Perception and retrospection: the dynamic consistency of responses to survey questions on wellbeing

Stephen Pudney

No 2010-07, ISER Working Paper Series from Institute for Social and Economic Research

Abstract: Implementation of broad approaches to welfare analysis usually entails the use of 'subjective' welfare indicators. We analyse BHPS data on financial wellbeing to determine whether reported current and retrospective perceptions are consistent with each other and with the existence of a common underlying wellbeing concept. We allow for adjustment of perceptions in a vector ARMA model for panel data, with dependent variables observed ordinally and find that current perceptions exhibit slow adjustment to changing circumstances and retrospective assessments of past wellbeing are heavily contaminated by current circumstances, causing significant bias in measures of the level and change in welfare.

Date: 2010-03-15
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/fi ... ers/iser/2010-07.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Perception and retrospection: The dynamic consistency of responses to survey questions on wellbeing (2011)
Journal Article: Perception and retrospection: The dynamic consistency of responses to survey questions on wellbeing (2011)
Working Paper: Perception and retrospection: the dynamic consistency of responses to survey questions on wellbeing (2010)
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:ese:iserwp:2010-07

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
Publications Office, Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex CO4 3SQ UK
https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/publications/

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ISER Working Paper Series from Institute for Social and Economic Research Publications Office, Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex CO4 3SQ UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jonathan Nears ().