This paper uses new Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data to provide the first estimates of well-being across the states of America. From this sample of 1.3 million US citizens, we analyze measures of life satisfaction and mental health. Adjusting for people's characteristics, states...

A huge research literature, across the behavioral and social sciences, uses information on individuals' subjective well-being. These are responses to questions ﾖ asked by survey interviewers or medical personnel ﾖ such as "how happy do you feel on a scale from 1 to 4?" Yet there is little...

This paper studies the mental distress caused by bereavement. The largest emotional lossesare from the death of a spouse; the second-worst in severity are the losses from the death ofa child; the third-worst is the death of a parent...

This paper documents some of the patterns in modern microeconomic data on youngpeople´s employment, attitudes and entrepreneurial behaviour. Among other sources, thepaper uses the Eurobarometer Surveys; the Labour Force Surveys from Canada and theCurrent Population Survey in the United States...

This paper argues, in line with the proposals of the recent Stiglitz Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, that we should now be measuring a nation's emotional prosperity rather than its economic prosperity (that is, we ought to focus on the level of mental...

The question of whether there is a connection between income and psychological well-being is a long-studied issue across the social, psychological, and behavioral sciences. Much research has found that richer people tend to be happier. However, relatively little attention has been paid to...

Many governments wish to assess the quality of their universities. A prominent example is the UK's new Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014. In the REF, peer-review panels will be provided with information on publications and citations. This paper suggests a way in which panels could choose...

Recently, economists and behavioral scientists have studied the pattern of human well-being over the lifespan. In dozens of countries, and for a large range of well-being measures, including happiness and mental health, well-being is high in youth, falls to a nadir in midlife, and rises again in...

We live in a high-divorce age. It is now common for university faculty to have students who are touched by a recent divorce. It is likely that parents themselves worry about effects on their children. Yet there has been almost no formal research into the important issue of how recent...

This study explores the hypothesis that high home-ownership damages the labor market. We show that rises in the home-ownership rate in a U.S. state are a precursor to eventual sharp rises in unemployment in that state. The elasticity exceeds unity: a doubling of the rate of home-ownership in a...