Happy for how long? How social capital and economic growth relate to happiness over time

B-Tier
Journal: Ecological Economics
Year: 2014
Volume: 108
Issue: C
Pages: 242-256

Score contribution per author:

1.005 = (α=2.01 / 2 authors) × 1.0x B-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

What predicts the evolution over time of subjective well-being? We correlate the trends of subjective well-being with the trends of social capital and/or GDP. We find that in the long and the medium run social capital largely predicts the trends of subjective well-being. In the short-term this relationship weakens. Indeed, in the short run, changes in social capital predict a much smaller portion of the changes in subjective well-being than over longer periods. GDP follows a reverse path, thus confirming the Easterlin paradox: in the short run GDP is more positively correlated to well-being than in the medium-term, while in the long run this correlation vanishes.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:eee:ecolec:v:108:y:2014:i:c:p:242-256
Journal Field
Environment
Author Count
2
Added to Database
2026-01-24