IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/jhappi/v16y2015i4p985-997.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Factors Affecting Well-Being at the State Level in the United States

Author

Listed:
  • Vivian Valdmanis

Abstract

United States (US) policy makers often rely on economic indicators in order to determine citizens’ well-being. Authors of other research in the area of well-being have reported that well-being is a function of other factors beyond just income including health indicators such as physical and mental health, social interactions such as employment and productivity, and politics. Therefore, inclusion of these other factors would better capture variations in well-being. In this paper, well-being in each of the fifty states in the US is assessed using a mixed panel model approach (2009–2011) including typical economic and political measures. The findings from the empirical analysis reveal higher level of equality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, was the strongest indicator of well-being. Conversely, in states considered as politically conservative, an inverse relation was shown to exist between higher levels of state conservative politics and levels of average well-being by state. Finally, per capita income growth was difficult to measure as it related to well-being due to the fluctuations attributed to the recession of 2008. Therefore, state policies focused only on economic measures could not be verified whereas the income equality and/lower levels of income disparity would benefit the state population, as a whole, in terms of well-being. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

Suggested Citation

  • Vivian Valdmanis, 2015. "Factors Affecting Well-Being at the State Level in the United States," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 16(4), pages 985-997, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:jhappi:v:16:y:2015:i:4:p:985-997
    DOI: 10.1007/s10902-014-9545-0
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10902-014-9545-0
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10902-014-9545-0?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Blanchflower, David G. & Oswald, Andrew J., 2004. "Well-being over time in Britain and the USA," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(7-8), pages 1359-1386, July.
    2. Sen, Amartya, 1999. "Commodities and Capabilities," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195650389.
    3. Ferrer-i-Carbonell, Ada, 2005. "Income and well-being: an empirical analysis of the comparison income effect," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(5-6), pages 997-1019, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kadri Taht & Despoina Xanthopoulou & Lia Figgou & Marialena Kostouli & Marge Unt, 2020. "The Role of Unemployment and Job Insecurity for the Well-Being of Young Europeans: Social Inequality as a Macro-Level Moderator," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 21(7), pages 2355-2375, October.
    2. Smaranda Adina Cosma & Marius Bota & Cristina Fleșeriu & Claudiu Morgovan & Mădălina Văleanu & Dan Cosma, 2020. "Measuring Patients’ Perception and Satisfaction with the Romanian Healthcare System," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(4), pages 1-16, February.
    3. Martin Schröder, 2018. "Income Inequality and Life Satisfaction: Unrelated Between Countries, Associated Within Countries Over Time," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 19(4), pages 1021-1043, April.
    4. Phumsith Mahasuweerachai & Siwarut Pangjai, 2018. "Does Piped Water Improve Happiness? A Case from Asian Rural Communities," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 19(5), pages 1329-1346, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jeroen C.J.M. van den Bergh, 2007. "Abolishing GDP," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 07-019/3, Tinbergen Institute.
    2. Senik, Claudia, 2009. "Direct evidence on income comparisons and their welfare effects," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 408-424, October.
    3. Andrew E. Clark, 2018. "Four Decades of the Economics of Happiness: Where Next?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 64(2), pages 245-269, June.
    4. Oshio, Takashi & Urakawa, Kunio, 2013. "The association between perceived income inequality and subjective well-being: Evidence from a social survey in Japan," CIS Discussion paper series 579, Center for Intergenerational Studies, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    5. Muhammad Faress Bhuiyan, 2018. "Life Satisfaction and Economic Position Relative to Neighbors: Perceptions Versus Reality," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 19(7), pages 1935-1964, October.
    6. Akay, Alpaslan & Martinsson, Peter, 2011. "Does relative income matter for the very poor? Evidence from rural Ethiopia," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 110(3), pages 213-215, March.
    7. Drakopoulos, Stavros A., 2008. "The Concept Of Comparison Income: An Historical Perspective," MPRA Paper 8713, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Maite Blázquez & Elena Cottini & Ainhoa Herrarte, 2014. "The socioeconomic gradient in health: how important is material deprivation?," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 12(2), pages 239-264, June.
    9. Budría, Santiago & Ferrer-i-Carbonell, Ada, 2012. "Income Comparisons and Non-Cognitive Skills," IZA Discussion Papers 6419, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Maite Blázquez Cuesta & Santiago Budría, 2014. "Deprivation and Subjective Well-Being: Evidence from Panel Data," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 60(4), pages 655-682, December.
    11. Drakopoulos, Stavros, 2011. "Hierarchical Needs, Income Comparisons and Happiness Levels," MPRA Paper 48343, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Paul Downward & Simona Rasciute, 2011. "An Economic Analysis of the Subjective Health and Well-being of Physical Activity," Chapters, in: Plácido Rodríguez & Stefan Késenne & Brad R. Humphreys (ed.), The Economics of Sport, Health and Happiness, chapter 2, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    13. Hajdu, Tamás & Hajdu, Gábor, 2011. "A hasznosság és a relatív jövedelem kapcsolatának vizsgálata magyar adatok segítségével [Examining the relation of utility and relative income using Hungarian data]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(1), pages 56-73.
    14. Fotis Papadopoulos & Panos Tsakloglou, 2015. "Chronic material deprivation and long-term poverty in Europe in the pre-crisis period," ImPRovE Working Papers 15/16, Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy, University of Antwerp.
    15. Paul Hudson & W. J. Wouter Botzen & Jennifer Poussin & Jeroen C. J. H. Aerts, 2019. "Impacts of Flooding and Flood Preparedness on Subjective Well-Being: A Monetisation of the Tangible and Intangible Impacts," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 20(2), pages 665-682, February.
    16. Caporale, Guglielmo Maria & Georgellis, Yannis & Tsitsianis, Nicholas & Yin, Ya Ping, 2009. "Income and happiness across Europe: Do reference values matter?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 42-51, February.
    17. Proto, Eugenio & Rustichini, Aldo, 2015. "Life satisfaction, income and personality," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 17-32.
    18. Silvia Maja Melzer & Ruud J. Muffels, 2012. "Migrant's Pursuit of Happiness: The Impact of Adaption, Social Comparison and Relative Deprivation; Evidence from a 'Natural' Experiment," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 448, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    19. Bonsang, E. & Klein, T.J., 2012. "Retirement and subjective well-being," Other publications TiSEM f7d1a3d3-eb51-42d0-a3da-0, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    20. Jones, Andrew M. & Wildman, John, 2008. "Health, income and relative deprivation: Evidence from the BHPS," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 308-324, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:jhappi:v:16:y:2015:i:4:p:985-997. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.