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Happiness, Lottery Winners, and Your Heart
Andrew OswaldWarwick University
* Much of this work is joint with coauthor Nick Powdthavee. I also owe a great debt to the work of David G Blanchflower, Andrew Clark, Paul Frijters, and Justin Wolfers.
#1
In the 21st century, should our society’s goal be happiness rather than GDP?
#3
Could physiological measures, like heart rate and blood pressure, be used as proxies for well-being?
Average Happiness and Real GDP per Capita for Repeated Cross-sections of Americans.
1.8
22.2
2.4
2.6
Mea
n H
app
iness
15
00
018
00
021
00
024
00
0R
eal G
DP
pe
r C
ap
ita
1975 1980 1985 1990 1995Year
Real GDP per Capita Mean Happiness
Life-Satisfaction Levels in European Nations
2.4
2.6
2.8
3
3.2
3.4
3.6
3.8
1974 1982 1990 1998 2006
ItalyIrelandGermanyNetherlands
The types of sources
British Household Panel Study (BHPS)German Socioeconomic PanelAustralian HILDA PanelGeneral Social Survey of the USAEurobarometer SurveysLabour Force Survey from the UKWorld Values SurveysNCDS 1958 cohort
Some cheery news:
In Western nations, most people seem happy with their lives
The distribution of life-satisfaction levels among British people
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
Per
cen
tag
e o
f P
op
ula
tio
n
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Self-rated Life Satisfaction
Source: BHPS, 1997-2003. N = 74,481
Big effects
Unemployment
Divorce
Marriage
Bereavement
Friendship networks
Health
[No effects from children]
The pattern of a typical person’s happiness through life
4.9
5.0
5.1
5.2
5.3
5.4
5.5
5.6
15-20 21-30 31-40 41-50 51-60 61-70Age group
Ave
rag
e li
fe s
atis
fact
ion
sco
re
This holds in various settings
For example, we see the same age pattern in mental health among a recent sample of 800,000 UK citizens:
[Blanchflower and Oswald, Social Science & Medicine, 2008]
The probability of depression by ageMales, LFS data set 2004-2006
-0.01
-0.005
0
0.005
0.01
0.015
0.02
1938 1942 1946 1950 1954 1958 1962 1966 1970 1974 1978 1982 1986 1990
Year of birth
Reg
ress
ion
co
effi
cien
t
-0.014
-0.012
-0.01
-0.008
-0.006
-0.004
-0.002
0
0.002
1942 1946 1950 1954 1958 1962 1966 1970 1974 1978 1982 1986 1990
Depression by age among females: LFS data 2004-2006Q2
Year of birth
Reg
ress
ion
co
effi
cien
t
Now what about money?
The data show that richer people are happier and healthier.
For example
Di Tella et al REStats 2003 and Luttmer QJE 2005 show income is monotonic in happiness equations for 11 industrial countries.
But is there really good causal evidence?
One recent attempt (Gardner-Oswald, Journal of Health Economics
2007):
Remarkably
There is no immediate effect on well-being as measured by happiness or financial satisfaction.
In our data
Strikingly, even the person who receives the equivalent of 1 million US dollars reports a fall, in time t1, in financial satisfaction (ie. satisfaction with the household’s income).
But the puzzle remains
There is a delay.
The longitudinal lottery work finds the effect of a win takes one to two years to show up in mental well-being scores.
An interesting border is between happiness and medicine
• Is it possible that we can find physiological correlates with human well-being?
• Perhaps to broaden the standard policy goal of GDP?
Some regression evidence
When we estimate a life-satisfaction equation
LS = f (high blood pressure, control variables)
Hypertension enters negatively in a 10,000 sample from NCDS cohort and a 15,000 sample from Eurobarometers
Across nations, hypertension and happiness are inversely correlated
(Blanchflower and Oswald, forthcoming, Journal of Health Economics)
0
10
20
30
40
50
Figure 2.The Inverse Correlation Between Hypertension and Life
Satisfaction: 16 European Nations Aggregated into Quartiles
Countries in the Countries in the lowest quartile highest quartile of blood-pressure of blood-pressure
IrelandDenmarkN'LandsSweden
SpainFranceLuxUK Austria
ItalyBelgiumGreece
E. GermanyW. GermanyPortugalFinland
P
erce
nta
ge o
f citi
zens
ver
y sa
tisfie
d w
ith t
heir
live
s
Per
cent
age
of c
itiz
ens
very
sat
isfi
ed w
ith
thei
r li
ves
Two Studies of ‘Winners’
#1 Redelmeier and Singh, Annals of Internal Medicine, 2001
Oscar winners live 4 years longer than those merely nominated.
Two Studies of ‘Winners’
#2 Rablen and Oswald
Nobel scientists live 1.6 years longer than those merely nominated.
We took data on
All science Nobellists and all nominees between 1901 and 1850.
Two kinds of test:
(i) Matching test
(ii) Hazard models with time-varying covariates
1-2 extra years
There does seem a longevity difference between winners and mere nominees. [No income effect]
Even with the corrections for immortal time bias that we attempted.
#2 As social scientists, we need to understand better the connections between mental and physical health.
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