International Inequality in Subjective Well-Being: An exploration with the Gallup World Poll

Pablo Gluzmann and Leonardo Gasparini

CEDLAS, Working Papers from CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata

Abstract: In this paper we compute inequality measures over the distribution of a subjective well-being variable constructed from a life satisfaction question included in the Gallup World Poll in almost all countries in the world. We argue that inequality in subjective well-being may be a better proxy for the degree of unfairness in a society than income inequality. We find evidence that inequality in subjective well-being has an inverse-U relationship with per capita GDP, but it is monotonically decreasing with respect to mean subjective well-being. We argue that this difference might be associated to inequality aversion in the space of utility.

JEL-codes: D31 D39 D63 I31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2017-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap, nep-lam, nep-ltv and nep-upt
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:dls:wpaper:0216

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