(Un)Happiness in Transition
Sergei Guriev and
Ekaterina Zhuravskaya
No w0111, Working Papers from New Economic School (NES)
Abstract:
Despite the strong growth performance in transition countries in the last decade, residents of transition countries report abnormally low levels of life satisfaction. Using data from multiple sources including a recent survey in 28 post-communist countries, we study various explanations of this phenomenon. We find that deterioration in public goods provision, an increase in macroeconomic volatility, and a mismatch of human capital explain a great deal of the difference in life satisfaction between transition countries and other countries with similar income. The rest of the gap is explained by the difference in the quality of the samples. As in other countries, life satisfaction in transition is strongly related to income; but due to a higher non-response of highincome individuals in transition countries, the effect of GDP growth on the increase in life satisfaction estimated using survey data is biased downwards. The evidence suggests that if the region keeps growing at current rates, the life satisfaction in transition countries will catch up with the “normal” level in the near future.
Pages: 43 pages
Date: 2007-12
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nes.ru/files/Preprints-resh/WP111.pdf (application/pdf)
Related works:
Journal Article: (Un)happiness in Transition (2009) 
Working Paper: (Un)Happiness in Transition (2009) 
Working Paper: (Un)Happiness in Transition (2009) 
Working Paper: (Un)Happiness in Transition (2009) 
Working Paper: (Un)Happiness in Transition (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:abo:neswpt:w0111
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in Working Papers from New Economic School (NES) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Vladimir Ivanyukhin ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).