Hypertension and Happiness across Nations

David Blanchflower () and Andrew J. Oswald

No 12934, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: A modern statistical literature argues that countries such as Denmark are particularly happy while nations like East Germany are not. Are such claims credible? The paper explores this by building on two ideas. The first is that psychological well-being and high blood-pressure are thought by clinicians to be inversely correlated. The second is that blood-pressure problems can be reported more objectively than mental well-being. Using data on 16 countries, the paper finds that happier nations report lower levels of hypertension. The paper's results are consistent with, and seem to offer a step towards the validation of, cross-national estimates of well-being.

JEL-codes: I10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-hpe and nep-ltv
Date: 2007-02
Note: HE LS
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w12934.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.

Related works:
Working Paper: Hypertension and Happiness across Nations (2007)
Working Paper: Hypertension and Happiness across Nations (2007)
Working Paper: Hypertension and Happiness across Nations (2007)
Journal Article: Hypertension and happiness across nations (2008)
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: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12934

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w12934
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
Address: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by ().