Lelkes, Orsolya (2005) Knowing what is good for you: empirical analysis of personal preferences and the 'objective good'. CASEpaper (94). Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, London, UK.
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Abstract
This paper aims to test empirically if certain frequently used measures of well-being, which are regarded as valuable properties of human life, are actually desired by people. In other words, it investigates whether the “expert judgments” in social science overlap with social consensus on what the “good life” is. The starting hypothesis is that there is an overlap between these two in the case of basic needs. For the analysis, individuals’ self-reported life satisfaction is used as a proxy for “utility”, based on survey data, which includes about 30 000 individuals from 21 different European countries. The results indicate that the commonly used measures of well-being – labour market situation, health, housing conditions and social relations – significantly influence people’s satisfaction, ceteris paribus. Next, the stability of preferences is tested using Hungarian data from the 1990s. The results indicate that there was only very limited change in the relationship between life satisfaction and basic measures of well-being despite the landslide of societal and economic transformation.
| Item Type: | Monograph (Discussion Paper) |
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| Official URL: | http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/case |
| Additional Information: | © 2005 Orsolya Lelkes |
| Divisions: | Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion |
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology |
| JEL classification: | I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I3 - Welfare and Poverty > I31 - General Welfare; Basic Needs; Living Standards; Quality of Life; Happiness D - Microeconomics > D6 - Welfare Economics > D63 - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement P - Economic Systems > P3 - Socialist Institutions and Their Transitions > P36 - Socialist Institutions and Their Transitions: Consumer Economics; Health, Education and Training, Welfare, and Poverty |
| Date Deposited: | 01 Jul 2008 12:12 |
| Last Modified: | 11 Dec 2024 18:43 |
| URI: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/6270 |
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