needs are fulfilled. It has been demonstrated that interpersonal relationships and social capital matter too, and people whose values are more centred on material possessions have a greater probability of being less happy. Is this still true during the COVID-19 pandemic, when interpersonal relations, health and economic security are threatened and feelings of insecurity emerge? This is the issue that we address in this paper. We exploited the unique natural situation of the pandemic and lockdown in Italy to investigate the relationship between happiness and relational and material goods. Data collected by questionnaire during the lockdown suggests that the main direct effect of the pandemic on the happiness of respondents was related to the effect of the pandemic and lockdown on interpersonal relationships. Those who declared that COVID and lockdown had jeopardized their interpersonal relationships were significantly less likely to report higher levels of happiness, especially when controlling for other personal and contextual covariates. An important gender, religious and town size effect also emerged. Moreover, relational goods and good health were considered to be the most important determinants of happiness, though people were not so worried about their own health.
... Plenty of literature discusses the factors affecting the subjective well-being (S.W.B.) of residents. At the macro level, previous studies mainly focus on economic development (Easterlin et al., 2011;Novak & Pahor, 2017), social security (Fang & Sakellariou, 2016;Han & Gao, 2020), living environment (Gross-Manos & Shimoni, 2020; Knight & Gunatilaka, 2010), and infrastructure (Hunter et al., 2005). From the micro perspective, several elements are fully considered by scholars including economic factors such as income, consumption, employment, and entrepreneurship (Dunn et al., 2008;Wang et al., 2019;Zhao et al., 2020), demographic factors such as marriage, age, health, and education (Kivett, 1988;, and family factors such as couple and parent-child relationships (Liang et al., 2014). ...
We explore the impact of mobile payment usage on the subjective well-being (S.W.B.) of rural residents in China using unique data from the China Household Finance Survey (C.H.F.S.). The estimated results show that using mobile payment has increased the S.W.B. of rural residents, and this finding still holds through several robust checks. The mechanism analysis suggests that the positive effect of mobile payment is partially explained by the reduction in transaction costs, the promotion in consumption upgrade, and the increase in social networks. Additionally, the inclusive financial attributes of mobile payment are verified through several heterogeneity analyses. Results show that the positive impact of mobile payment on S.W.B. is more pronounced in socially vulnerable groups such as the elderly, people with lower income, or lower education. Our study enriches the research on the fields of happiness effect of rural financial convenience and function of inclusive finance and has practical significance for other developing countries.
... At the same time, contrasts between urban and rural may be intensified (Easterlin et al., 2011;Partridge and Rickman, 2008). The world is increasingly urbanized, with projections of more than 60% of the global population expected to live in urban areas by 2030 (United Nations, 2018) and rural landscapes increasingly depopulated. ...
As human populations become concentrated in larger, more intensely urbanized areas connected through globalization, the relationships of cities to their surrounding landscapes are open to social, ecological, and economic reinterpretation. In particular, the value of access to nature in the form of nearby, undeveloped wildland to urban populations implies a relatively novel type of synergistic city-region relationship. We develop a robust and replicable metric – the Urban Wildland Juxtaposition (UWJ) – that quantifies critical dimensions of the juxtaposition of the urbanicity of cities with the quantity of nearby unbuilt wildlands, based on the spatial proximity and relative intensities of these two contrasting system types. Using a distance-decay gravity model, this analysis provides documentation on the calculation of the UWJ and its component metrics, urbanicity (U) and wildland (W) and then presents U, W, and UWJ metrics for 36 urbanized areas representing all regions of the U.S., providing the basis for comparisons and analysis. We explore the potential of the metric by testing correlations with “creative class” employment and public health measures. The UWJ has implications and potential applications for demographic, economic, social, and quality-of-life trends across the U.S. and internationally.
... In terms of control variables, women are more likely to recommend animal welfare products to others, which is consistent with the fact that women are more willing to share life experiences with others; young people in first-tier cities with better family economic conditions are more likely to accept animal welfare products; respondents with pet experiences prefer animal welfare products to those without pet experiences, and those that never heard of animal welfare are more willing to buy and recommend animal welfare products. Some previous studies have shown that statistical results share a very similar significance level between ordinal and cardinal numbers [60]; the ordered Probit model is employed to estimate the impact of consumer welfare knowledge on consumers' behavioral intentions. The ordered Probit model regression results in columns (3) and (4) of Table 6 are entirely consistent with the OLS regression results in the significance level and symbolic direction. ...
As purchase power and consumption knowledge increase, consumers gradually demand safer and healthier products. Animal welfare is expected to be an important attribute of high-end food in the future and a major concern for the high-quality development of the livestock industry. The objective was to shed new light on our understanding of consumers’ perceptions and behavioral intentions toward animal-friendly food. Using sample data of 1499 food consumers in Guangdong province, China, this study explored the role of product cognition and empathy in the relationship between consumers’ knowledge and behavioral intentions. Results indicate that knowledge of animal welfare significantly influences consumers’ behavioral intentions, and there is a mediating effect on cognition. Meanwhile, empathy moderates the relationship between product cognition and consumers’ intentions to purchase or recommend animal-friendly products. Improving consumers’ knowledge of animal welfare and cognitive levels of animal-friendly products may contribute to promoting animal-friendly product consumption and sustainable development of the livestock industry.
... Although there is considerable income disparity within urban areas, the disposable income per capita for urban residences was 2.6 times that of rural residences in 2019 (NBS, 2020). Urban areas also have higher population density, better commercial development, better infrastructure and services, and more highly educated residents than rural areas (Easterlin et al., 2011;Song, 2014). Rural areas often have a concentration of disadvantages such as poverty, higher rates of infant mortality, and lower quality of health and education services. ...
China has made significant progress in enhancing maternal and child health over the past 70 years but geographic-based disparities in early childhood development remain. This study investigated trends in urban–rural gaps in early childhood development and the factors that influence them by leveraging secondary data from the China Family Panel Studies (2010–2018). We also analyzed data from two representative surveys involving direct assessments of child outcomes. In 2018, there were marked reductions in urban–rural differences in participation in center-based early education; the education level of mothers raising children under five years; and cognitive stimulation at home compared to 2010. While urban–rural disparities in children’s health status have decreased, persistent and significant urban–rural gaps in young children’s early developmental outcomes still exist. These disparities are associated with urban–rural differences in maternal education, which affect both children’s early home learning and early childhood education experiences. Suggestions to reduce such inequalities are advanced.
... This evidence is a step forward compared to the recognition of an overall negative effect of urbanization on life satisfaction. 3 Easterlin et al. (2011), Berry and Okulicz-Kozaryn (2009, 2011 and Shucksmith et al. (2009) report similar findings. 4 Another relevant contribution who analyses the link between urbanization and happiness is Glaeser (2020). ...
This paper investigates whether urbanization plays a role in determining the importance of each happiness domain on overall happiness. The analysis focuses on Italy. We exploit a multilevel model to consider regional heterogeneity in happiness determinants. We first verify whether a direct effect of urbanization exists on each specific components of happiness, as well as on overall happiness. Consistent with the findings in the literature, happiness decreases with urbanization. In the analysis of the mediating role, we find that the importance of satisfaction family explains more overall happiness in urban areas. On the contrary, satisfaction with health, friendships and environment gain more weight in rural areas.
... Furthermore, the relational dimensions of wellbeing, including the fishers' identity, camaraderie, and community cohesion are very relevant in small-scale fisheries and may account for certain discrepancies with other studies using more holistic measures such as life or job satisfaction. For instance, while many SWB studies have found differences in satisfaction with life between urban and rural settings (Easterlin et al. 2011), our sampling yielded no differences in affect between the sites. However, by examining the association between the fishing activity and affect in a focused manner, our work contributes to disentangle the mechanisms by which fisheries support the well-being of fishing communities. ...
Small-scale fisheries have been associated with the subjective well-being of coastal communities through their links with culture, identity, and social cohesion. But although fish catches are usually considered the primary ecosystem service that benefits fishers, little is known about how subjective well-being is influenced by the fishing activity itself. Here, we applied the experience sampling method in two small-scale fisheries in Bangladesh to assess the effects of fishing on fishers’ occurrence of positive and negative affect, two measures of subjective well-being. We found that fishing activities were not directly associated with increased momentary affect and that the frequency of positive affect actually decreased as the fishing trip progressed. Furthermore, although very low catches were associated with less positive affect, the highest frequency of positive affect was achieved with relatively small catches. Our results imply that the benefits provided by small-scale fisheries to the momentary subjective well-being of fishers are not strongly related to the actual catching of fish.
... The previous literature suggests that the urban-rural SWB differences are localized in western context and in the most affluent countries (e.g. Berry & Okulicz-Kozaryn, 2009;Easterlin et al., 2011, Weckroth & Kemppainen, 2021. Hence, this analysis provides an intriguing insight to the within-country differences in a nation which has been named the happiest country in the world by the United Nations World Happiness Report (e.g. ...
This analysis examines the geography of subjective wellbeing within a single country via a novel dataset consisting of more than 26,000 respondents embedded in 3100 postal code areas in Finland. We include a detailed indicator on the level of urbanity of the respondent’s location derived from a 250 × 250 m GIS grid, contextual measures of the postal code area´s socioeconomic status as well as proximity to the nearest urban locality and capital city. This analytical framework model makes it possible to examine both individual and contextual determinants for perceived quality of life (QoL). In addition, we include individual-level measures on mental health (Mental Health Inventory MHI-5) and satisfaction with housing and neighbourhood characteristics. The results show that when controlling for socioeconomic factors living in an inner urban area or a neighbourhood (postal code area) with a high unemployment rate are associated with lower QoL and. Also, the share of population with a tertiary education in a postal code area has a positive effect for individual QoL. However, the effects of inner urban living and unemployment rate become insignificant when including mental health indicators and perceived loneliness. In sum, the results confirm and add more detail to earlier findings on lower QoL in urban context and connect living in inner urban area to mental health indicators. As such, the analysis provides further evidence for the positive QoL effects of more rural living while having an access to health and other services.
... Previous studies have relied on the (demographic) indication of urban versus rural regions (Ehrlich et al., 2021;Wang et al., 2015). However, this subdivision is rather arbitrary and not consistently applied between countries (Easterlin et al., 2011;Lattes et al., 2017). Moreover, indications have changed over time as a result of new classification. ...
Globally, urban areas are growing at a faster rate than their population, potentially reducing environmental sustainability due to undesirable land take in (semi)natural and agricultural lands. However, it is unclear to what extent this trend varies locally, which may hamper the formulation and implementation of local-scale policies in the context of the global competition for land. Here, we attribute built-up land change to population dynamics and changes in land take per person, for >75,000 administrative regions worldwide, typically representing municipalities or counties. Results show that changes in land take per person, expressed as the area of built-up land per capita, relate to 38.3%, 49.6%, and 37.5% of the total increase in built-up land during the periods 1975-1990, 1990-2000, and 2000-2015, respectively, but with large local variations. Interestingly, we find that centres of large cities densify in all three periods, while their rural areas show an opposite development, suggesting an urban polarization effect. We also find densification in many regions in the Global South that already have a high population density, leading to potential trade-offs in terms of human wellbeing. Therefore, our work provides novel insights into the debate on sustainable urban development at a global scale.
... shown that benefits stemming from living in urban areas are easily grasped by skilled individuals who are able to better enjoy the amenities that are relatively more important or affordable to them than to those less educated. On the contrary, studies in the field of happiness economics find that urbanization generally reduces SWB (for instance, Berry and Okulicz- Kozaryn 2011, Easterlin et al. 2011, Winters and Li 2017. Glaeser et al. (2016) show that residents of declining cities in the US appear less happy than others. ...
This paper investigates the effect of big-city life on individuals’ well-being. Combining data on Italian municipalities’ characteristics with individual-level survey data, I find that big city dwellers feel worse off. This association is not driven by omitted variable bias or by spatial sorting of citizens. Commute time accounts for most of the differences in subjective well-being among cities of different sizes. There is suggestive evidence that the negative effect of commuting on well-being stems from the reduced time availability for fostering personal relationships and engaging in leisure activities.
... Although in some South Asian countries, higher economic growth rates have led to gains in some dimensions of human well-being but not all and not at the aggregate level in particular (Deaton 2008;Easterlin et al. 2011). Pakistan remains one of the lowest performers in South Asia on human development indicators, particularly in literacy rate and health outcomes (see Easterly 2001). ...
To achieve sustainable future for all, United Nations’ (UNs’) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs-2030) reinforced the formulation of social, economic and human development policies. Pakistan is a country with high population growth rate, among top ten recipients of foreign remittances but facing an acute problem of stagnant human development outcomes over the years. Of note, Pakistan’s economic growth is considered as growth without human face (see Easterly in The political economy of growth without development: A case study of Pakistan, 2001). It is, therefore, important from public policy point of view to understand the short-and long-run dynamics of the relationships between important social, demographic and economic factors. Accordingly, this paper investigates the short-and long-run relationships between population growth, government social spending, foreign remittances inflow and aggregate level of human development in Pakistan using Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach of cointegration and error correction models. The cointegration test results showed that there is cointegration among the variables to proceed with the estimations of long-run relationships. Our empirical results confirm the existence of short-and long-run relationships between population growth, remittances inflow and human development in Pakistan. Population growth inversely while remittances inflow positively influenced Pakistan’s human development status both in the short-and long-run. The empirical findings of our study call for designing and implementing robust development policies—that result in effective and sustainable human development—mainly towards viewing population from a more humanitarian and equitable perspective in Pakistan.
... Comparative studies reveal that the urban-rural difference in quality of life and life satisfaction decreases as the development levels within a country increase, such as GDP and GDP per capita. (Burger et al., 2020;Easterlin et al., 2011;Shucksmith et al., 2009). For China, a small strand of literature examining the rural-urban difference in happiness shows that, 3 despite the dramatic economic disparity between rural and urban residents, rural people tend to be more satisfied with life or happier than urban residents (Cai and Wang, 2018;Knight and Gunatilaka, 2010). ...
Over the past decades, China has witnessed a fast growth in urbanization promoted by massive flows of rural-to-urban migration. This study investigates the association between urbanization and the subjective well-being of migrant, rural, and urban populations, and also examines how urbanization affects the rural-urban difference in SWB. Using nationally representative data from the China Family Panel Studies in 2010, this study finds that urbanization is in general related to the reduced life satisfaction among respondents. Rural residents and migrants are more vulnerable to this negative influence of urbanization than urbanities. Conversely, urbanization is associated with an increase in respondents' self-reported happiness, a pattern more pronounced among urban residents and migrants. Further analyses suggest that the gap in life satisfaction between urban and migrant (or rural) population tends to narrow in more urbanized counties. On the other hand, as urbanization increases, the happiness gap between urban and migrant population appears to decrease while the gap between rural and migrant population tends to widen. We provide some speculations for the patterns.
... Cities feature a diversity of consumption amenities which make life outside work more enjoyable, which in turn makes them attractive places to live. Despite the increasing popularity of residing in cities, actual city life is generally associated with lower levels of subjective wellbeing (SWB) in the Western world (Burger et al., 2020;Easterlin et al., 2011;Okulicz-Kozaryn, 2015). Interestingly, recent studies have found lower levels of SWB in urban areas and higher levels of SWB in rural areas for Western countries such as the United States Okulicz-Kozaryn, 2009, 2011;Glaeser et al., 2016), Canada (Lu et al., 2015), New Zealand (Morrison, 2011), Germany (Botzen, 2016), Italy (Lenzi and Perucca, 2019) and The Netherlands (Burger, 2021). ...
Although more and more people choose to live in (large) cities, people in the Western world generally report lower levels of subjective well-being in urban areas than in rural areas. This article examines whether these urban–rural differences in subjective well-being are (partly) driven by selective migration patterns. To this end, we utilise residential mobility data from the United Kingdom based on 12 waves of the British Household Panel Survey. We explore urban–rural differences in life satisfaction as well as changes in life satisfaction of people moving from rural areas to urban areas (or vice versa), hereby paying specific attention to selection and composition effects. The results show that selective migration can, at least partly, explain the urban–rural subjective well-being differential through the selection of less satisfied people in cities and more satisfied people in the countryside. While the average life satisfaction of urban–rural migrants is higher compared to the life satisfaction of rural–urban migrants, we do not find – on average – long-lasting life satisfaction effects of migration. At the same time, there are differences between sociodemographic groups in that we find that a move from the countryside to the city is positively associated with the life satisfaction of students while it is negatively associated with the life satisfaction of people with a non-tertiary education.
... The findings are not conclusive. Income is found to have little influence on happiness in some studies (Easterlin, 2003;Easterlin et al., 2011) but is found to have a positive relationship in others (Aknin et al., 2009;Sacks et al., 2012). Transformative service research tends to take a wider perspective, aiming at improving the lives of customers (Anderson and Ostrom, 2015). ...
Little has been written about co-creational aspects of happiness. Happiness is generally treated in the marketing literature as an individual outcome of exchange. However, the notion of value in exchange has been challenged by service-dominant (S-D) logic. To stimulate the research discovery process, an account of co-creation of happiness is offered, based on the experience of the lead author, in playing blues music. We propose value is co-created in a context when it is perceived by an individual to be adding to their happiness/subjective well-being (SWB). Thus, the concepts of value and happiness/SWB are closely linked and interconnected. The contribution to S-D logic is in recognising the interconnectedness between value co-creation and happiness/SWB. In particular, this article draws attention to the co-creative role of the artist, in cultural ecosystems. This is relevant to the development of the field and has potentially significant implications for policy in allocating society’s resources.
... A country's development level allows for a better understanding of this outcome. Although people claim to be happier in rural areas in less developed countries, in more developed countries urban areas show better levels of life satisfaction [88]. Therefore, our results provide evidence that the facilities and services provided by urban areas are more relevant to maintaining a good level of PWB than other aspects, such as lower population density or access to nature, which are characteristics of rural areas, including during confinement. ...
The confinement caused by the COVID-19 pandemic led to changes in people’s lifestyles,
which in part provided an opportunity to develop habits at home. The aims were: (1) to verify if the psychological well-being (PWB) of people related to healthy habits, and if physical activity (PA) and diet mediated this relationship; (2) to test if there were differences in this model of relationships between women and men; (3) to analyze if there were differences in healthy habits, PA, diet, and PWB depending on gender; (4) to test if there were differences in healthy habits, PA, diet, and PWB depending on living area; (5) and to assess if there were interaction effects of gender and living area in healthy habits, PA, diet, and PWB. Using a cross-sectional design, we obtained a sample of 1509 participants (18–78 years, 1020 women). Diet and PA fully mediated the relationship between PWB and healthy habits, and women developed more healthy habits than men, whereas men had higher levels of PA and PWB.We also found that people who lived in rural areas during confinement practiced more PA and had lower PWB levels than those who lived in urban areas. These results can help in the planning of strategies to promote healthy habits.
An emerging strand of research emphasizes the role of the macro institutional context in shaping the social distribution of well-being. This article examines the variations in the association between political power and subjective well-being by how the rule of law is instituted across societies. Two hypotheses of the rule of law role are tested: (a) power-tempering and (b) power-enhancement hypotheses. We use a unique dataset of 30,491 individuals from 27 countries with diverse social and political characteristics. We first confirmed the relationship between individuals’ perceptions of their positions in the power hierarchy and their overall satisfaction with their lives using models with country-level fixed effects. Moreover, this relationship significantly varies across countries, and the Rule of Law Index explains part of the variation, as indicated by random-effects models. In societies with well-defined, universally applicable, and fair laws, the association of one’s position of power and subjective well-being is reduced. Our study illustrates that institutions of better quality and functioning may equalize access to well-being.
Governments, civic society, businesses, and citizens all strive to make cities more livable. However, evidence about what aspects of cities actually contribute to the subjective well-being of their residents is incomplete. This paper examines the links between life satisfaction and indicators of the “quality” of U.S. metropolitan areas such as leisure/cultural opportunities, crime, climate, transportation, racial/ethnic diversity, incomes, cost of living, income inequality, the environment, healthcare, population growth, and political affiliation and polarization. Using mixed-effects regression and controlling for individual demographics, data on 9,498 respondents in 161 U.S. metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) suggest that MSA characteristics have little relationship with life satisfaction. The only consistently significant characteristics are the natural log of median MSA per capita income, which is negatively associated with life satisfaction, and climate quality, which is positively associated with it. The association between the percentage of the population voting Republican and life satisfaction is negative but only borderline significant. Further, principal components analysis shows that MSAs with characteristics similar to California's Central Valley or the Texas/Mexico border are actually associated with higher life satisfaction. The finding that subjective well-being tends to be higher in places with better climates is well-supported by prior literature; past research also helps explain why poorer places may be happier, since people tend to be happier when their income compares favorably to their peer group's.
Concerns exist regarding the impact on our lives of the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). Using a large dataset of 137 countries over the period 2005–2018 from multiple sources, we estimate the causal effect of AI on individual‐level subjective wellbeing. Our identification strategy is inferred from the gravity framework and uses merely the variation in exogenous drivers of a country's AI development. We find a significant negative effect of AI on an individual's wellbeing, in terms of current levels or expectations of future wellbeing. The results are robust to alternative measures of AI, identification strategies, and sampling. Moreover, we find evidence of significant heterogeneity in the impact of AI on individual wellbeing. Further, this dampening effect on individual wellbeing resulting from the use of AI is more prominent among young people, men, high‐income groups, high‐skilled groups, and manufacturing workers.
An emerging strand of research emphasizes the role of the macro institutional context in shaping the social distribution of well-being. This article examines the variations in the association between political power and subjective well-being by how the rule of law is instituted across societies. Two hypotheses of the rule of law role are tested: (a) power-tempering and (b) power-enhancement hypotheses. We use a unique dataset of 30,491 individuals from 27 countries with diverse social and political characteristics. We first confirmed the relationship between individuals’ perceptions of their positions in the power hierarchy and their overall satisfaction with their lives using models with country-level fixed effects. Moreover, this relationship significantly varies across countries, and the Rule of Law Index explains part of the variation, as indicated by random-effects models. In societies with well-defined, universally applicable, and fair laws, the association of one’s position of power and subjective well-being is reduced. Our study illustrates that institutions of better quality and functioning may equalize access to well-being.
Using the 2016 merger of French regions as a natural experiment, this paper adopts a difference-in-differences identification strategy to recover its causal impact on individual subjective well-being. No depressing effect is found in the short term; life satisfaction has even increased in regions that were absorbed from both economic and political viewpoints. The empirical evidence at stake suggests that local economic performance has enhanced in these regions, which includes a faster decline of the unemployment rate. In the context of a unitary state, economic gains have therefore outweighed cultural attachment to administrative regions.
In this paper, we analyse the education and wage gaps between Hindus and Muslims over the period 1983 to 2011–2012 in India. We find that Muslims are worse off than Hindus in terms of education and this disadvantage has increased over time. Our analysis shows that the wage gap is more pronounced at the higher end of the wage distribution which we interpret as a glass ceiling effect. We find that the wage gap has increased over time and the increase is more pronounced at the upper quantiles. Our decomposition analysis shows that difference in education has a significant contribution to the Hindu-Muslim wage gap. We find that the Hindu-Muslim gaps are more pronounced in urban areas relative to rural areas. Comparing Muslims with different Hindu castes, we find that while the disadvantaged castes have improved their condition relative to Muslims over time, the condition of Muslims relative to the advantaged castes has worsened. Dividing the sample into younger (aged 16–35) and older (36–65) cohorts, we find that the Hindu-Muslim gap in education is more acute in the younger cohort while the Hindu-Muslim wage gap is more pronounced for the older cohort.
India is on route to becoming the largest population in the world, with around 50 % of its population estimated to be living in cities by 2050. However, for a country that is undergoing substantial changes on the economic and demographic front, India remains mostly understudied when it comes to subjective well-being (SWB). In light of a growing urban population and a consistently low rank on SWB indices, we investigate the association between urbanisation and SWB in India using ordinary least squares regression. We use the nationally representative 1995–2012 World Values Surveys and control for an extensive set of SWB predictors. We find that while Indians in cities (>500,000) report high SWB, those living in small towns (10,000–50,000) report the highest SWB. Contrary to the Western countries and China, Indians living in rural areas with small communities report low SWB, but the lowest SWB is reported by those living in areas with a population size of 50,000–100,000.
Social surveys on wellbeing have been increasingly including measures of subjective wellbeing, alongside more often used objective ones, as they show the importance of a more comprehensive approach to understanding what constitutes good and happy lives. This paper relies on the European Social Survey (ESS) data from Round 4 (2008) and Round 9 (2018 ESS. 2018. Methodology Overview. https://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/methodology/ (19 February 2021) [Google Scholar]) to analyze and compare subjective wellbeing (SWB) in rural and urban areas of eight Central European countries: Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, and Slovakia. Based on available ESS items, we have constructed a more concise version of the VanderWeele et al.’s Flourishing Index, which we termed the Subjective Wellbeing Index (SWI), and which includes the following domains: (1) happiness and life satisfaction, (2) mental and physical health, and (3) financial and material stability. The main results indicate that all eight CE countries have relatively high and improving SWI scores, but stable relational position over the ten-year period. When looking at the rural-urban subsamples, all countries scored higher on the SWI in urban areas in 2008, with significant improvements in the rural areas of more affluent EU countries by 2018 as Austrian, Czech and German rural areas exhibited higher SWI scores than their urban counterparts.
In this paper we use survey data to examine heterogeneity in the urban gradient of life satisfaction. Are some sociodemographic groups more satisfied in cities than others? We find that young persons with tertiary education generally report higher levels of life satisfaction in Norway’s largest city, Oslo, whereas the elderly and the less educated are more satisfied elsewhere. These results may shed light on the ‘urban paradox’: the tendency of large cities in developed countries to have low levels of average subjective well-being and also why the received literature has produced mixed results, as the sociodemographic composition of cities varies.
The article examines the impact on rural non-agricultural employment of two trends — development of return migration to rural areas and the spread of nonstandard forms of work and jobs (distance work, platform employment, self-employment, subcontracting, etc.). In terms of rural employment development, the ongoing blurring of the concepts of "place of residence" and "place of work" creates an influx of "new" high-income urban workers in rural areas, and also significantly expands employment opportunities for the indigenous rural population. The paper hypothesizes that employment in rural areas and, more generally, the development of rural areas will be determined, among other things, by the urban-rural migration, with temporary or seasonal migration, as well as moving for long periods of time or for permanent residence. The traditional view of non-agricultural employment as employment of the indigenous rural population who have lost their jobs in agriculture leads to ignoring of these trends, lack of policies to encourage return migration to rural areas, and limited measures of state support for rural labor market. There is made a conclusion about the need to expand the concept of rural employment to «out-of-town employment», which takes into account new opportunities and forms of employment, including for city dwellers seeking to leave the city in order to improve their quality of life. Additionally, the issue is raised about the need for research on the commercial re-use of agricultural assets — mainly real estate — by non-agrarian businesses in order to facilitate the transfer of urban businesses to rural area and the diversification of the rural economy.
Objectives
Population aging — which tends to be more pronounced in rural than in urban areas — poses important challenges for facilitating equal opportunities for aging well and ‘aging in place.’ Unmet health care needs among the older rural population may result in poorer health and higher mortality, but the scientific evidence of a systematic rural mortality disadvantage at older ages is scarce. We argue that systematic urban–rural mortality differences by age may be found if the confounding effect of life expectancy is considered.
Study design
Nationwide population-based study.
Methods
We draw on age- and sex-specific data for the population aged 60+ years in NUTS-3 regions in Germany (2016–2018) and LAU-1 regions in England & Wales (2017–2019). To account for the confounding effect of life expectancy, we compare age-specific mortality only across urban and rural regions with similar life expectancy levels. We quantify statistical uncertainty with bootstrapping.
Results
The results show a remarkable shift from higher mortality in urban regions to higher mortality in rural regions with increasing age, when controlling for the confounding effect of life expectancy. That is, the urban mortality disadvantage is strongest for the population aged 60–79 years, whereas the pattern shifts toward a rural mortality disadvantage for the population aged 80 years and older. This pattern is present at all levels of life expectancy, for both sexes and in both countries.
Conclusion
The shift from urban to rural excess mortality over age suggests that regions may vary in their capability to respond to arising health issues across older ages. This systematic mortality disadvantage is of high public health relevance and should be considered in designing policies to reduce regional mortality disparities.
This paper attempts to explain why some large cities in developed countries score low on indices of happiness/life satisfaction, while at the same time experiencing population growth. Using survey and register data to study Norway's biggest city, Oslo, we show that different population segments are behind these seemingly contradictory city attributes. A minority of highly mobile citizens are satisfied with life in Oslo and exhibit positive net migration to the city. A majority of less mobile citizens are dissatisfied and tend to move out of Oslo, but these flows are too small to determine the overall migration pattern.
This article investigates whether self-assessed states of unhappiness are persistent. To disentangle state dependence from unobserved heterogeneity in life satisfaction, it estimates a dynamic ordered Logit with correlated random effects on longitudinal data in France, the UK, Australia, and Germany. The persistence of life satisfaction is found to be heterogeneous; people already happy with their lives tend to remain happy while unhappiness sounds more transitory. Overall, there is no empirical evidence of unhappiness traps: rather, every individual faces the risk of experiencing some temporary spell of low subjective well-being in her life course.
A recent study published in Lancet predicts a remarkable drop in population numbers following a peak that will be reached by 2064. A unique feature of the upcoming population drop is that it will be almost exclusively caused by decreased reproduction, rather than factors that increase rates of mortality. The reasons for decreased reproduction are also unique, as, unlike previous centuries, today, limited reproduction is hardly due to a shortage in resources. In other words, the predicted population drop is almost exclusively due to changes in reproductive behavior and reproductive physiology. Today, global changes in reproductive behavior are mostly explained by social sciences in a framework of demographic transition hypotheses, while changes in reproductive physiology are usually attributed to effects of endocrine disrupting pollutants. This review outlines a complementary/alternative hypothesis, which connects reproductive trends with population densities. Numerous wildlife and experimental studies of a broad range of animal species demonstrated that reproductive behavior and reproductive physiology are negatively controlled via endocrine and neural signaling in response to increasing population densities. The causal chain of this control system, although not fully understood, includes suppression of every level of hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal (HPG) cascade by hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, activated in response to increasing stress of social interactions. This paper discusses evidence in support of a hypothesis that current trends in reproductive physiology and behavior may be partly explained by increasing population densities. Better understanding of the causal chain involved in reproduction suppression by population density related factors may help developing interventions to treat infertility and other reproductive conditions.
This study shows, for the first time, that city unhappiness is common across the world. We use the World Values Survey cumulative dataset 1981–2020 from www.worldvaluessurvey.org. In all developed countries, without exception, we find that city dwellers are not happier than rural residents.
It is widely believed that life in the country is more satisfying than life in the city. This belief is propagated in romantic arts as well as in some social scientific theories. The belief is firmly rooted in public opinion, especially in the most urbanized parts of the world. This idea is not without consequences for planological decisions.
The belief is false however. Analysis of various studies on life-satisfaction shows no advantage of rural dwelling. In developed countries rural people tend to be equally satisfiied with life as city-people. In the underdeveloped countries rural dwellers are markedly less happy than city-dwellers. Some explanations for the discrepancy between belief and reality are suggested.
A huge research literature, across the behavioral and social sciences, uses information on individuals’ subjective well-being.
These are responses to questions—asked by survey interviewers or medical personnel—such as, “How happy do you feel on a scale
from 1 to 4?” Yet there is little scientific evidence that such data are meaningful. This study examines a 2005–2008 Behavioral
Risk Factor Surveillance System random sample of 1.3 million U.S. citizens. Life satisfaction in each U.S. state is measured.
Across America, people’s answers trace out the same pattern of quality of life as previously estimated, from solely nonsubjective
data, in one branch of economics (so-called “compensating differentials” neoclassical theory, originally from Adam Smith).
There is a state-by-state match (r = 0.6, P < 0.001) between subjective and objective well-being. This result has some potential to help to unify disciplines.
In this new edition of his landmark book, Richard Layard shows that there is a paradox at the heart of our lives. Most people want more income. Yet as societies become richer, they do not become happier. This is not just anecdotally true, it is the story told by countless pieces of scientific research. We now have sophisticated ways of measuring how happy people are, and all the evidence shows that on average people have grown no happier in the last fifty years, even as average incomes have more than doubled. In fact, the First World has more depression, more alcoholism and more crime than fifty years ago. This paradox is true of Britain, the United States, continental Europe, and Japan. What is going on? Now fully revised and updated to include developments since first publication, Layard answers his critics in what is still the key book in 'happiness studies'.
This is the first comprehensive book on the return of happiness in economics. It still sounds comparatively unusual to put happiness and economics together. At the same time, the association appears increasingly exciting and fruitful, and quite a number of studies have been produced following Richard Easterlin’s and Tibor Scitovsky’s pioneering works through the 1970s. The essays collected in this book provide an authoritative and comprehensive assessment - theoretical, applied, and partly experimental - of the entire field moving from the so-called paradoxes of happiness in economics. The book breaks new ground on the recent directions of research on happiness, well-being, interpersonal relations, and reciprocity. The meaning of happiness is thoroughly explored, and the tension between a hedonic-subjective idea of happiness and a eudaimonic-objective one is discussed.
This paper is the first of its kind to study quality of life responses of crime victims. Using cross-sectional data from the OHS97 survey of South Africa, it is shown that victims report significantly lower well-being than the non-victims, "ceteris paribus". Happiness is lower for non-victimized respondents currently living in higher crime areas. However, some evidence is found that criminal victimization hurts, but hurts less if regional crime rate on our reference group is high. Copyright (c) The London School of Economics and Political Science 2005.
Just as the beginning of Western civilization is marked by the permanent settlement of formerly nomadic peoples in the Mediterranean basin, so the beginning of what is distinctively modern in our civilization is best signalized by the growth of great cities. Nowhere has mankind been farther removed from organic nature than under the conditions of life characteristic of great cities. The contemporary world no longer presents a picture of small isolated groups of human beings scattered over a vast territory, as Sumner described primitive society1. The distinctive feature of the mode of living of man in the modern age is his concentration into gigantic aggregations around which cluster lesser centers and from which radiate the ideas and practices that we call civilization.
This paper argues that institutional conditions in the form of the extent and form of democracy have systematic and sizeable effects on individual well-being, in addition to demographic and economic factors. Using recent interview data from 6,000 residents of Switzerland, we show that individuals are cet. par. happier, the better developed the institutions of direct democracy are in their area of residence. This also applies to a second institution, the degree of government decentralisation (federalism). Finally, we are able to support some of the earlier results for other countries and periods with new data also based on a survey with a large sample size. In particular, we find that the unemployed are to a great extent less happy than employed persons, and that a higher household income level only raises happiness to a small extent
Data from the World Values Survey are used in multilevel statistical models to evaluate received theory about preferences for rural versus big-city living, as evidenced by variations in life satisfaction/happiness/utility and its converse, life dissatisfaction. The models control for individual-level determinants of life satisfaction plus such embedding circumstances as level of development and culture region. For most parts of the world there is no evidence that either rural or big-city living are associated with variations in happiness or unhappiness; personal characteristics and level of development are the key driving forces. The exceptions are in rapidly-urbanizing Asia, where life dissatisfaction is lower in big cities than elsewhere, and in higher income countries, particularly those of Anglo-Saxon heritage, where life dissatisfaction increases with big-city residence and is significantly lower in rural areas. The Asian experience is consistent with the expectations of received urban theory for regions experiencing the upswing of the urban transition and rapid rural-to-urban migration while the higher income Anglo-Saxon experience conforms with expectations about preferences for low-density living close to nature that are traits of that culture.
The paper presents subjective well-being functions for urban and rural China, based on a national household survey for 2002. Whereas the vast income disparity between urban and rural households is confirmed, it is found that, remarkably, rural households report higher subjective well-being than do their richer urban counterparts. A decomposition analysis explores the reasons for this reversal. It finds that there are many determinants of happiness other than absolute income, and that the determinants differ in the two sectors. An explanation for the puzzle is advanced in terms of relative concepts, income inequalities, orbits of comparison, and degrees of insecurity. Positive and normative implications are discussed.
There is increasing interest in the “economics of happiness”, reflected by the number of articles that are appearing in mainstream economics journals that consider subjective well-being (SWB) and its determinants. This paper provides a detailed review of this literature. It focuses on papers that have been published in economics journals since 1990, as well as some key reviews in psychology and important unpublished working papers. The evidence suggests that poor health, separation, unemployment and lack of social contact are all strongly negatively associated with SWB. However, the review highlights a range of problems in drawing firm conclusions about the causes of SWB; these include some contradictory evidence, concerns over the impact on the findings of potentially unobserved variables and the lack of certainty on the direction of causality. We should be able to address some of these problems as more panel data become available.
The striking thing about the happiness-income paradox is that over the long-term--usually a period of 10 y or more--happiness does not increase as a country's income rises. Heretofore the evidence for this was limited to developed countries. This article presents evidence that the long term nil relationship between happiness and income holds also for a number of developing countries, the eastern European countries transitioning from socialism to capitalism, and an even wider sample of developed countries than previously studied. It also finds that in the short-term in all three groups of countries, happiness and income go together, i.e., happiness tends to fall in economic contractions and rise in expansions. Recent critiques of the paradox, claiming the time series relationship between happiness and income is positive, are the result either of a statistical artifact or a confusion of the short-term relationship with the long-term one.
Summary This paper is among the first to link the literatures on migration and on subjective well-being in developing countries. It poses the question: why do rural-urban migrant households settled in urban China have an average happiness score lower than rural households? Three basic hypotheses are examined: migrants had false expectations about their future urban conditions, or about their future urban aspirations, or about their future selves. Estimated happiness functions and decomposition analyses, based on a 2002 national household survey, indicate that certain features of migrant conditions make for unhappiness, and that their high aspirations in relation to achievement, influenced by their new reference groups, also make for unhappiness. Although the possibility of selection bias among migrants cannot be ruled out, it is apparently difficult for migrants to form unbiased expectations about life in a new and different world.
Taking a longer view than most literature on economic development, Richard A. Easterlin stresses the enormous contrast between the collective experience of the last half century in both developed and developing countries and what has gone before. An economic historian and demographer, the author writes in the tradition of the "new economic history," drawing on economic theory and quantitative evidence to interpret the historical experience of economic theory and population growth. He reaches beyond the usual disciplinary limits to draw, as appropriate, on sociology, political science, psychology, anthropology, and the history of science. The book will be of interest not only to social scientists but to all readers concerned with where we have been and where we are going. ". . . Easterlin is both an economic historian and a demographer, and it is the combination of these two disciplines and the fine balance between theory and experience that make this well-written, refreshingly optimistic book excellent reading." --Population and Development Review "In this masterful synthesis, Richard Easterlin draws on the disciplines of economic history, demography, sociology, political science, psychology, and the history of science to present an integrated explation of the origins of modern economic growth and of the mortality revolution. . . . His book should be easily accessible to non-specialists and will give them a sense of why economic history can inform our understanding of the future." --Dora L. Costa, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, EH.Net and H-Net "Growth Triumphant is, simply, a fascinating book. Easterlin has woven together a history of economic growth, economic development, human mortality and morbidity, the connections each has with the others, and the implications of this nexus of forces on the future. . . . This book deserves a wide audience." --Choice "In what must surely be the most fair-minded, well-balanced, and scrupulously reasoned and researched book on the sensational subjects implied in its title--the Industrial Revolution, the mortality and fertility revolutions, and the prospects for future happiness for the human race--Professor Easterlin has set in place the capstone of his research career." --Journal of Economic History Richard A. Easterlin is Professor of Economics, University of Southern California.
A remarkable diversity of indicators shows quality of life across nations to be positively associated with per capita income. At the same time, the changes in quality of life as income grows are surprisingly uneven. Either in levels or changes, moreover, the effect of exogenous shifts over time is surprisingly strong compared to growth effects. This article reaches this conclusion with a panel dataset of 81 indicators covering up to four time periods (1960, 1970, 1980, and 1990). The indicators cover seven subjects: (1) individual rights and democracy, (2) political instability and war, (3) education, (4) health, (5) transport and communications, (6) inequality across class and gender, and (7) "bads." With a SUR estimator in levels, income per capita has an impact on the quality of life that is significant, positive, and more important than exogenous shifts for 32 out of 81 indicators. With a fixed-effects estimator, growth has an impact on the quality of life that is significant, positive, and more important than exogenous shifts for 10 out of 81 indicators. With a first-differences IV estimator, growth has a causal impact on the quality of life that is significant, positive, and more important than exogenous shifts for six out of 69 quality of life indicators. The conclusion speculates about such explanations for the pattern of results as (1) the long and variable lags that may come between growth and changes in the quality of life and (2) the possibility that global socioeconomic progress is more important that home-country growth for many quality-of-life indicators. Copyright 1999 by Kluwer Academic Publishers
World Development Report 2009: Reshaping economic geography World Development Indicators Online (WDI) database. Data retrieved
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World Bank (2009). World Development Report 2009: Reshaping economic geography. Washington, DC: World Bank. World Bank (2010). World Development Indicators Online (WDI) database. Data retrieved June 18, 2009. APPENDIX A Table A-1. Countries Included in the Analysis
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The happiness equation: The surprising economics of our most valuable asset. London: Icon Books Rural depopulation in England and Wales
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Champion, T. (2004). Lest we re-invent the wheel: Lessons from previous experience. In T. Champion & G. Hugo (Eds.), New Forms of Urbanization: Beyond the Urban-Rural Dichotomy (pp. 25–42). Alder-shot, England: Ashgate Publishing Ltd.
Cities transformed: Demographic change and its implications in the developing world The World Bank The connection between old and new approaches to financial satisfaction
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London: Earthscan. United States National Research Council (2003). Cities transformed: Demographic change and its implications in the developing world. Washington, DC: National Academic Press, The World Bank. van Pragg, B. M. S. (2005). The connection between old and new approaches to financial satisfaction. In L. Bruni, & P. L. Porta (Eds.), Economics and happiness: Framing the analysis (pp. 196–222). New York: Oxford University Press.