From Happiness Data to Economic Conclusions

Daniel Benjamin, Kristen Cooper, Ori Heffetz and Miles Kimball

No 31727, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Happiness data—survey respondents’ self-reported well-being (SWB)—have become increasingly common in economics research, with recent calls to use them in policymaking. Researchers have used SWB data in novel ways, for example to learn about welfare or preferences when choice data are unavailable or difficult to interpret. Focusing on leading examples of this pioneering research, the first part of this review uses a simple theoretical framework to reverse-engineer some of the crucial assumptions that underlie existing applications. The second part discusses evidence bearing on these assumptions and provides practical advice to the agencies and institutions that generate SWB data, the researchers who use them, and the policymakers who may use the resulting research. While we advocate creative uses of SWB data in economics, we caution that their use in policy will likely require both additional data collection and further research to better understand the data.

JEL-codes: D60 D63 D9 I31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ger, nep-hap, nep-hpe and nep-ltv
Note: AG EH LS PE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published as Daniel J. Benjamin & Kristen Cooper & Ori Heffetz & Miles Kimball, 2024. "From Happiness Data to Economic Conclusions," Annual Review of Economics, .

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w31727.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

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:31727

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w31727
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

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 ().