International Inequality in Subjective Well-Being: An exploration with the Gallup World Poll

In this paper we compute inequality measures over the distribution of a subjective well-being variable constructed from a life satisfaction question included in the Gallup World Poll in almost all countries in the world. We argue that inequality in subjective well-being may be a better proxy for the...

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Autores principales: Gluzmann, Pablo Alfredo, Gasparini, Leonardo
Formato: Articulo Documento de trabajo
Lenguaje:Inglés
Publicado: 2017
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Acceso en línea:http://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/handle/10915/65323
http://www.cedlas.econo.unlp.edu.ar/wp/wp-content/uploads/doc_cedlas216.pdf
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Sumario:In this paper we compute inequality measures over the distribution of a subjective well-being variable constructed from a life satisfaction question included in the Gallup World Poll in almost all countries in the world. We argue that inequality in subjective well-being may be a better proxy for the degree of unfairness in a society than income inequality. We find evidence that inequality in subjective well-being has an inverse-U relationship with per capita GDP, but it is monotonically decreasing with respect to mean subjective well-being. We argue that this difference might be associated to inequality aversion in the space of utility.