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mercoledì 3 maggio 2017

Il denaro dà la felicità?

Risponde Justin Wolfers nello studio “Subjective Well‐Being and Income: Is There Any Evidence of Satiation?”
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La tesi di molti…
… once “basic needs” have been met, higher income is no longer associated with higher in subjective well-being…
Si tratta però di un’affermazione non riscontrata.
Anche per questo si è aggiustato il tiro. Nel 1974 Richard Easterlin ha elaborato una sua ipotesi per cui…
… increasing average income did not raise average well-being…
Una relazione che mette in luce il cosiddetto “paradosso di Easterlin”.
Oggi abbiamo a disposizione molti più dati per valutarne la consistenza.
Ecco cosa hanno riscontrato studi più recenti
… robust positive relationship between well-being and income across countries and over time (Deaton, 2008; Stevenson and Wolfers, 2008; Sacks, Stevenson, and Wolfers, 2013)…
Viste le difficoltà a confermarlo, i ricercatori hanno riformulato il paradosso in termini nuovi (“Easterlin modificato”)…
… claiming that beyond a certain income threshold, further income is unrelated to well-being…
Esempio…
… Diener and Seligman (2004, p.5) state that “there are only small increases in well-being” above some threshold
Altri autori…
… Clark, Frijters and Shields (2008, p.123) state more starkly that “greater economic prosperity at some point ceases to buy more happiness,” a similar claim is made by Di Tella and MacCulloch (2008, p.17): “once basic needs have been satisfied, there is full adaptation to further economic growth.”… Layard (2003, p.17) argues that “once a country has over $15,000 per head, its level of happiness appears to be independent of its income;” while in subsequent work he argued for a $20,000 threshold (Layard, 2005 p.32-33). Frey and Stutzer (2002, p.416) claim that “income provides happiness at low levels of development but once a threshold (around $10,000) is reached, the average income level in a country has little effect on average subjective well-being.”…
In altre parole: non più “bisogni di base” ma una “soglia”, superata la quale benessere e denaro si scollegano.
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Certamente l’incidenza del denaro sulla felicità declina ma non sembra raggiungere mai un punto di saturazione.  Non c’è evidenza che si realizzi una disconnessione tra denaro e benessere soggettivo.
Questo è vero innanzitutto quando si confrontano paesi diversi
… evaluating whether countries at different levels of economic development have different average levels of subjective well-being…
Il reddito pro-capite (o il potere di acquisto) vengono messi in relazione con due misure del “benessere soggettivo” tratte dal Gallup World Poll.
Il benessere è misurato sia complessivamente sia su una scala che suddivide vari aspetti della vita.
In particolare…
… data are drawn from the five waves of the Gallup World Poll run between 2008 and 2012 and GDP per capita, plotted on a log scale. We have data on 155 countries, which account for over 95% of the world’s population, across the spectrum of levels of economic development. Each of these measures of subjective well-being is highly correlation with GDP per capita ( 0.79 for the 155 countries in the upper panel, and 0.85 for the 86 countries in the lower panel)…
Altre fonti considerate…
… Pew Global Attitudes studies, which posed the satisfaction ladder question in 44 countries in 2002, 47 countries in 2007, and 22 countries in 2010… Social Survey Program, which asked a consistent happiness question in 1991, 1998, 2001, 2007 and 2008…
Qualsiasi sia la fonte considerata il paradosso di Easterlin non viene confermato: felicità e denaro sembrano sempre collegati.
Vengono considerate diverse soglie di reddito ma nessuna identifica un punto di saturazione.
Conclusione…
… the well-being–income relationship observed among poor countries holds in at least equal measure among rich countries… Our larger datasets emphatically reject the weak and strong forms of the modified-Easterlin hypothesis…
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Consideriamo ora il nesso all’interno di ogni paese.
Per gli USA
… we find no evidence of a significant break in either the happiness-income relationship, nor in the life satisfactionincome relationship…
Si tratta di esiti che contrastano con quelli di Frey and Stutzer (2002, p.409).
Conclusione possibile…
… While the idea that there is some critical level of income beyond which income no longer impacts well-being is intuitively appealing, it is at odds with the data… there is no major well-being dataset that supports this commonly made claim…
Alcune ricerche sembrano invece confermare una disconnessione all’interno dei paesi…
… Kahneman and Deaton (2010) have shown that in the United States, people earning above $75,000 do not appear to enjoy either more positive affect nor less negative affect…
Ma i database considerati sono meno ampi. E comunque, anche questi studiosi, non rinvengono un punto di saturazione.
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Eric Falkenstein è critico sullo studio di Wolfers. Innanzitutto andrebbe chiarito meglio il pensiero di Easterlin…
… Richard Easterlin found that within a given country people with higher incomes were more likely to report being happy. However, between developed countries, the average reported level of happiness did not vary much with national income per person… although income per person rose steadily in the United States between 1946 and 1970, average reported happiness showed no long-term trend and declined between 1960 and 1970…
Il concetto chiave è quello di status: poiché la nostra felicità dipende dal nostro status, un incremento di reddito puo’ essere irrilevante.
Un concetto tutt’altro che originale…
… Economists from Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Thorstein Veblen, and even Keynes focused on status, the societal relative…
Wolfers si focalizza molto sui confronti internazionali ma è chiaro che nello schema proposto da Easterlin hanno poco senso: l’invidia è un sentimento che si prova per il vicino non per lo sconosciuto che abita in altri paesi.
Ma lo studio ha un problema ancora più grave…
… the biggest problem with the Sacks, Stevenson and Wolfers analysis is that they estimate a short-term relationship between life satisfaction and GDP, rather than the long-term relationship…
E’ chiaro che in tempi di crisi, per esempio, un differenziale di reddito puo’ ripercuotersi sul benessere. Questo fatto non invalida però l’ipotesi di Easterlin
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Bryan Caplan ci aiuta a sintetizzare e comprendere meglio le conclusioni di Wolfers…
… Happiness (in Standard Deviations) = a + .35 * ln(income)…
C’è chi interpreta questo risultato come la confutazione di un legame tenue tra denaro e felicità. Ma…
… I think not. If you picture a continuum with Epicureanism at 0, and crude materialism at 1, Wolfers stands at .24
L’effetto è piuttosto blando. O no?…
… if you currently earn $50,000, Wolfers' coefficient implies you'd need an extra $820,585 per year to durably increase your happiness by one lousy standard deviation. In math, that's not "zero effect of income on happiness." But in English, it basically is…
Se si considerasse l’influsso di altre variabili probabilmente l’effetto scenderebbe ulteriormente.
Inoltre…
… it goes against first-hand experience, the wisdom of the ages, and the rightly interpreted empirical evidence…
Introspezione e tradizione contano su questioni tanto scivolose.
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Curioso notare come i “ricchissimi” (redditi oltre mezzo milione di dollari l’anno) siano tutti “molto felici” (100%!).
Inoltre, la felicità è piatta nell’intervallo di reddito dai 30.000 dollari ai 150.000.
Diciamo che l’epicureismo perfetto magari non è dimostrabile ma è reale.
E’ onesto ammettere che la relazione tra felicità e mercato resti quantomeno problematica…
… the small effect of income/wealth on happiness throughout the income distribution remains ideologically inconvenient for free-market economists. A free-market economy is a fantastic tool for making people rich, but making people rich is a mediocre tool for making people happy… 

mercoledì 2 marzo 2016

Stevenson and Wolfers' Flawed Happiness Research By Eric Falkenstein

Stevenson and Wolfers' Flawed Happiness Research By Eric Falkenstein - #ovoidesimmetrico #felicitàabreve #invidiaegoismo #soldiefelicità
  • Stevenson and Wolfers' Flawed Happiness Research By Eric Falkenstein
  • what's wrong with so many academic debates.
  • Richard Easterlin found that within a given country people with higher incomes were more likely to report being happy. However, between developed countries, the average reported level of happiness did not vary much...
  • Similarly, although income per person rose steadily in the United States between 1946 and 1970, average reported happiness showed no long-term trend and declined between 1960 and 1970.
  • I agree with Easterlin, and the relative-status utility function
  • Furthermore, evolution favors a relative utility function as opposed to the standard absolute utility function,
  • Economists from Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Thorstein Veblen, and even Keynes focused on status,
  • if economist used a relative utility function many (most) seminal models would become ambiguous, and the whole field loses much of its foundation.
  • Wolfer... second set of findings concern cross-sectional data within a country. Easterlin did not dispute this, however. Given positional goods like mates and lakefront property, relative wealth should matter.
  • So, what about the original Easterlin note, that among developed countries, where people are more worried about obesity than malnutrition, as GDP/ capita rises we aren't getting happier? Well, Sacks, Stevenson, and Wolfers (2013) adress this point directly, and show this chart...
  • When an economist tells you a symmetric ovoid contains a highly significant trend via the power of statistics, don't believe them: real effects pass the ocular test of statistical significance... as from 2010 Easterlin and co-authors have data with similar blobs, but they draw downward-sloping lines over them...I think it's best to say, no relation, and to stop drawing lines on blobs.
  • the biggest problem with the Sacks, Stevenson and Wolfers analysis is that they estimate a short-term relationship between life satisfaction and GDP, rather than the long-term relationship.
  • We should aspire higher than envy, which paradoxically seems to elevate greed,
  • I otherwise admire, usually libertarian leaning, are quite averse to the Easterlin conclusion, thinking it will lead us to adopt a luddite policies because growth would not matter in such a world (see Ron Bailey here, or Tim Worstall there).
  • key is that while I admit that my relatively impoverished grandfather was probably as happy as I am, I'm also very glad I live now: growth is good in spite of my envious homunculus.
  • as productivity growth is the natural consequence of free minds and markets, flattening growth means not merely focusing on 'more important things' but rather squelching freedom, and liberty is more important than equality... how would one prevent Larry Ellison or LeBron James from being richer than everyone else? The only way would be to destroy new companies or merit-based systems, why the worst rise to the top in hierarchies
continua