It has often been claimed that it is impossible to measure human capabilities but within the methodological conventions of household survey design, we show that some non-financial capability indicators do already exist and we demonstrate how similar indicators, covering a wide range of life...

This paper investigates how economic conditions are associated with age-sex group specific suicide rates in a panel of 28 OECD countries over the period 1980-2002. We consider the trend and cyclical components of income, unemployment, income inequality, inflation, as well as various...

Based on point-of-time comparisons of happiness in richer and poorer countries, it is commonly asserted that economic growth will have a significant positive impact on happiness in poorer countries, if not richer. The time trends of subjective well-being (SWB) in 13 developing countries,...

There is no significant relationship between the improvement in happiness and the long term rate of growth of GDP per capita. This is true for three groups of countries analyzed separately - 17 developed, 9 developing, and 11 transition - and also for the 37 countries taken together. Time series...

The paper is motivated by sustained interest in the capabilities approach to welfare economics combined with the purported paucity of economic statistics that measure capabilities at the individual level. Specifically, it takes a focal account of normatively desirable capabilities constitutive...

Sorting of people on the labor market not only assures the most productive use of valuable skills but also generates individual utility gains if people experience an optimal match between job characteristics and their preferences. Based on individual data on subjective well-being it is possible...

This paper analyses whether individuals are influenced by the day of the week when reporting subjective well-being. By using a large panel data set and controlling for observed and unobserved individual characteristics, we find a large day-of the-week effect. Overall, we find a 'blue' Sunday...

Recent happiness studies by economists, sociologist and psychologists have produced many important new approaches and attitudes to focus less on objective variables and more on subjective well-being (SWB). Studies investigating life satisfaction (as a proxy of SWB) have identified strong...

Over the last decades, empirical research on subjective well-being in the social sciences has provided a major new stimulus to the discourse on individual happiness. Recently this research has also been linked to economics where reported subjective wellbeing is often taken as a proxy measure for...

We analyse the influence of climate on average life satisfaction in 87 countries using data from the World Values Survey. Climate is described in terms of ‘degree-months’ calculated using an optimally-selected base temperature of 65°F (18.3°C). Our results suggest that countries with...