Welcome to a seminar where Filip Fors Connolly and Johannes Frech will present the result from a paper they are working on:
Abstract
In recent years, policymakers and researchers alike have paid increasing attention to subjective well-being, both regarding cross country differences and trends within countries. Whereas research initially focused on country means when measuring subjective well-being, the distribution within countries, measured by standard deviation, has gained increased popularity. This article proposes a new focus when evaluating subjective well-being, namely the “worst off”, i.e. the group of people with the lowest levels of subjective well-being. We argue that, based on a number of ethical theories, this measure is the most relevant when assessing levels of subjective well-being in society. For this purpose, we construct new measures of low subjective well-being, both relative and absolute, by which we assess cross country differences, as well as intranational changes over time. Data from 17 countries, coming from the <span ">European Social Survey waves 1, 2, 8, and 9 is analyzed. The results reveal large country differences regarding the levels of subjective well-being for the worst off, as well as general improvements for this group in all countries. The magnitude of the improvements also differed largely among the countries examined, ranging from very large in Poland, Czechia, and Germany, to modest in Portugal and the UK. We conclude by discussing these results in relation to previous studies, and in terms of their possible implications for future research and benchmarking quality of life.
Join Zoom Meeting
The seminar will be held in English and send through zoom. Employees at the department will get the link by e-mail. If you want to participate and are not employed - send an e-mail to sara.kalucza@umu.se or josefina.frech@umu.se
