Effects of the Great East Japan Earthquake on Subjective Well-Being

Takuya Ishino, Akiko Kamesaka, Toshiya Murai and Masao Ogaki
Additional contact information
Takuya Ishino: Faculty of Economics, Kanazawa Seiryo University
Akiko Kamesaka: School of Business Administration, Aoyama Gakuin University
Toshiya Murai: Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University

No 2014-010, Keio-IES Discussion Paper Series from Institute for Economics Studies, Keio University

Abstract: Using a large panel data set that samples over 4000 Japanese, we analyze changes in people's subjective well-being (happiness) and altruistic worldview before and after the Great East Japan Earthquake. As a result we find that 1) more people replied that their happiness improved after the earthquake than said it worsened, and also that 2) many more Japanese people became more altruistic since the earthquake, even in the most affected areas. One possible interpretation of these results is that an increase in altruism due to the earthquake spurred people to give to charity, which in turn increased their happiness. Our regression analysis yields results that are consistent with this story.

Keywords: subjective well-being; happiness; altruism; the Great East Japan Earthquake; disasters (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 I31 I38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2014-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ies.keio.ac.jp/upload/pdf/en/DP2014-010.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Effects of the Great East Japan Earthquake on Subjective Well-Being (2015)
Working Paper: Effects of the Great East Japan Earthquake on Subjective Well-Being (2014)
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:keo:dpaper:2014-010

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Keio-IES Discussion Paper Series from Institute for Economics Studies, Keio University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Institute for Economics Studies, Keio University ().