Happiness and the Human Development Index: Australia Is Not a Paradox

In "Happiness and the Human Development Index: The Paradox of Australia," Blanchflower and Oswald (2005) observe an apparent puzzle: they claim that Australia ranks highly in the Human Development Index (HDI), but relatively poorly in happiness. However, when we compare their happiness dat...

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Main Authors: Leigh, Andrew, Wolfers, Justin
Format: Report
Language:unknown
Subjects:
Online Access:https://docs.iza.org/dp1916.pdf
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spelling ftrepec:oai:RePEc:iza:izadps:dp1916 2024-04-14T08:13:43+00:00 Happiness and the Human Development Index: Australia Is Not a Paradox Leigh, Andrew Wolfers, Justin https://docs.iza.org/dp1916.pdf unknown https://docs.iza.org/dp1916.pdf preprint ftrepec 2024-03-19T10:41:47Z In "Happiness and the Human Development Index: The Paradox of Australia," Blanchflower and Oswald (2005) observe an apparent puzzle: they claim that Australia ranks highly in the Human Development Index (HDI), but relatively poorly in happiness. However, when we compare their happiness data with the HDI, Australia appears happier, not sadder, than its HDI score would predict. This conclusion also holds when we turn to a larger cross-national dataset than the one used by Blanchflower and Oswald, when we analyse life satisfaction in place of happiness, and when we measure development using GDP per capita in place of the HDI. Indeed, in the World Values Survey, only one other country (Iceland) has a significantly higher level of both life satisfaction and happiness than Australia. Our findings accord with numerous cross-national surveys conducted since the 1940s, which have consistently found that Australians report high levels of wellbeing. happiness, life satisfaction, Human Development Index, income, Australia Report Iceland RePEc (Research Papers in Economics)
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collection RePEc (Research Papers in Economics)
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language unknown
description In "Happiness and the Human Development Index: The Paradox of Australia," Blanchflower and Oswald (2005) observe an apparent puzzle: they claim that Australia ranks highly in the Human Development Index (HDI), but relatively poorly in happiness. However, when we compare their happiness data with the HDI, Australia appears happier, not sadder, than its HDI score would predict. This conclusion also holds when we turn to a larger cross-national dataset than the one used by Blanchflower and Oswald, when we analyse life satisfaction in place of happiness, and when we measure development using GDP per capita in place of the HDI. Indeed, in the World Values Survey, only one other country (Iceland) has a significantly higher level of both life satisfaction and happiness than Australia. Our findings accord with numerous cross-national surveys conducted since the 1940s, which have consistently found that Australians report high levels of wellbeing. happiness, life satisfaction, Human Development Index, income, Australia
format Report
author Leigh, Andrew
Wolfers, Justin
spellingShingle Leigh, Andrew
Wolfers, Justin
Happiness and the Human Development Index: Australia Is Not a Paradox
author_facet Leigh, Andrew
Wolfers, Justin
author_sort Leigh, Andrew
title Happiness and the Human Development Index: Australia Is Not a Paradox
title_short Happiness and the Human Development Index: Australia Is Not a Paradox
title_full Happiness and the Human Development Index: Australia Is Not a Paradox
title_fullStr Happiness and the Human Development Index: Australia Is Not a Paradox
title_full_unstemmed Happiness and the Human Development Index: Australia Is Not a Paradox
title_sort happiness and the human development index: australia is not a paradox
url https://docs.iza.org/dp1916.pdf
genre Iceland
genre_facet Iceland
op_relation https://docs.iza.org/dp1916.pdf
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