IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/applec/44y2012i5p537-554.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Some empirics of the bivariate relationship between average subjective well-being and the sustainable wealth of nations

Author

Listed:
  • Hans-Jürgen Engelbrecht

Abstract

The World Bank's Millennium Capital Assessment (MCA) has provided per capita estimates of total wealth and its major subcategories for a large number of countries. In this article, these macro-level estimates are used to explore bivariate cross-country ‘wealth--happiness’ relationships, focussing on issues of appropriate functional form, parameter stability and outliers. For comparative purposes, ‘income--happiness’ relationships are also explored. Total wealth turns out to be strongly related to Gross National Income (GNI) per capita, due to the importance of produced and intangible capital, but not to natural capital. In contrast, when the most natural capital intensive countries are excluded as outliers, a strong relationship emerges between Subjective Well-Being ( SWB ) and natural capital, especially amongst high income countries. In these countries, natural capital seems to be an important wealth correlate of SWB , despite accounting for only a very small proportion of total wealth.

Suggested Citation

  • Hans-Jürgen Engelbrecht, 2012. "Some empirics of the bivariate relationship between average subjective well-being and the sustainable wealth of nations," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(5), pages 537-554, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:applec:44:y:2012:i:5:p:537-554
    DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2010.510464
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2010.510464
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00036846.2010.510464?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. Kirk Hamilton & Giles Atkinson, 2006. "Wealth, Welfare and Sustainability," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 3236.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Schlör, Holger & Venghaus, Sandra & Hake, Jürgen-Friedrich, 2018. "The FEW-Nexus city index – Measuring urban resilience," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 210(C), pages 382-392.
    2. Werner Hediger, 2013. "From Multifunctionality and Sustainability of Agriculture to the Social Responsibility of the Agri-food System," Journal of Socio-Economics in Agriculture (Until 2015: Yearbook of Socioeconomics in Agriculture), Swiss Society for Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, vol. 6(1), pages 59-80.
    3. Mechler, Reinhard, 2009. "Disasters and economic welfare : can national savings help explain post-disaster changes in consumption ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4988, The World Bank.
    4. Mubashir Qasim & Arthur Grimes, 2018. "Sustainable economic policy and well-being: The relationship between adjusted net savings and subjective well-being," Working Papers 18_06, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    5. Rintaro Yamaguchi & Masayuki Sato & Kazuhiro Ueta, 2016. "Measuring Regional Wealth and Assessing Sustainable Development: An Application to a Disaster-Torn Region in Japan," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 129(1), pages 365-389, October.
    6. A. D. Nuwan Gunarathne & H. M. P. Peiris, 2017. "Assessing the impact of eco-innovations through sustainability indicators: the case of the commercial tea plantation industry in Sri Lanka," Asian Journal of Sustainability and Social Responsibility, Springer, vol. 2(1), pages 41-58, September.
    7. Li, Chuan-Zhong & Isacsson, Gunnar, 2009. "Valuing urban accessibility and air quality in Sweden: A regional welfare analysis," Working Paper Series 2009:2, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
    8. McGrath, Luke & Hynes, Stephen & McHale, John, 2019. "Augmenting the World Bank's estimates: Ireland's genuine savings through boom and bust," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 1-1.
    9. Koji Tokimatsu & Rintaro Yamguchi & Masayuki Sato & Rieko Yasuoka & Masahiro Nishio & Kazuhiro Ueta, 2014. "Assessing future sustainability by forecast of Genuine Savings paths," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 16(4), pages 359-379, October.
    10. Koji Tokimatsu & Rintaro Yamaguchi & Masayuki Sato & Rieko Yasuoka & Masahiro Nishio & Kazuhiro Ueta, 2012. "Measuring sustainable development for the future with climate change mitigation; a case study of applying an integrated assessment model under IPCC SRES scenarios," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 14(6), pages 915-938, December.
    11. Viccaro, Mauro & Rocchi, Benedetto & Cozzi, Mario & Severino, Marino, 2015. "The socioeconomic impact derived from the oil royalty allocation on regional development," 2015 Fourth Congress, June 11-12, 2015, Ancona, Italy 207861, Italian Association of Agricultural and Applied Economics (AIEAA).
    12. Petar Kurecic & Filip Kokotovic, 2017. "Examining the "Natural Resource Curse" and the Impact of Various Forms of Capital in Small Tourism and Natural Resource-Dependent Economies," Economies, MDPI, vol. 5(1), pages 1-24, February.
    13. Mubashir Qasim & Les Oxley & Eoin McLaughlin, 2020. "Genuine savings as a test of New Zealand weak sustainability," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 22(1), pages 89-127, January.
    14. Chuan-Zhong Li & Gunnar Isacsson, 2012. "Valuing urban accessibility and air quality in Sweden," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 42(3), pages 881-898, June.
    15. Koji, Tokimatsu & Takanobu, Kosugi & Atsushi, Kurosawa & Norihiro, Itsubo & Masaji, Sakagami, 2009. "Measuring Weak Sustainability for the future: Calculating Genuine Saving with population change by an integrated assessment model," MPRA Paper 16728, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Asheim, Geir B. & Hartwick, John M., 2011. "Anomalies in green national accounting," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(12), pages 2303-2307.
    17. repec:lib:000cis:v:1:y:2013:i:1:p:16-26 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Sato, Masayuki & Samreth, Sovannroeun, 2008. "Assessing Sustainable Development by Genuine Saving Indicator from Multidimensional Perspectives," MPRA Paper 9996, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Gurbanov, Sarvar & Nugent, Jeffrey B. & Mikayilov, Jeyhun, 2017. "Management of Oil Revenues: Has That of Azerbaijan Been Prudent?," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 5(2), pages 1-20.
    20. Luke McGrath & Stephen Hynes & John McHale, 2022. "The Air we Breathe: Estimates of Air Pollution Extended Genuine Savings for Europe," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 68(1), pages 161-188, March.
    21. Adrian Boos & Karin Holm‐Müller, 2012. "A theoretical overview of the relationship between the resource curse and genuine savings as an indicator for “weak” sustainability," Natural Resources Forum, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 36(3), pages 145-159, August.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:taf:applec:44:y:2012:i:5:p:537-554. 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RAEC20 .

    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.