TY  - JOUR
AU  - Helliwell,John F.
AU  - Barrington-Leigh,Christopher P.
TI  - Measuring and Understanding Subjective Well-Being
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 15887
PY  - 2010
Y2  - April 2010
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15887
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15887.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
John F. Helliwell
Vancouver School of Economics
University of British Columbia
997-1873 East Mall
Vancouver BC V6T 1Z1
CANADA
Tel: 604/822-4953
Fax: 604/822-5915
E-Mail: john.helliwell@ubc.ca

Christopher P. Barrington-Leigh
Canadian Institute for Advanced Research
and Department of Economics
University of British Columbia
997 - 1873 East Mall
Vancouver, B.C.  V6T 1Z1 
CANADA
E-Mail: cpbl@wellbeing.econ.ubc.ca
AB  - Increasing attention is being paid in academic, policy, and public arenas to subjective measures of well-being. This promising trend represents a shift towards measuring positive outcomes in psychology and greater realism in the study of economic behaviour. After a general review of past and potential uses for subjective well-being data, and a discussion of why some economists have previously been sceptical of SWB data, we present global and Canadian examples from our own research to illustrate what can be learned. Differences in subjective well-being will be shown to be large and sustained across individuals, communities, provinces and nations. Although the patterns of subjective well-being are very different across Canada than across the world, we show that in both cases the differences can be fairly well accounted for by the same set of life circumstances. Our examples of policy-relevant research findings include new accountings of the differences in individual-level SWB assessments around the world and across Canada. These highlight the importance of social factors whose role has otherwise been hard to quantify in income-equivalent terms.
ER  -