Macroeconomics and Life Satisfaction: Revisiting the “Misery Index”

Heinz Welsch

Journal of Applied Economics, 2007, vol. 10, issue 2, 237-251

Abstract: Using data from surveys of life satisfaction, evidence has been presented that European citizens' subjective well-being is inversely related to inflation and unemployment. Motivated by the “Barro Misery Index”, this paper reconsiders the relationship between macroeconomics and subjective well-being by including the growth rate and the long-term interest rate as additional variables in life satisfaction regressions. The paper finds that people care about growth and employment on the one hand and stability on the other, where stability may alternatively be captured by the inflation rate or the long-term interest rate. Stability, measured in whichever of these ways, does not seem to be less important to European citizens than growth and employment.

Date: 2007
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/15140326.2007.12040489 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Journal Article: Macroeconomics and life satisfaction: Revisiting the "misery index" (2007)
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:taf:recsxx:v:10:y:2007:i:2:p:237-251

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/recs20

DOI: 10.1080/15140326.2007.12040489

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Applied Economics is currently edited by Jorge M. Streb

More articles in Journal of Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().