Life Satisfaction and Quality of Development

John Helliwell

No 14507, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper argues that measures of life satisfaction, now being collected annually by the Gallup World Poll in more than 130 countries, permit a much broader view of the quality and consequences of development than other common measures. While these data show the importance of conventionally measured economic development, they also show the importance of many other elements of life that are also affected, whether deliberately or not, by community, national, and international institutions and policies. In estimating the importance of these other factors, this paper pays special attention to the social context of well-being: the norms, networks and relationships within which lives are lived.

JEL-codes: D6 I3 J1 O1 O10 P51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap, nep-hpe, nep-ltv and nep-soc
Note: IFM
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (51)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14507.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:14507

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14507

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().