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International Handbooks of Quality-of-Life
Mariano Rojas Editor
Handbook of
Happiness Research
in Latin America
International Handbooks
of Quality-of-Life
Chair of the Editorial Board

Graciela Tonon, Universidad Nacional de Lomas de Zamora and
Universidad de Palermo, Argentina
Editorial Board
Alex Michalos, University of Northern British Columbia, Canada
Rhonda Phillips, Purdue University, USA
Don Rahtz, College of William & Mary, USA
Dave Webb, University of Western Australia, Australia
Wolfgang Glatzer, Goethe University, Germany
Dong Jin Lee, Yonsei University, Korea
Laura Camfield, University of East Anglia, UK
uyuyuy1947@yahoo.com
Aims and Scope
The International Handbooks of Quality of Life Research offer extensive
bibliographic resources. They present literature reviews of the many
sub-disciplines and areas of study within the growing eld of quality of life
research. Handbooks in the series focus on capturing and reviewing the
quality of life research literature in specic life domains, on specic
populations, or in relation to specic disciplines or sectors of industry.
In addition, the Handbooks cover measures of quality of life and well-being,
providing annotated bibliographies of well-established measures, methods,
and scales.
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/8365
Mariano Rojas
Editor
Handbook of Happiness
Research in Latin
America
Editor
Mariano Rojas
FLACSO-Mexico and UPAEP
Mexico City, Mexico
International Handbooks of Quality-of-Life

ISBN 978-94-017-7202-0 ISBN 978-94-017-7203-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-7203-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015951665
Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg New York London

# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016
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The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in
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contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.
Printed on acid-free paper
Springer Science+Business Media B.V. Dordrecht is part of Springer Science+Business Media

(www.springer.com)
Contents
1 Happiness, Research, and Latin America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Mariano Rojas
Part I The Relevance of Latin American Happiness

2 The Singularity of Latin American Patterns
of Happiness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Pablo Beyta
3 The Social Psychology of Latin American Happiness . . . . . . . 31
Jorge Yamamoto
4 The Relevance of Happiness: Choosing Between
Development Paths in Latin America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Mariano Rojas
5 Trends and Challenges for the Research of Happiness
in Latin America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Emilio Moyano Daz
Part II Human Relations and Happiness in Latin America

6 The Importance of Relational Goods for Happiness:
Evidence from Manizales, Colombia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Liliana Velasquez
7 Like the Zompopito: Social Relationships
in Happiness Among Rural and Indigenous
Women in Nicaragua . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Jessica Martnez Cruz and Haydee Castillo Flores
8 Aging, Family Relations and Well-Being in Chile . . . . . . . . . 129
Mara Soledad Herrera, Mara Beatriz Fernandez,
and Carmen Barros
vi Contents
9 Happiness and Social Capital: Evidence from Latin

American Countries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Francisco Mochon Morcillo and Rebeca de Juan Daz
10 From the Individual to the Romantic Relationship:
In Search of Happiness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Rozzana Sanchez Aragon and Rolando Daz Loving
11 The Role of Relational Goods in the Relationship
Between Illnesses and Satisfaction in Latin America . . . . . . . 179
Mariano Rojas and Maikol Elizondo-Lara
Part III Material Conditions and Happiness in Latin America

12 How the Economy Affects Happiness. Empirical
Findings from Argentina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Dardo Ferrer and Victoria Giarrizzo
13 Relative Income and Job Satisfaction in Chile . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Rodrigo Montero and Tomas Rau
14 Food-Deprivation and Subjective Well-Being
in Latin America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
Jorge Guardiola and Mariano Rojas
15 Threats to Happiness: How Lower Middle Class
Households Deal with Insecurity and Precariousness . . . . . . . 231
William Daniel Vera Rojas, Monica Budowski,
and Christian Suter
16 Income, Sex, Pills and Relationships: An Empirical
Study for Argentina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
Pablo Schiafno and Martin Tetaz
17 Using Life Satisfaction Data to Identify Urban
Problems, Prioritize Local Public Expenditures
and Monitor the Quality of Urban Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
Eduardo Lora
Part IV Social Factors and Happiness in Latin America

18 Sociopolitical Dimensions of Subjective Wellbeing:
The Case of Two Mexican Cities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
Rene Millan
19 Does Migration Cause Unhappiness or Does Unhappiness
Cause Migration? Some Initial Evidence
from Latin America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
Carol Graham
Contents vii
20 Socioeconomic Disparities in Subjective

Well-being in Colombia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343
David A. Hurtado
21 Individual and Social Dimensions of Subjective
Well-Being: Evidence Across Latin-American Countries . . . . 357
Victoria Ateca Amestoy, Teresa Garca-Munoz,
and Ana I. Moro Egido
22 Psychological and Social Determinants of Subjective
Well-Being in Mexico: Poverty, Class Identication
and Social Mobility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389
Joaquina Palomar Lever and Amparo Victorio Estrada
23 Happiness Inequality in Latin America
and the Caribbean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405
Nestor Gandelman
24 Does the Chilean Pension Model Inuence Life
Satisfaction? A Multilevel Longitudinal Analysis . . . . . . . . . . 415
Esteban Calvo
25 Does Values Education Make a Difference
on Well-Being? A Case Study of Primary Education
in Chiapas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443
Paola Cubas-Barragan
26 Happiness and Quality of Life in Mexico: Conceptual and
Geographical Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463
Jose de Jesus Garca Vega
Part V Health and Happiness in Latin America

27 The Determinants of Mental Health: Empirical Evidence
from Chile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479
Ramon Florenzano and Francisca Dussaillant
28 Pain, Emotions, and Social-Well-Being in Mexico . . . . . . . . . 489
Benjamn Domnguez Trejo, Gerardo Montero
Ruvalcaba Palacios, and Mara Lopez Lena
29 The Impact of Economic Growth on the Prevalence
of Health Problems in Latin America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515
Maikol Elizondo-Lara and Mariano Rojas
Part VI The Importance of Subjective Well-Being Indicators

30 The Distance Between Perception and Reality
in the Social Domains of Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 531
Eduardo Lora
viii Contents
31 A Perceived Human Development Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 557

Marcelo Neri
32 Life Satisfaction and Happiness in Mexico:
Correlates and Redundancies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 579
Gerardo Leyva, Alfredo Bustos, and Ana Miriam Romo
33 The Usefulness of Subjective Well-Being to Predict
Electoral Results in Latin America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 613
Ivan Martnez Bravo
Author Bios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 633
Contributors
Victoria Ateca Amestoy BETS-Dpto. Fundamentos del Analisis

Economico II, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Bilbao, Spain
Rozzana Sanchez Aragon Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico,
Mexico City, Mexico
Carmen Barros Ponticia, Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago, Chile
Pablo Beyta Institute of Sociology, Ponticia Universidad Catolica de
Chile, Santiago, Chile
Ivan Martnez Bravo Imagina Mexico: Laboratorio de Felicidad, Mexico
City, Mexico
Monica Budowski Division of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work,
University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland
Alfredo Bustos Direccion General Adjunta de Investigacion, INEGI,
Aguascalientes, Mexico
Esteban Calvo Public Policy Institute, School of Business and Economics,
Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile
Jessica Martnez Cruz Universidad Centroamericana UCA, Managua,
Nicaragua
Paola Cubas-Barragan Sociologa, Benemerita Universidad Autonoma de
Puebla, Puebla, Mexico
Emilio Moyano Daz Universidad de Talca, Talca, Chile
Rebeca de Juan Daz Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia,
Madrid, Spain
Francisca Dussaillant School of Government, Universidad del Desarrollo,
Concepcion, Chile
Maikol Elizondo-Lara Astra Zeneca, FLACSO-Mexico and UPAEP,
Mexico City, Mexico
Ana I. Moro Egido Dpto. Teora e Historia Economica, Universidad de
Granada, Granada, Spain
ix
x Contributors
Amparo Victorio Estrada Department of Psychology, Universidad

Iberoamericana, Mexico City, Mexico
Mara Beatriz Fernandez Ponticia, Universidad Catolica de Chile,
Santiago, Chile
Dardo Ferrer Center for Regional and Experimental Economics (CERX),
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Ramon Florenzano School of Psychology, Universidad del Desarrollo,
Concepci
on, Chile
Haydee Castillo Flores Universidad Centroamericana UCA, Managua,
Nicaragua
Nestor Gandelman Department of Economics, Universidad ORT,
Montevideo, Uruguay
Teresa Garca-Munoz Dpto. Metodos Cuantitativos para la Economa y la
Empresa, Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain
Victoria Giarrizzo Center for Regional and Experimental Economics
(CERX), Buenos Aires, Argentina
Carol Graham Global Economy and Development Program, Brookings
Institution, Washington, DC, USA
Jorge Guardiola Department of Applied Economics, Universidad de
David A. Hurtado Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard
T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston
opez Lena Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Mexico
Mara L
City, Mexico
Joaquina Palomar Lever Department of Psychology, Universidad
Iberoamericana, Mexico City, Mexico
Gerardo Leyva Direccion General Adjunta de Investigacion, INEGI,
Eduardo Lora Center for International Development, Harvard University,
Cambridge, MA, USA
Rolando Daz Loving Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Mexico
City, Mexico
Rene Millan Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales, UNAM, Mexico City,
Mexico
Rodrigo Montero Departamento de Economa, Universidad Diego
Portales, Santiago, Region Metropolitana, Chile
Francisco Mochon Morcillo Universidad Nacional de Educacion a
Distancia, Madrid, Spain
Contributors xi
Marcelo Neri Center for Social Policies/Getulio Vargas Foundation

(CPS/FGV) and EPGE/FGV, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Gerardo Montero Ruvalcaba Palacios Department of Nursing and
Obstetrics, University of Guanajuato, Campus Irapuato-Salamanca,
Guanajuato, Mexico
Mara Soledad Herrera Ponticia, Universidad Catolica de Chile,
Santiago, Chile
Tomas Rau Instituto de Economa, Ponticia Universidad Catolica de
Chile, Santiago, Region Metropolitana, Chile
Mariano Rojas FLACSO-Mexico and UPAEP, Mexico City, Mexico
Ana Miriam Romo Direccion General Adjunta de Investigacion, INEGI,
Pablo Schiafno Facultad de Ciencias Economicas, Universidad de
Palermo, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Christian Suter Department of Sociology, University of Neuchatel,
Neuchatel, Switzerland
Departamento de Economia, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires,
Argentina
Martin Tetaz CEDLAS, Univerisidad Nacional de la Plata, Buenos Aires,
Argentina
Benjamn Domnguez Trejo Graduated Studies and Research Division,
National Autonomous University of Mexico, School of Psychology, Mexico
Jose de Jesus Garca Vega Department of Economics, Universidad de
Monterrey, Monterrey, Mexico
Liliana Velasquez CRECE, Manizales, Colombia
William Daniel Vera Rojas Division of Sociology, Social Policy and
Social Work, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland
Jorge Yamamoto Ponticia Universidad Catolica del Peru, Lima, Peru
Happiness, Research, and Latin America
1
Mariano Rojas
1.1 Happiness spend much of their time thinking about happi-

ness. For Aristotle happiness is the supreme
1.1.1 Happiness Is Important good; in his Nichomaquean Ethics he recognizes
that all men aspire to happiness. Many
Happiness is important to people. Happiness is a philosophers have addressed the fundamental
nal goal, meaning that people aspire to happi- questions of what constitutes a good life and
ness for its own sake, and not as a mean to how people ought to act in order to be happy. In
attaining something else. Happiness also fact, happiness is central to that branch of philos-
motivates peoples actions, meaning that people ophy dealing with ethics. Unfortunately, neither
ponder their actions by looking for greater hap- philosophers nor writers not poets have followed
piness; in their searching for happiness people a scientic approach to study happiness and to
act on the basis of their expectations (Veenhoven understand how it relates to different life events.
1988; Rojas 2014). It is not until the recent decades that researchers
The importance of happiness as a nal goal is from many disciplines have begun applying the
widely accepted. Happiness has an important scientic method to understand happiness and its
place in the writings of poets, the lyrics of correlates.
musicians, and the essays of thinkers. For exam- In order to justify the importance of happiness
ple, Jorge Luis Borges, one of the greatest Latin it would be possible to ll in a whole chapter
American writers, begins his poem entitled quoting what famous people have said about it
Remorse with the following phrase: I have from philosophers to musicians, and also includ-
committed the worst sin of all that a man can ing not so few researchers-. It could also be
commit. I have not been happy. Borges goes on useful to evoke how it is that fairy tales usually
to state: My parents bred and bore me for the end, with the well-known and they lived happily
beautiful and courageous game of life; for earth, ever after phrase. However, even if it is true that
for air, for water, and for re. I let them down. I thoughtful and smart people have talked about
wasnt happy. The poet concludes It never happiness, this does not make it important.
leaves my side, since I began: This shadow of I do believe the best way to validate that
having been an unhappy man. Philosophers also happiness is important to people is to recall an
expression that parents always have in mind and
which they frequently say: All I want is for my
M. Rojas (*) children to have a happy life. In fact, what
FLACSO-Mexico and UPAEP, Mexico City, Mexico makes of happiness a matter of the highest
e-mail: mariano.rojas.h@gmail.com
# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016 1

M. Rojas (ed.), Handbook of Happiness Research in Latin America,
International Handbooks of Quality-of-Life, DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-7203-7_1
2 M. Rojas
relevance is that ordinary people experience it, to be happier in order to get married or to buy a
aspire to it, and wish it to their family and larger house; it is the other way around. People
friends. This shows that happiness is not an do get married and do buy larger houses-
alien academic construct which only highly because they believe it comes with greater
sophisticated thinkers can understand; it is nei- happiness.
ther a privilege reserved to elites. Happiness is an Unfortunately, until a few decades ago there
ordinary life experience which ordinary people was no direct measurement of happiness. This
have. In fact, happiness is an experience so com- forced researchers to focus their attention on
mon to peoples lives that they can easily measures of intermediate goals, as well as to
respond to questions such as: How happy are assume that these measures where good proxies
you?, Do you have a happy life?, How is it of happiness. In addition, policy makers had to
going?, How is life?, and Whats up?. rely on these measures of intermediate goals
Response rates near 100 % are obtained when -such as income, schooling, life expectancy, and
these questions are asked in large; this shows many others-, in order to design and evaluate
that, in different grades, people are happy or their policies and programs. As it is shown in
unhappy, and that they know it. If a direct happi- this book, things have substantially improved
ness question is asked people can provide a quick during the last decades.
response; if people are asked to talk about it they
can do it for hours.
1.1.3 Happiness Motivates Human
Action
1.1.2 Happiness Is an Ultimate Goal
It is expected for people to undertake those
Happiness is an ultimate goal; this means that actions and decisions which they believe will
happiness is a goal which is pursued per se and contribute to attaining greater happiness. People
not as a mean to attaining other goals. It is nec- may be successful or not in increasing their hap-
essary to distinguish between nal and interme- piness, their beliefs may be right or wrong, but
diate goals. Many of the goals people look for are happiness is the main motivation behind their
intermediate ones; people pursue these goals not decisions. The most important decisions people
for their own sake but because they believe that make, such as where to live, whom to marry to,
by attaining these goals their happiness will what profession to study, whom to vote for, and
increase. For example, most people aspire to whether to migrate or not, take into consideration
higher income because they do believe that by the expectation of happiness that such decision
having greater purchasing power they will be entails.
able to satisfy their needs and desires and that, In consequence, by understanding their main
as a consequence, their happiness will be greater. motivation and by revealing some hidden costs
Only such a person as Ebenezer Scrooge, the and benets the study of happiness allows for a
well-known character in Charles Dickens A better understanding of peoples behavior. As a
Christmas Carol, makes of money a nal goal. matter of fact, there are important well-being
In addition, aspiring to greater happiness as a benets and costs that remain hidden to the eco-
way to have greater purchasing power is aber- nomic analysis; thus, the assumption that human
rant; the main purpose of pursuing happiness is behavior may be completely understood from an
not because it will allow people to have greater economic cost-effectiveness analysis is incor-
productivity or more income. This is why happi- rect. The study of happiness reveals these hidden
ness is a nal goal, while income is just an costs and benets and provides a better under-
instrumental goal; as a matter of fact, the value standing of human behavior.
of money is given by how much happiness it It is important to state that people act on the
contributes to provide. Likewise, nobody wants basis of their expectation of happiness and that
1 Happiness, Research, and Latin America 3
sometimes there are important differences experience of being well emerges, perhaps,
between what people expect and what takes because the tradition is rooted in normative
place. The behavioral economics school has perspectives which aim to transform people
used happiness research to show that these rather than to measure and understand their
differences between expected and experienced well-being. Thus, in this tradition peoples well-
happiness may be considerable (Gilbert 2006; being ends up being imputed by the expert or
Camerer et al. 2003; Kahneman et al. 1999). In philosopher on the basis of her own criteria.
consequence, a better understanding of human In principle, well-being assessments made
behavior requires studying happiness as well as within the imputation tradition cannot be
studying the formation of happiness corroborated because the well-being which is
expectations. experienced by people is of little relevance in
this tradition. In consequence, it is of no surprise
that after centuries of discussion the imputation
1.2 The Study of Happiness. The tradition can provide hundreds of books but not a
Old Traditions of Imputation single corroborated nding. Rather than using
and Presumption peoples experience of being well to corroborate
their assessments, the many schools which
Two traditions have predominated in the study of co-exist within this approach aim to advance
peoples happiness (Rojas 2014): The imputation their criteria by convincing the audience and, in
and the presumption traditions. not so few cases, by imposing their criteria to the
audience. The imputation tradition is beyond
corroboration; however, it is possible to check
1.2.1 The Imputation Tradition whether its postulates are compatible or not with
ndings from happiness research.
The imputation tradition is rooted in the ethical
tradition of the philosophers and many thought-
ful persons who believe they do have the author- 1.2.2 The Presumption Tradition
ity of judging the existence of goodness in the
life of others, as well as in providing the criteria A second tradition in the assessment of peoples
to make this judgment. According to this tradi- well-being is based on the presumption of some
tion, happiness or the good life- is judged by a variables being relevant for well-being. This tra-
third person and not by the interested person dition recognizes that happiness is an experience
herself. A similar approach is followed by doc- of being well people do have (Kahneman
trinal and moralist movements; where some et al. 1997; Bentham 1965); however, rather
groups end up judging the existence of goodness than asking people directly about their experi-
in the life of others. This tradition also shows up ence, experts appeal to uncorroborated theories
nowadays in the work of those experts who pro- and models which relate happiness to a set of
pose the criteria to judge the well-being of people observable variables. Experts then assume that
(Rojas 2015). Experts appeal to their audience by these theories are valid and quickly move on to
providing convincing arguments and good rheto- assess peoples well-being on the basis of the
ric in order to propose the criteria to judge the life observed variables which are presumed to be of
of others; however, experts do not provide the greatest relevance in explaining happiness.
research-based evidence supporting the proposed Without corroborating the relevance of these
criteria. variables in explaining peoples experience of
In the imputation tradition what people think being well, the approach rapidly moves towards
about their life, and how they are experiencing it, the construction of indicators, the design and
is not irrelevant information in the assessment of evaluation of social programs, and the imple-
their well-being. The neglecting of peoples own mentation of public policies to increase peoples
4 M. Rojas
presumed well-being. The disciplinary compart- happiness arises; happiness is a life experience
mentalization of knowledge implies for most that can be known, and it becomes necessary to
experts to end up talking about the well-being discuss how this experience can be known and
of consumers, workers, citizens, voters, and so what the appropriate way of measuring it is.
on, but not about the well-being of human beings.
Well-being judgments made within the pre-
sumption tradition can be corroborated as long as 1.3.1 Happiness Is a Life Experience
an external exogenous- well-being variable is of Being Well
available. The subjective well-being approach
can provide this external information to corrobo- Happiness is no longer understood as a scholarly
rate and validate the well-being presumptions construct but as an experience people have. This
made by social-science theories. Hence, from a life experience of being well emerges from
happiness perspective, these theories provide human condition, because it is in human condi-
hypotheses but not conclusions- about the rele- tion to have some essential experiences of being
vance of some variables in explaining peoples well and to make a synthesis about how well life
well-being; these hypotheses can be is going on. Sensorial, affective, and evaluative
corroborated. experiences are essential to human condition
(Rojas 2007a, 2014; Rojas and Veenhoven
2013).
1.3 The Scientific Study Sensorial experiences involve the use of the
of Happiness. Happiness ve senses: smell, sight, touch, hearing, and
Research taste. Well-being is associated in a positive way
with pleasure and in a negative way with pain.
Happiness research is based on a simple but This kind of experience caught the attention of
radical change in the understanding and study utilitarian philosophers, such as Jeremy
of happiness. For centuries the assessment of Bentham.
peoples happiness was the exclusive role of Affective experiences refer to emotions and
scholars and philosophers; it was argued that moods. They involve such well-known
these thoughtful persons had the knowledge and experiences as love, pride, hate, fear, and envy,
the capacity to assess whether people were lead- among many. Psychologists have classied them
ing a happy life or not. It was also assumed that in positive and negative emotions; well-being is
people themselves could not be trusted in the positively associated with the rst ones and neg-
assessment of their happiness. Scholars used atively with the second ones.
their always persuasive arguments to construct Evaluative experiences involve an assessment
sophisticated constructs which provided guid- of how life is going on according to some evalu-
ance to assess peoples happiness, and there ative standards and aspirations. Achievements
was no role to be played by people except for emerge from reaching goals and aspirations
waiting to know the scholars assessment of while failures emerge from not being able of
their life. doing so. Well-being is favorably associated
A revolution in the study of happiness takes with achievements and negatively associated
place during the last decades (Diener et al. 1999). with failures.
This revolution implies a redenition in the con- A fourth type of experience, not sufciently
ception of happiness; happiness is conceived as a studied, is the mystic one; it is usually associated
life experience people do have rather than a to spiritual experiences.
construct experts do propose. It becomes evident In most cases these four types of experiences
that happiness can be studied through scientic do overlap; meaning that an event can generate
methods and, in consequence, happiness research sensorial, affective and evaluative experiences
becomes possible. A new epistemology of simultaneously. It may be that experiences do
complement each other in generating a global from the person who is experiencing it. In other
positive well-being experience or a global nega- words people are necessary for any well-being
tive one. For example, it could be possible for an experience to exist. Objects may contribute to
event to simultaneously detonate pleasure, posi- detonate essential well-being experiences; but
tive affects, and achievement; as well as it could without people objects are no more than inert
be possible for an event to simultaneously deto- matter, without any possibility to for well-being
nate pain, negative affects, and failure. It is also to take place.
possible for events to generate essential It is important to state that happiness does not
experiences with conicting global well-being occur in the realm of objects but in the realm of
effects; for example, an event may detonate persons. Under the posture of objectivity many
pain and achievement. scholars have pushed for the using of long lists of
It is this well-being lived as an experience so-called objective variables in the measurement
which is relevant to human beings, who are also of well-being. This position is incorrect, because
capable of making a global well-being synthesis these variables may be related in intricate and
in terms such as: I am happy, I am satised decient ways- to well-being, but they are not
with my life, I am at ease with myself, and I well-being themselves. The error emerges as a
like the life I have. consequence of confusing well-being itself with
Of course, it is always possible for scholars to its potential explanatory factors.
dene well-being as they wish; however, people It is impossible to avoid subjectivity when the
do not get motivated by constructs which are experience of being well is studied. Happiness is
alien to their daily experience of being well. not an object but an experience lived by the
This is why people do not show the same enthu- subject. Thus, the relevance of the explanatory
siasm for some well-being constructs as that factors must not be justied by the objectivity of
which is shown by their constructors. From measurement but by how closely they are related
peoples own perspective what matters is their to peoples experience of being well. In addition,
experience of being well. it is possible for the same set of objective
variables to generate different experiences of
being well across people; in consequence, the
1.3.2 The Epistemology of Happiness. list of objective variables does not sufces to
Knowing Happiness have a good approximation of the happiness peo-
ple do experience. For example, Rojas (2007b,
As it was stated in the previous subsection, hap- 2008) has shown that values and circumstances
piness is not an academic construct but a life mediate the relationship between income and
experience people do have. In consequence, hap- happiness; thus, it is not possible to estimate a
piness is not something to be invented but to be persons happiness on the basis of his or her
known by scholars. income. Therefore, approaching peoples happi-
It is in human condition for every person to ness from objective conditions may lead to seri-
know her happiness. Hence, the fundamental ous appreciation errors.
question is not how a person knows her happi- Second, the person is the authority to judge
ness but how a third-party knows a persons her life. Each person lives her life and
happiness. There are some epistemological experiences her well-being; thus, nobody else is
principles regarding how a persons happiness in a better position to judge her happiness. The
can be known by a third party (Rojas 2006a, subjective well-being approach accepts a
2007a): persons judgment as a valid appraisal of her
First, well-being is inherently subjective. happiness. The authority to judge a person life
There is no objective well-being. Well-being is neither in the hands of researchers nor
makes reference to the experience of being well philosophers but in the hands of the person her-
a person has; as such, it cannot be disentangled self. The role of researchers is to understand the
6 M. Rojas
nature of a persons well-being assessment, concrete persons, who cannot be detached from
rather than to assess it (Rojas 2007a). In conse- their circumstance. In other words, happiness
quence, there is no better way of knowing the research deals with persons as they are rather
well-being of a person than asking her; alterna- than as somebody else thinks they are or they
tive methods such as asking somebody else or ought to be.
observing her behavior may have substantial Fifth, identifying the relevant explanatory
aws. factors of happiness. Happiness research begins
A persons assessment of her life cannot be with a persons assessment of her happiness and
tested as right or wrong by researchers. What it then follows a quantitative or qualitative
researchers can do is to propose and test models approach to nd its determinants. In this sense,
and theories to understand peoples happiness, happiness research substantially differs from nor-
rather than to judge it as correct or incorrect or mative approaches, which usually presume both
as true or false. It is happiness theories which the specic conception of happiness and the
must be tested on the basis of peoples appraisals, factors that do explain it. Thus, happiness
and not peoples appraisals on the basis of the research uses econometric and qualitative
theories proposed by researchers. techniques to nd out what the relevant explana-
Third, the happiness report made by the per- tory factors are; as such, it rejects the common
son. People know whether they are experiencing practice of dening the relevant explanatory
happiness or unhappiness; they can also assess factors of happiness on the basis of untested
the degree of their experience. Thus, it is possible theories (presumed well-being) or on the basis
to measure peoples happiness by asking them of normative arguments (imputed well-being).
about it. There are many ways of asking the Happiness research also differs from participa-
question as well as many alternative response tory approaches, which directly ask people to
scales, and there are many studies about the estimate what the relevant factors explaining
measurement of happiness. However, what is their happiness are. Happiness research is based
important is that happiness must be assessed by on a simpler postulate: People know their happi-
the person herself rather than by somebody else. ness and they can report it. This is a postulate that
Thus, a basic principle in knowing peoples hap- participatory approaches share; however, partici-
piness is to ask people themselves rather than to patory approaches do also require the assumption
rely on indirect measures made by somebody that, besides knowing their happiness, people do
else or on uncorroborated theories that justify also know what factors explain it and in which
the using of some variables as proxies of peoples intricate ways they act.
happiness. Happiness research does also allow for het-
Fourth, the person who makes the report. One erogeneity across persons and nations in the
of the main advantages of asking people them- explanatory structure of happiness. As a matter
selves about their happiness is that researchers of fact, the factors that explain happiness and
must try to understand the experience of being their relative importance may vary across nations
well of concrete persons, rather than the happi- and even across persons. Thus, happiness
ness of abstract and out-of-context academic research has the advantage of being sensitive to
agents. By directly asking people about their cultural differences across nations as well as to
well-being, researchers study the well-being of personality-trait differences across people.
human beings of esh and blood (as in de Sixth, happiness research requires a trans-
Unamunos Tragic Sense of Life) and who are disciplinary approach. It is difcult, if not
in their circumstance (as in Ortega y Gassets impossible, to fully understand a persons happi-
Meditations on the Quixote). Thus, while aca- ness on the basis of the knowledge generated by a
demic disciplines usually deal with academic particular discipline alone. Disciplines work with
agents -such as the consumer or the class-mem- abstract entities, and sophisticated and elegant
ber- happiness researchers are forced to deal with models are built to explain particular aspects
while neglecting many others. Happiness are made (Eid and Diener 2004). A better knowl-
research is forced to work with concrete human edge of these biases and survey problems allows
beings; hence, happiness researchers need to rec- for designing research projects that gather better
ognize and understand the complexity of what a information regarding the well-being experi-
person is. Happiness is not an academic but a enced by people. The vast literature on subjective
human issue; scholars do not construct the con- well-being shows that the information gathered
cept of happiness, but they can aspire to under- from surveys is useful to proxy peoples happi-
stand it. Understanding the happiness of concrete ness. Diener and Suh (2000) show that as nal
human beings requires a transdisciplinary or at goal happiness can be compared across cultures.
least an interdisciplinary- approach.
1.4 Happiness in Latin America

1.3.3 Measuring Happiness
1.4.1 The Region
Veenhoven (1984) states that happiness can only
be measured on the basis of a persons answer to Latin America is a vast region with about
a direct question about her well-being; there is no 600 million people and with an extension above
room for speculation based on a persons 20 million square kilometers. Many languages
possessions, facial expressions, or other extrinsic are spoken in the region, but Spanish and Portu-
behavior. There is also no room for a third party guese are predominant. As a matter of fact, the
judging a persons happiness. Latin American appellation results from the
Happiness research requires asking people desire of dividing the American continent
directly about their happiness. It is common to between those who speak romance languages
ask direct questions to gather the information; for (Latin Americans) and those who speak an
example: Taking everything in your life into Anglo-Saxon language (Anglo Americans).
consideration, how satised are you with your There is no clear geographical delimitation for
life? or Taking everything in your life into the Latin-American region. Any particular
consideration, how happy are you with your delimitation could be contested. A common
life?. The response scale may be numerical delimitation stresses the dominance of the
(usually going from 0 to 10) or categorical (usu- Latin-rooted languages; 20 countries would be
ally going from extremely unsatised unhappy- included on the basis of this criterion. Spanish
to extremely satised happy-) (Ferrer-i- is widely spoken in Argentina, Venezuela,
Carbonell 2002). Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba,
It is possible to inquire about overall Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador,
assessments of happiness and/or of life satisfac- Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Pan-
tion, as well as about satisfaction with specic ama, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay. Portuguese is
domains and aspects of life. It is also possible to the predominant language in Brazil, which is the
ask people about their essential experiences of most populated country in the region. French is
being well; such as about their sensorial, affec- spoken in Haiti. It is important to remark that
tive, and evaluative experiences (Veenhoven many indigenous languages, such as Quechua,
1992; Rojas 2006b, 2007a). Guaran, Nahuatl, Aymara, and others, are
Nowadays there is abundant research on mea- widely spoken in countries such as Bolivia,
surement techniques and on biases introduced by Ecuador, Guatemala, Paraguay, Peru, and
survey design and by transitional states. There is Mexico.
also better knowledge of measurement problems It is necessary to state that the Latin American
and scales of measurement (Ferrer-i-Carbonell identity is not dened by language alone; Latin
2002; Schwarz and Stark 1991, 1999). Further- Americans share a common history and most
more, there is also research on how judgments people hold similar central values about how
8 M. Rojas
and why to live for. Thus, although there are income and some social-indicators measures as
signicant inter-country differences as well as proxies of well-being. What the Latin American
intra-country disparities, there prevails the idea data shows is that these theories are wrong or, at
of the Latin American region having a single least, insufcient to provide a good understand-
identity, and most people in the region can iden- ing of peoples experience of being well. Income
tify themselves as Latin-Americans. is an outstanding proxy of the well-being of
consumers, but not of the well-being of persons.
Latin Americans are much more than mere
1.4.2 Latin America Is a Happy Region. consumers and their happiness emerges from
Is This a Paradox? many other factors beyond their income.
The emergence of happiness research brought

out some paradoxes. The Easterlin paradox is 1.5 Happiness Research in Latin
well known; it states that contrary to what most America
economists and many other people believe hap-
piness does not rise with income (Easterlin 1973, 1.5.1 Researching Happiness in Latin
1974). This paradox is explained by the role America
income plays as status marker, as well as by the
endogeneity of aspirations to income. The relatively high levels of happiness in Latin
Another paradox makes reference to the America are not really a paradox; happiness
relatively-high happiness levels that are observed research in Latin America provides a good expla-
in the Latin-American region. This nding nation for these high levels of happiness. The
which has been known as the Latin American best way to address apparent paradoxes is by
phenomenon- is considered a paradox because doing research and by contrasting current
according to commonly used income and social- believes and theories to the evidence; this
indicators measures happiness levels should not enhances our understanding of happiness. In
be so high in the region. For example, most Latin fact, the Latin American case provides an oppor-
American countries are classied as mid-income tunity to better understand what factors are rele-
ones; income-poverty rates are high, and income vant to happiness. This is why it is crucial to do
inequality is also high. However, when taking a happiness research in Latin America, because the
look at happiness indicators it is found that Latin region allows for a better understanding of all the
Americans enjoy, in general, high happiness relevant factors explaining happiness.
levels. World rankings of happiness which are Happiness research in Latin America shows
made on the basis of the life-satisfaction variable that income and social-indicators measures are
do usually place some Latin American countries, very poor proxies of Latin Americans well-
such as Costa Rica, Panama, Venezuela, and being, and that the theories supporting the using
Mexico, in the top 10. Latin American countries of these indicators are, at least, insufcient to
do also show relatively good standings in World understand peoples happiness.
rankings that use evaluative-oriented measures, It is important to do happiness research in and
such as the Best-Worst life variable. In general, about Latin America. This book contains the
Latin Americans enjoy very high life satisfaction contributions of researchers from many
and affective-state levels, and their evaluative- disciplines and from many countries who do
state levels are not low. happiness research in Latin America. There are
Is the so-called Latin American phenome- also some contributions of non-Latin-American
non really a paradox? This book aims to show authors who are doing research about happiness
that paradoxes do not exist, only wrong and in Latin America.
incomplete theories. The presumption that Latin With the remarkable exceptions of the
Americans should be less happy than they are psychologists Mara Martina Casullo
emerges from theories supporting the using of (in Argentina) and Reynaldo Alarcon Napuri
(in Peru), most happiness research in Latin comparable across countries and cultures; how-
America takes place during the new millennium. ever, the drivers of happiness may vary across
This Handbook contains the contributions of cultures and even across people because they are
many scholars who can be considered as pioneers contingent on the values and identity people do
in doing happiness research in and about Latin have. The contribution by Beyta (Chap. 2)
America. As expected, the list of contributors is argues that in order to understand the relatively
not exhaustive, and the work of some good high levels of happiness in the region it is neces-
researchers could not be incorporated in the sary to take a look at the quality of family ties.
Handbook due to many reasons. Furthermore, Relational values do explain the Latin American
the list of happiness researchers in Latin America singularity of high happiness within a
is expanding rapidly. Even though, the Hand- mid-income context.
book allows having a good understanding of the In the same line, Yamamotos contribution
factors that explain the relatively high happiness (Chap. 3) argues that the Latin American case
experienced by Latin Americans. shows that modernization, wealth, and individu-
As it was stated earlier, happiness research is alism are not necessary conditions for happiness.
based on the information that concrete human Yamamoto shows that culture and tradition play
beings provide about their well-being. A good an important role in explaining high happiness in
understanding of this information requires Latin America; he concludes that the high happi-
going beyond the knowledge that each academic ness levels in the region are explained by the
discipline provides. The study of human issues, strength of human relations and the underlying
such as the experience of being well which role of relational values.
human beings have, surpasses any current disci- Happiness research is relevant and it may
plinary boundary. This is why happiness research have important consequences. The contribution
is difcult to classify within the current by Rojas (Chap. 4) shows that some Latin Amer-
compartmentalized architecture of knowledge. ican countries may have err in assuming that
Many happiness issues are covered in this Hand- raising income sufces to ensure greater well-
book; each contribution reects the preferences being. The wrong assumption of a close relation-
and disciplinary education of its authors. How- ship existing between happiness and income may
ever, happiness research demands from all have persuaded some governments to undertake
authors a broader transdisciplinary perspective, wrong policies that end up reducing peoples
and this shows in the Handbook. In addition, as happiness.
expected, the contributions in this Handbook do Moyano Daz (Chap. 5) studies the methodo-
also portray the interests, values and culture that logical approaches followed by happiness
prevail in the Latin American region. Through- researchers in Latin America; the author
out the contributions in the Handbook the reader addresses some methodological concerns in the
will nd recurrent issues such as study of happiness in Latin America.
non-materialistic values, the importance of rela- The importance that human relations play in
tional values, the role of family ties, living in Latin American happiness is studied in many
difcult material conditions, social cohesion, chapters in the Handbook. Velasquez (Chap. 6)
physical and mental health problems, and others. uses a very interesting database from a mid-size
city in Colombia to show the importance that
relational goods play in explaining peoples hap-
1.5.2 The Contributions piness. The contribution points towards the
in the Handbook importance of the family as a central institution
in explaining happiness in Latin America.
Values and identity play an important role in Martnez Cruz and Castillo Flores (Chap. 7)
determining the drivers of happiness. Happiness, run a qualitative study in Nicaragua and show the
as the experience of being well people do have, is relevance of harmonious, participatory, and
10 M. Rojas
egalitarian social relations in explaining the hap- focus on job satisfaction. Using a database from
piness of rural and indigenous women who Chile, the authors conclude that peer comparison
would be classied as poor by common is important in explaining job satisfaction.
standards. Even under humble material The contribution by Guardiola and Rojas
conditions Latin Americans can be happy thanks (Chap. 14) moves away from income
to their relational values and the strength of assessments of material conditions to focus on
social relations. the importance of (reported) food deprivation in
An in-depth study of the quality of family ties explaining peoples happiness. Using a database
and how they relate to the happiness of elder from all Latin American countries the authors
people is carried out in Chile by Herrera Ponce, nd, as expected, that food deprivation is
Fernandez, and Barros (Chap. 8); the study associated to lower happiness; however, an inter-
shows that family relations can play an important esting nding from their research is that religion
role in explaining peoples happiness. and access to relational goods play a mitigating
Family relations are highly gratifying in Latin role in this association.
America and they substantially contribute to Vera, Budowski and Suter (Chap. 15) explore
peoples happiness; however, human relations the domains of life situation of middle-income
go beyond family ties. Mochon Morcillo and de households which are exposed to vulnerability.
Juan Daz (Chap. 9) use a large dataset from all By contrasting the situation between Chilean and
Latin American countries to study the impor- Costa Ricans the authors point out towards the
tance of social networks, social trust, and social important role that welfare regimes play in
norms in explaining happiness. Social capital is explaining peoples well-being.
not strong in the region and there is still room to Using some databases from Argentina,
enhance this kind of social relations. Schiafno and Tetaz (Chap. 16) contrast the
Human relations may take different forms; role that material and non-material conditions
Sanchez Arag on and Diaz Loving (Chap. 10) play in explaining peoples satisfaction with
provides an in-depth psychological study of life; the authors nd out that material conditions
how happiness is experienced in romantic matter, but satisfaction with family and time
relationships. Romantic relations constitute an spend with loved ones have a higher explanatory
important kind of human relations and they power.
have important implications for peoples Lora (Chap. 17) provides an interesting study
happiness. on how life satisfaction data can be used to guide
The importance of human relations also public policy. His contribution uses data from
shows up in a study of people with health-related some Latin American cities to study quality of
problems; the contribution by Rojas and urban life; Lora shows how subjective well-being
Elizondo-Lara (Chap. 11) uses a dataset from data can be used to make recommendations
all Latin American countries and demonstrates regarding the allocation of public expenditures
that holding good social and family relations in urban areas.
does mitigate the impact of health-related The contribution by Millan (Chap. 18) uses
problems on happiness. data from some communities in Mexico to pro-
Ferrer and Giarrizzo (Chap. 12) study the gap vide evidence showing that contextual
between happiness and economic welfare community-level factors inuence peoples hap-
valuations in Argentina. Their ndings show piness. Millans study stresses the need of taking
that material conditions play a non-determinant a look at society-level factors such as: social
role in explaining peoples happiness; a profound cohesion. social fragmentation and the nature of
gap between happiness and economic welfare the relationship between government ofcers and
assessments shows up in Argentina. citizens.
The study by Montero and Rau (Chap. 13) Migration (within and across countries) is an
further explores the nature of the relationship important phenomenon in Latin America,
between income and happiness, with a particular Graham (Chap. 19) uses data from all Latin
American countries to study the causal relation- The rise in happiness research also demands
ship between intention to migrate and happiness; greater understanding of the role played by hap-
she shows evidence for frustrated achievers piness measurements; Garca Vega (Chap. 26)
unhappiness driving intent to migrate. Graham uses a database from Mexico to study how the
concludes that the desire of migrating is partially explanatory structure of happiness is contingent
explained by matters that go beyond peoples to the using of different well-being
absolute income situation. measurements.
Hurtado (Chap. 20) provides an overlook of Florenzano and Dussaillant (Chap. 27) present
the relationship between socio-economic status an interesting study from Chile regarding the
and happiness in Colombia; education, income interrelation between mental and physical health
and unemployment do inuence Colombians and their role in explaining peoples happiness.
well-being. The authors state that health policy has
Ateca Amestoy, Garca-Munoz and Moro concentrated in attaining good physical health;
Egido (Chap. 21) distinguish between so-called however, their study points towards the greater
individual and interpersonal explanatory importance mental health plays in explaining
variables, as well as between individual and happiness.
social domains of well-being. The authors use a The contribution by Domnguez Trejo, Mon-
Latin American database to study the importance tero Ruvalcaba Palacios, and Lopez Lena
and degree of substitutability between individual (Chap. 28) focuses on the study of affective and
and interpersonal explanatory variables in physical pain in Mexico; it shows how auto-
generating well-being. nomic markers can be used to further understand
Palomar Lever and Victorio Estrada peoples well-being.
(Chap. 22) use some databases from Mexico to Elizondo-Lara and Rojas (Chap. 29) study the
study the complex relationship between happi- impact of economic growth on the prevalence of
ness, poverty, class identication, and socio- health problems in Latin America; they nd a
economic mobility. The authors argue that all negative association between peoples happiness
variables are intertwined and that happiness is and rates of economic growth.
not only a consequence but also a cause of The experience of being well is inherently
some socio-economic conditions. subjective; thus, this experience requires an
Latin America is well-known for its high understanding of how people relate with their
income-inequality levels; Gandelman context. This relationship with their context
(Chap. 23) works with a database that includes incorporates perceptions and evaluations of
all Latin American countries to study happiness surrounding conditions, as well as the value peo-
inequality in the region; the author states that ple attach to some events rather than to others-
happiness is not as unequally distributed as within this context. The work by Lora (Chap. 30)
income and he points out towards as well as the work by Neri (Chap. 31) show that
non-pecuniary factors explaining this distribu- there are gaps between peoples perceptions of
tion of happiness. surrounding conditions and the assessments
The contribution by Calvo (Chap. 24) uses the experts and institutions make on the basis of
Chilean case to show the importance institutions lists of so-called objective indicators. Lora stud-
play in Latin American happiness. ies the existence of gaps when objective
An interesting study from Mexico about how indicators of quality of life are used, while Neri
values education in primary schools inuences explores the existence of gaps by using the
childrens well-being is presented by Cubas- so-called Human Development Index. Their
Barragan (Chap. 25). Schools constitute an research shows it is important to keep track of
important space in the life of children and they happiness data because the experience of being
are also important in promoting those values that well is not closely related to the set of so-called
contribute to present and future happiness. objective indicators which governments and
12 M. Rojas
international organizations usually use. These society. High-income countries may learn that it
objective indicators are insufcient to fully is possible to attain happiness while reducing the
grasp peoples well-being situation. ecological footprint and the rate of exhaustion of
The contribution by Leyva, Bustos and Romo natural resources. Low income countries may
(Chap. 32) uses ofcial happiness data from learn that the path towards a happy nation
Mexico to show that many social and personal requires expanding their sight beyond the pro-
factors do correlate with peoples happiness. curement of economic growth. From a happiness
Happiness data provides useful information perspective, classifying countries on the basis of
about many relevant factors in peoples lives, as their income levels is insufcient to approximate
well as about the personal evaluations and mean- their well-being situation.
ing people attach to these factors. The purpose of societies is not really about
Politicians who implement wrong policies in attaining endless increases in the gross domestic
democratic regimes are not only reducing product, and the purpose for people is not about
peoples happiness but also they are diminishing increasing forever and ever- their consumption
their possibilities of staying in power. The con- levels. In fact, people aspire to having a life they
tribution by Martnez (Chap. 33) uses data from are satised with, while societies should aim to
all Latin American countries to study the proba- provide the institutional arrangements that foster
bility of reelection; he shows that the ofcial this satisfaction with life.
party has a greater probability of being reelected Almost two centuries and a half ago a new
when citizens are happy. conception of wealth emerged. The wealth of
nations, as it is portrayed in Adam Smiths clas-
sical book, was associated to those resources that
1.6 Reconsideration of the Wealth contribute to increasing the consumption
of Nations possibilities in nations. Happiness research in
Latin America shows that the conception of
During the last decades there has been greater wealth needs to be expanded; and that the notion
interest in the concept of progress. What is in fact of wealth of nations must incorporate factors
a developed society? What conception of poverty such as the strength of warm and gratifying
predominates in societies? What constitutes the human relations (within the family as well as in
wealth of nations? Happiness research makes it the neighborhood, the working place, and the
possible to address these questions with sounded community), the availability of free time and
information; and happiness research in Latin the knowledge and skills to enjoy leisure
America provides valuable information that activities, and holding non-materialistic values
enriches and broadens the perspective. that place peoples attention on who they are
The relatively high happiness levels in Latin and how they relate to others rather than on
America show that there is more to income in what they possess and can purchase.
life; thus, Latin America has much to contribute Some decades ago T.S. Eliot, in his poem
to understanding what policies -public and pri- entitled The Rock, expressed the following com-
vate- contribute to generating a happier society. plain: Where is the Life we have lost in living?
High and low income countries, as well as inter- Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
national organizations fostering the economic Where is the knowledge we have lost in informa-
growth as progress paradigm may have some- tion?. Happiness research in Latin America
thing to learn from Latin America: Attaining reminds us that human beings are much more
higher income is not a nal goal but just an than mere consumers and mere producers. The
instrument for greater well-being, income is not implementation of the basic postulates of scien-
the unique driver of happiness and not necessar- tic research is necessary to arrive to correct
ily it is the most important, and that there are conclusions; however, these conclusions are con-
other drivers of happiness that must be taken into tingent to the input which is provided. The Latin
account when designing strategies for a happier American region provides humanist insight that
places concrete human beings at the center of M. McGillivray & M. Clarke (Eds.), Understanding
life. By combining scientic research with human well-being (pp. 182206). Tokyo, Japan:
United Nations University Press.
Latin American happiness we can aspire to go Rojas, M. (2006b). Life satisfaction and satisfaction in
beyond information and knowledge and to touch domains of life: Is it a simple relationship? Journal of
some wisdom about living a good life; this is, Happiness Studies, 7(4), 467497.
perhaps, the main contribution from this book. Rojas, M. (2007a). The complexity of well-being: A life-
satisfaction conception and a domains-of-life
approach. In I. Gough & A. McGregor (Eds.),
Researching well-being in developing countries:
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Rojas, M. (2006a). Well-being and the complexity of Veenhoven, R. (1992). Happiness in nations. Rotterdam,
poverty: A subjective well-being approach. In The Netherlands: Erasmus University Rotterdam.
Part I
The Relevance of Latin American Happiness
The Singularity of Latin American
Patterns of Happiness 2
Pablo Beyta
2.1 Introduction world population average (Helliwell and Wang

2012). This trend is quite clear: according to the
Latin America is a unique region in terms of its 2012 Gallup Poll, eight in ten countries with the
quality of life patterns. On one hand, it possesses greatest positive attitudes about life could be
a long list of social indicators which, when com- found in Latin America (Clifton 2012).
pared to those of Western Europe and of the This ambivalence in the quality of life of
United States are clearly unfavorable: lesser Latin Americans is disconcerting. The problem
GDP per capita, lower levels of nutrition and could be formulated as follows: traditional
basic health care, worse health outcomes (infant indicators and wellness goals highlight multiple
mortality and life expectancy at birth), reduced failures in the region, while subjective
access to basic knowledge (literacy, reading rate, indicatorsthose where people declare their
participation in primary and secondary school), own well-beingshow that Latin America
lower entry to tertiary education and less access could even become a global development
to communication and information (World Bank model. Is this a paradoxical scenario? Is it con-
2013; CIA 2013; Social Progress Imperative tradictory, perhaps, that a region denotes high
2013; Gapminder 2013). levels of happiness, as well as a low economic,
On the other hand, people in the region claim health and educational level?
to have high levels of subjective well-being, even This question is what this article will address.
considering the most demanding international The thesis I will defend is that by observing in
standards (Calvo et al. 2012). Nearly 70 % of detail the unique characteristics of Latin Ameri-
Latin Americans say they are happy, amongst can patterns of happiness, we will nd that this
which 29.5 % would indicate being very happy scenario is more consistent than it seems. But to
(Melgar and Rossi 2011). The national average understand the logic of these patterns of quality
life satisfactions in the region vary from about of life, it will be necessary to analyze macro
6 to 8.5, using a scale where 1 is the lowest and welfare standards in the region in relation to the
10 is the highest (Rojas 2012). To this positive particular conditions which in Latin America,
evidence, it is added that Latin Americans tend to unlike other cultural regions, favor happiness.
report a greater amount of positive affect than the This will be the project we will undertake in
this chapter.
P. Beyta (*) The singular patterns of happiness in Latin
Institute of Sociology, Ponticia Universidad Cat
olica de America will be investigated through a compari-
Chile, Santiago, Chile son with two regions which traditionally have
e-mail: ptbeytia@uc.cl

18 P. Beyta
served as a point of contrast for Latin Americans: recessions in Italy, France, Spain, the UK and, to
Western Europeconsidering Germany, Spain, a much lesser extent, Germany.
France, Italy and the United Kingdom1and the In these same years, the three sectors analyzed
United States.2 As we shall see, this parallel in this study were gradually moving towards a
provides several tools that will allow us to under- greater Human Development Index (HDI), that
stand and unravel the apparent Latin American is, towards a better quality of life if it will be
welfare paradox: the existence of a compara- considered so, in addition to the economic
tively high level of happiness coupled with a dimension, the education and the health of the
comparatively low level of economic, health population (UNDP 2013). According to this mea-
and educational development. sure of social progress, Latin America would also
lag behind Western Europe and the United
States. Although, thanks to Chile and Argentina,
this regional separation has not been too obvious,
2.2 Traditional View of Social
it can be noted that never, as of 1980, has a Latin
Progress and Political
American country HDI exceeded the perfor-
Emergence of Subjective
mance of the United States or any of the Western
Indicators
European countries considered in this study.3
Both general trends of developmentprog-
If we look at macroeconomic measurements
ress in GDP per capita and in HDIclearly go
from 1980 up to the present day, we will see
well together. As shown in Fig. 2.1, with a
that Latin America, Western Europe and the
greater GDP per capita countries experience a
United States have steadily progressed toward
higher HDI, and the correlation between the
achieving a higher GDP per capita (UNDP
two variables is signicant and greater than 0.94
2013). This trend has been consistent in its direc-
(attenuated largely by the extreme case of
tion, but the level of progress has differed for the
Guatemala).
regions: Western Europe and the United States
Allowing only for these indicators of social
have moved forward superbly, while Latin
progress, everything seems to t and point in the
America has had a tenuous progress. Although
same direction. Starting with these
since 1985 the separatist tendency between both
measurements, it makes sense to distinguish
groups of countries was already being shown,
developed nationsthe most advanced in the
between 1995 and 2005, the rapid economic
economy, health and educationand develop-
progress in Spain ended up making this disjunc-
ing nationsthose that are comparatively
tion evident. The result has been an ample eco-
behind in improving these dimensions. With
nomic gap between Latin America and the
the considerable exception of eco-criticism
developed countries, one which since 2007 has
which thanks to the concept of sustainability
begun to timidly fade, due to sporadic economic
achieved afnity with the logic of economic
maximization, for decades there had not been
a space in the West for deep questioning of this
partial model of development.
1
This study wont consider the case of Portugal, given the In recent years, however, this has changed
absence of adequate data for the analysis of the conditions
dramatically, and in large part through a growing
which favor happiness in that country.
2
Practically all Latin American essayists of the nineteenth
centurymen like Sarmiento, Mart, Montalvo, Rod o, y
Gonzalez Pradamade permanent allusions to Europe 3
and the United States, with the objective of discovering The inclusion of the case of Portugal would have per-
that which is unique to Latin American culture and soci- mitted us to see a sporadic overlap in the HDI in Europe
ety (Sacoto 2001). This tradition continued into the twen- and Latin America.
4
tieth, led magnicently by the musings of Octavio Pearsons R coefcient is 0.901 and signicant at the
Paz (2006). 0.01 level (bilateral).
2 The Singularity of Latin American Patterns of Happiness 19
Fig. 2.1 Relationship between GDP per capita and Salvador 1999, Finland 2005, France 2006, Germany
Human Development Index (Data source: UNDP. Data 2006, Guatemala 2005, Italy 2005, Mexico 2005,
of HDI and GDP are for each country in the year of latest Netherlands 2006, Norway 2008, Peru 2008, Puerto
data of happiness in the World Values Survey Rico 1995, Spain 2007, Sweden 2006, Switzerland
(19992008) (Survey year for each country: Argentina 2007, Trinidad and Tobago 2006, Uruguay 2006, United
1999, Brazil 2006, Chile 2005, Colombia 2005, El Kingdom 2006 and United States 2006))
political disposition to incorporate subjective while Bhutan, France, the UK, Canada, Mexico,
indicators in assessing the welfare of nations. Chile and some Chinese provinces have made
Measures of happiness have acquired increasing signicant efforts to measure subjective well-
political importance since 2008 and they are being and consider it in their public policies.
currently being supported by various Citizen opinion has not lagged behind in this
governments and international organizations. discussion: if in the year 1990 about 1,200
The United Nations, the OECD and the World articles mentioning happiness were published in
Bank are very committed to the inclusion of magazines and in Spanish, English and French-
happiness as an indicator of social progress,5 speaking newspapers, in 2011 that number had
exceeded 26,000 (Beyta and Calvo 2011),
among these most recent articles, about 4,400
5
The milestone which initiated the formal commitment of
make reference as much to happiness as to the
these organizations to modify the traditional indicators of politics, a gure that is eleven times greater than
social progress was the Declaration of Istanbul, in 2007. that found in 1990.
20 P. Beyta
2.3 Inconsistency Comes into Play: analyzing the link between HDI and happiness.
The Curious Levels Considering the same previous countries, the
of Happiness in Latin America association between both variables is now clearly
negative: the more money, health, and education
For nearly seven decades we have been consid- per person, the less percentage of high happiness
ering social progress primarily as material wel- the nations have (see Fig. 2.3). And this curious
fare (at least since the 1944 Bretton Woods association is also explained by a regional pat-
conference, hosted by the United Nations); how- tern, since the Latin American countries have
ever, the current scenario has promoted an opening comparatively high averages of happiness, linked
of this concept to the subjective indicators. Under to a decisively lower GDP than that of the other
these conditions, the rst task for scholars of social nations.
development is to evaluate the relationship The trend lines, on the other hand, reinforce in
between old and new indicators. And here emerge a different way the idea of the Latin American
several surprises, which describe Latin America as particularity: if you observe the ascending dotted
an exceptional region in its quality of life patterns. line in Fig. 2.3, you can see the relationship
Upon evaluating the relationship between between HDI and percentage of happiness tends
national economy and subjective well-being, some to be positive in Europe and the United States
social scientists have found a global positive link: (countries with greater human development); on
with a greater GDP per capita, nations have greater the contrary, in Latin America this relationship is
average life satisfaction and happiness (Inglehart negative: the greater economy, health, and edu-
et al. 2008; Graham and Pettinato 2001; Demir cation the countries in this region have, the less
2010. However, by analyzing an example with the percentage of high happiness is declared by its
United States and the countries of Latin America citizens (see descendant dotted line, Fig. 2.3).
and Europe, the relationship between GDP per Therefore, Latin America is not only identied
capita and the percentage of reported high happi- by having a high well-being subjective to low
ness in nations is not only nonpositive, but it comes economic, educational, and sanitary cost, but
to show a slight negative tendency: the more money also because within this region, unlike Europe
per person the countries have, less happiness the and the United States, these factors are not
citizens report (see total trend, Fig. 2.2). associated with greater national averages of
This nding must be carefully analyzed. If the happiness.
relationship between both variables is analyzed Finally, the particularity in the macrosocial
separately for Latin America and the other patterns of Latin American well-being can be
countries, we can see that in both sectors there conrmed very clearly in the results of the
appears to be a positive relationship between Happy Planet Index, created by the New Eco-
GDP per capita and high happiness (see specic nomics Foundation to evaluate the relationship
trend lines, Fig. 2.2). The inconsistency between between well-beingobjective and subjective
said indicators appears, then, once all of these and ecological sustainability. According to the
countries are involved in the same equation: data from 2012, which considered more than
there the relationship between these variables 151 countries, Latin America would be the
becomes slightly negative. And this is due to region that achieves the greatest subjective
the exceptional Latin American macrosocial well-being and life expectancy, with the least
patterns: nations with comparatively high environmental cost (measured by the national
averages of happiness, linked to a comparatively ecological footprint). Once again, the results
low GDP per capita. denote the Latin Americas macrosocial singu-
If the relationship between GDP per capita larity: Costa Rica, Colombia, El Salvador, Pan-
and the percentage of high happiness makes ama, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Guatemala
note the curious patterns of Latin American qual- would be among the ten countries with the best
ity of life, this situation becomes evident upon Happy Planet Index in the world.
Fig. 2.2 Relationship between GDP per capita and per- Survey (19992008) and the corresponding annual data of
centage of high happiness (Data source: latest data of GDP per capita provided by UNDP)
happiness available for each country in the World Values
the World Values Survey (19812008). The dis-

2.4 Explaining Inconsistency I: tribution of cases is shown in the Table 2.1.
Individual Determinants To study the differences between regions,
of Happiness in Latin America logistic regressions were usedseparate and
related by region, and predictions of
How can Latin America achieve so much happi- probabilities (to contrast their results with the
ness at such a low economic, educational, and related regressions for possible biases of social
health cost (that is, without having to achieve composition in the results of the latter). The
high HDI)? If we inquire about what individual synthesis of the most relevant and consistent
conditions favor the subjective well-being of Latin results is set forth in Diagram 2.1.
Americans, we can nd some appropriate answers, This diagram shows the similarities in the
while not conclusive, due to the low level of determinants of happiness in Latin America,
research that has existed in respect to this issue. Western Europe and the United States. In the
In 2011 I conducted an investigation into the center of the diagram, factors are identied that
similarities and differences in the individual in the three sociocultural sectors are related with
determinants of happiness in Latin America, high happiness: being between 40 and 49 years
Western Europe and the United States (Beyta old (only factor negatively associated), living
2011). The study considered 22,569 cases in with a partner, having good health in subjective
22 countries, in the aggregate of ve waves of terms, being satised with the household
22 P. Beyta
Fig. 2.3 Relationship between Human Development World Values Survey (19992008) and the corresponding
Index and percentage of high happiness (Data source: annual data of HDI provided by UNDP)
latest data of happiness available for each country in the
Table 2.1 Sample countries, survey year and number of cases

Region Country Survey year Number of cases
Latin America 16 countries, 12,260 cases Argentina 1999 1,280
Brazil 2006 1,500
Chile 2005 1,000
El Salvador 1999 1,254
Guatemala 2005 1,000
Mexico 2005 1,560
Peru 2008 1,500
Puerto Rico 1995 1,164
Trinidad and Tobago 2006 1,002
Uruguay 2006 1,000
Western Europe 5 countries, 6,318 cases Germany 2006 2,064
France 2006 1,001
Spain 2007 1,200
United Kingdom 2006 1,041
Italy 2005 1,012
United States 1 country, 3,991 cases United States 199519992006 1,5421,2001,249
Self employment
(specific type)
Latin ()
America
Gender
Secondary education
Loss of partner
Age (general)
Age (40-49)
Live with partner
Health (subjective) (+)
(+) Financial satisfaction (+)
Feeling of freedom
Religiosity
Western United
Europe States
Trust with weak ties Institutional confidence
Diagram 2.1 Determinants of happiness in Latin America, Western Europe and the United States (Source: Beyta
2011. Data compiled from the World Values Survey (19992008))
nancial situation, feeling freedom and control similar also happens: the link between perceiving
over life, and being religious. If you look further a good personal health and reporting happiness is
to the outside of the diagram, it can be noted that greater in the United States than in Latin Amer-
neither gender, nor having completed high ica and Western Europe.
school, nor having lost a loved one (separation, The second type of difference has to do with
divorce or widowhood) were signicantly the existence of factors that are only relevant in
associated with reports of high happiness in some of these regions. Here the most important
these regions. contrast has to do with the role of trust in social
Furthermore, this diagram shows statistically ties: only in Western Europe greater happiness is
signicant contrasts between regions. Here are reported among those who trust in weak ties
two types of relevant differences. In the rst (neighbors, people they have met for the rst
place, there are differences in the strength in time, people of another nationality or religion)
which certain variables are related with high and only in the United States is trusting in
happiness: nancial satisfaction is positively institutions relevant. Latin America, meanwhile,
linked with it in all regions, but in Latin America is identied by not signicantly binding social
this relationship is signicantly less than in the trust with high happiness.
other two sectors, while in United States it is These results already indicate some clues
signicantly greater. As for health, something about our studys problem, primarily in the
24 P. Beyta
Fig. 2.4 Network of correlations between conditions of happiness in Latin America. The greater the thickness of
happiness in Latin America. Note: The lines in this dia- the line the stronger the correlation between the variables
gram show the signicative bivariate correlations (Data source: compiled from the World Values Survey
(Pearson coefcient) between individual conditions of (19992008))
economic, health and educational areas. First, of other conditions. For example, change in age
being satised with economic situation seems to is linked with the health status of individuals,
be less related with happiness in Latin America, which in turn is often associated with the feeling
which could explain the high levels of happiness of freedom and control they have over their lives.
in the region despite its low comparative GDP Therefore, it would be appropriate to supplement
per capita. Second, health would seem to be less the previous analysis with an exploration of the
important in Latin America than in the United network of correlations between the conditions
States. Finally, educational level would not have of happiness; the outline of this network would
a great relationship with happiness in any of the reect the living environment in which greater or
regions studied, a nding consistent with the lack lesser possibilities of subjective well-being
of association between education and happiness appear in the population.
found in other research (e.g.: Veenhoven 2008). Considering the same data and variables
All these ndings assist in clarifying the weak tested in the previous study, Fig. 2.4 shows how
Latin American relationship between GDP per they correlate (Pearson coefcient) with other
capita and HDI, on one hand, and high happiness, living conditions which promote or mitigate the
on the other. happiness of Latin Americans.
That said, these results should be The dark nodes indicate individual
complemented with an analysis of correlations characteristics in the previous model showed a
between the conditions of happiness. Although direct relationship to the happiness of the popu-
analytically it would be appropriate to separate lation, while the transparent nodes denote
factors which favor or mitigate subjective well- variablessuch as gender, educational level,
being, in the real world the change in a living trust in weak ties and trust in institutions
condition is usually closely related to the change which are only indirectly associated with
44
42
39
38
31
27
Latin Western United Latin Western United

America Europe States America Europe States
Financial Satisfaction Income level
Graph 2.1 Percentage of money centrality in the networks of conditions of happiness (Data source: Compiled from
the World Values Survey (19812009))
happiness, acting in this network as mediator As can be seen, both the level of income and
elements. In turn, each line of the network shows nancial satisfaction have less centrality in the
a statistically signicant correlation between two network of conditions that are associated with the
living conditions, and the thicker the line, the happiness of Latin Americans. Previously it had
greater the strength of the association. been noted that the strength of the relationship
This same exercise was replicated for the between nancial satisfaction and high happiness
sample of Western Europe and the United States, was signicantly lower in Latin America than in
with the intent to identify differences between Western Europe and the United States. The sum
the patterns of regional correlations. Although of both sets of data gives consistency to this
many conclusions can be drawn from the product nding: money, both in its objective expression
of this exploration, I would like to highlight the (income) and subjective (nancial satisfaction),
most consistent: the low comparative centrality has less association with happiness in Latin
of money in Latin America. America than in the other regions studied.
Network theory has developed the degree
centrality concept to refer to the quantity of
relationships that each node has to other nodes 2.5 Explaining Inconsistency II:
in a network. From this, methodologies have The Impact of Social Relations
been created to calculate a normalized central
coefcient, which indicates the percentage of In the preceding argument reasons can be found
links that a node has, within the maximum possi- as to why happiness in Latin America is linked to
ble associations within a network. Graph 2.1 a lesser extent to the GDP per capita, health and
shows the centrality coefcient that income and education of the population. However, it still has
nancial satisfaction obtained in the three not yet been identied the motives as to why in
regions studied. this region a high happiness exists. I think that in
looking at the dynamics of social relations some
26 P. Beyta
Table 2.2 Levels of trust in Latin America, Western Europe and United States
Levels of trust in weak ties
Latin America Western Europe United States
Trust in neighbors 55.1 % 76.5 % 81.4 %
Trust in people they have just met 17.5 % 32.2 % 43.6 %
Trust in people of another religion 42.7 % 54.8 % 81.4 %
Trust in people of another nationality 33.3 % 55.8 % 76.6 %
Levels of institutional condence
Condence in the armed forces 47.1 % 61.5 % 84.0 %
Condence in the police 37.9 % 72.2 % 72.1 %
Condence in unions 27.9 % 32.7 % 34.5 %
Condence in the civil service 28.3 % 40.8 % 49.6 %
Condence in the judicial system 37.3 % 53.5 % 46.3 %
Data source: compiled from the World Values Survey (19812009)
of the keys to understanding this situation can be have (see Table 2.2). Therefore, social trust
found. seems not to be an element that explains the
The studies which indicate an association high levels of happiness in Latin America.
between interpersonal relationships and happiness In contrast, the Latin American population
can be traced to at least the 1930s (e.g. Watson itself can be identied by a type of social rela-
1930; Symonds 1937). Since then, many studies tionship of particular density and mutual support:
have shown that human interaction in general the family bond. In this region, families are
but particularly when it generates close social larger (there is a higher average number of chil-
relationships and mutual support, manifestations dren)6 and coupled (lower divorce rate and a
prone to social cohesionhas a positive and sig- higher percentage of people living with their
nicant link with the happiness and life satisfac- parents). In addition, they generate closer ties
tion of people (Argyle 2001; Bjrnskov 2003; and reciprocal help: there is a greater percentage
Cameld et al. 2006; Kahneman and Krueger of Latin Americans who admit unconditional
2006; Ram 2009). Primarily, the literature love and respect towardcraving parental pride
indicates that (a) living in a social environment in of themselvesand that bestows high impor-
which one can trust in both people and in tance to acting in aid of those who are closest
institutions (Tokuda and Inoguchi 2008) and (see Table 2.3).
(b) having close intimate relations and mutual Some of these family characteristics are of
support (Demir 2010) are closely related factors great importance, given that they are signi-
with subjective well-being. Could these elements cantly associated with the happiness of the popu-
explain the high happiness of Latin Americans? lation. As shown in Table 2.3, the divorced have
From the data sample used in this study lower subjective well-being in the three regions,
(Table 2.1), Latin Americans do not show higher with Latin America being less affected by having
levels of trust than Western Europe and the a lower rate of divorce. In addition, those Latin
United States. In fact, they claim to trust less in American and U.S. who respect and love their
strangerswhether they are neighbors or people parents unconditionally are happier, and in Latin
they have just metand in those who are differ- America there is a greater proportion of people in
entthose who have another religion or nation- this situation. Finally, in the three regions the
ality(see Table 2.2). Nor do they trust more in happiest people are those who aim at achieving
their institutions: at least with respect to the
armed forces, police, unions, civil services and
the judicial system, the percentage of trust is 6
According to the sample in this study, the average num-
lower than that which Europeans and Americans ber of children in Latin America would be 2.16, versus
1.56 in Western Europe, and 2.00 in the United States.
Table 2.3 Family relations in Latin America

Having 3 or more children 36.7 % 21.1 % 33.9 %** (+)
Divorce 2.9 %** () 5.0 %** () 10.1 %** ()
Living with parents 29.5 % 15.1 % 9.9 %** (+)
Respect and unconditional love for parents 92.0 %** (+) 81.7 % 77.8 %** (+)
Parental pride goal 91.3 %** (+) 68.8 %** (+) 77.6 %** (+)
High importance of helping people close 33.2 %** (+) 22.5 %** (+) 18.0 %** (+)
Data source: compiled from the World Values Survey (19812009)
Variables with ** have a signicant correlation coefcient (0.01 bilateral) with happiness. The signs () and (+) refer to
the direction of this correlation
the pride of their parents and those who give high obtain a high level of subjective well-being hav-
importance to helping those closest to them, ing a moderate GDP per capita, this is explained,
features that occur with greater frequency in the in part, because income and nancial satisfaction
Latin American population. are sparingly associated with subjective well-
In short, a greater proportion of Latin being in the region. On the other hand, health is
Americans report having family practices of less tied to happiness in Latin America than in
closeness and mutual support, which are linked the United States, and educational level
positively with personal happiness. Unlike the measured in nishing high schooldoes not
case with social trust, the eld of family appear to be signicantly associated with subjec-
relationships shows signicant potential for tive well-being in any of the regions studied. The
explaining the high levels of subjective well- sum of these ndings explain the relative inde-
being in the region. pendence with Latin American levels of happi-
ness in respect to the success of macrosocial
measures of economy, health and education gath-
ered in the HDI.
2.6 Overview: Consistency
This situation promotes the search for other
in the Indicators and Political
social indicators that explain the high Latin
Challenges
American levels of happiness. This study shows
that, to some extent, said levels can be explained
At the beginning of this article we ask ourselves:
by the dynamics of social relations. Specically,
is it consistent that in Latin Americaa context
close family ties and mutual support are signi-
that, in comparison with Western Europe and the
cantly associated with happiness, and they are
United States, has a low level of economic,
deployed to a greater extent in Latin America
health and educational developmentthere is
than in other regions. Studying in-depth family
high happiness, even globally? And we said that
relationships could help to clarify how Latin
in order to respond to this it was necessary to
Americans achieve high levels of happiness at
observe the macrosocial patterns of subjective
such a low monetary, sanitary, and educational
well-being, together with the conditions which
cost.
favor or mitigate the happiness of Latin
If indeed family ties are key to understanding
Americans. Therefore, we study the main per-
this scenario, it is important to evaluate the role
sonal characteristics that several scientic stud-
they are taking in Latin American countries.
ies have associated with happiness: age, gender,
Broadly speaking, I think the current organiza-
education, marital status, employment, income,
tion of social security and the progressive
health, religion, trust and sense of freedom.
increase in human development may be weaken-
The data suggest that macrosocial indicators
ing, as an unintended consequence, family sup-
of quality of life in Latin America have been
port in Latin America.
quite consistent. Although Latin Americans
28 P. Beyta
In the past seven decades, the organization of in the region. However, these countries could
well-being has diametrically changed in the also choose another path: considering, in addi-
Western countries: it has gone from a system of tion to objective well-being, subjective prosper-
protections of proximity (Castel 2003)where ity as an indicator of social progress, based on
security was ensured mainly by membership in a those elements that favor it and trying not to
family communityto a system of welfare sacrice them in the process of economic growth
stateswhich are dened by making people and human development. This would be the great
less dependent on their community associations challenge for Latin America: achieve high levels
(Esping-Andersen1990). Although this change of economic growth and human development,
has demonstrated many benets, it also without sacricing the regional dynamics that
facilitates the weakening of the family, as it is favor high happiness.
no longer necessary to ensure the survival and
material well-being of the population. By simply
opting for the person as the last unit of insurance,
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The Social Psychology of Latin American
Happiness 3
Jorge Yamamoto
3.1 Latin American Happiness of this is the belief that autonomy is a universal
need (Deci and Ryan 1980; Doyal and Gough
From Mexican esta, through Colombian warm- 1991; Ryan and Deci 2000). One of the founders
ness, to Brazilian Carnival, Latin America has a of Cross-Cultural Psychology, Harry Triandis,
wide reputation of a happy region. This popular stated that theorists can suffer from nave realism
cultural belief is supported by world surveys, for that limits the full appreciation of the subjective
example, The Happy Planet Index (Abdallah status of their own construals (Triandis 1996). If
et al. 2009, 2012; Marks et al. 2006) systemati- this is correct, the study of Latin American Hap-
cally report Latin America as the happiest region piness cannot be based on established (developed
in the world. countries) well-being theories. A better approach
However, Latin America did not correspond can be an emic perspective, a grounded theory
to the modern prototype of happiness which is approach based in ethnographic research and
based on the belief that richness and autonomy open-ended qualitative methods that identify the
are the basic building blocks of a good life. Latin categories of happiness in Latin America. When
American countries fall in the middle income quantitative methods are required, emic psycho-
group with not a single nation in the high income metric subjective well-being tests, whose items
economies (World Bank 2013). Is a region low should be based on qualitative emic studies,
on individualism and high on collectivism should be used in order to identify through mul-
(Hofstede 1980; Markus and Kitayama 1991; tivariate analysis the building blocks of Latin
Schwartz 2006). Therefore, to understand Latin American Happiness (Yamamoto et al. 2008a).
American Happiness is not just a cross-cultural
curiosity, it is an important case study for Happi-
ness Science in order to understand the basic 3.2 Roots of Latin American
building blocks of a happy culture. Happiness: Small Traditional
Developed countries happiness theories are Villages
based and inspired by their own cultural
conceptions of which are those basic building A logic starting point to understand Latin Amer-
blocks related to a good life, and one example ican Happiness is an emic, grounded theory
approach in small traditional Latin American
villages. Those communities are the less
J. Yamamoto (*)
olica del Peru, Lima, Peru
Ponticia Universidad Cat
inuenced by modern lifestyles and can keep
e-mail: jyamamo@pucp.pe more strongly the differential elements of the

32 J. Yamamoto
region. Following this methodological approach, most efcient (and equitable) way to harvest and
a series of qualitative studies were conducted in seed. The care of the land after seeding and
an Andean emigrational corridor that started in before harvesting is conducted in a familial
small traditional villages, passed through inter- work basis.
mediate peri-urban pueblos1 and nished in In a remote Andean community like Chucuna
urban emigrational shantytowns. The method there are neither house building companies nor
included ethnographical research in each site, real estate agents; houses are constructed by Ayni
and in depth open-ended interviews. Categories and Minka. A person who wants to build the
of well-being components as needs, resources, house, in a rst Ayni phase, collect all the
and values were extracted from interviews materials required. Ask the help of a family
through content analysis. The categories were member or a friend to make adobe, the traditional
loaded into a database, assigning a score of bricks used in the Andes; in addition, collect
1 when a participant mentioned a category, and straw from the highlands, and other required
a 0 when not. This dichotomised database materials during months, using the support from
allowed quantitative analysis as exploratory different friends or family members, without
non-metric factor analysis (Yamamoto 2008a). paying for the workforce. By Ayni, when those
Chucuna, the most traditional village of the friends and members of the family will build a
corridor studies, reported minimalist lessons of house, or require other help, the person who
subjective well-being. Evidence from participant received the support will be available for free,
observation to structural equation modelling with eagerness gratitude. In a second phase of
showed a very strong sense of collectivistic inter- house building, the beneciary organises a
dependence, opposed to autonomy. This collec- Minka. Almost all members of a small commu-
tivism can be observed in crucial aspects of the nity assist, and in few days the house is built.
life in Chucuna (Yamamoto et al. 2004a), and it This Minka is a esta, with live music, great
is organised thorough the ayni, minka and food, and a cheerful mood. This mood is the
communitary work, which are three types of same for agricultural or other minka activities,
social supportive interaction. The rst is related where everybody is joking, and spending a fun
to individual reciprocation of favours; the second interaction.
is a group action in favour of an individual, with The third traditional way of collective action
future reciprocation; and the nal is the work of is community work. There are access roads,
all members in favour of a common interest of water canals, and other issues that concern to
the community. For example, agriculture is a all members of the group. As building and main-
main economic activity, and is organised through tenance of these issues is not supported by the
minka. On day 1, subject A goes to work to the government, the trabajo comunitario or commu-
chacra2 of subject B; subject C to G goes to work nity work is organised, a day or several days of
to the chacra of subject B as well. On day 2, sub- labour where all members of the community go
ject A goes to work to the chacra of subject C; for the job. As usual, it is conducted in a joking,
subject B, and subjects D to G goes to work to the and funny mood, however, a physical ght may
chacra of subject C as well. The Minka cycle is not be absent. This interdependent collectivism is
nished when subject A receives the working coherent to the core social nature of the human
force of subjects B to G in its own chacra. As specie, MacDonald and Leary (2005), in a social
there is no availability for paid work labour in neuroscience study, found that social exclusion
remote Andean lands, this system is virtually the activates the brains physical pain network,
suggesting that social interaction was so critical
in evolution that it was associated with the pri-
1
An intermediate place between a small traditional vil- mary alert system: physical pain. In fact, in
lage of some few households and a urban city. Chucuna, an excluded person will have no
2
Parcel of land which is cultivated. house, will have no agriculture, and will have
3 The Social Psychology of Latin American Happiness 33
no fun. In ancient times, an excluded person will part of routine, in jokes, who is the best making
be the prey of predators; it was a matter of life furrows, or who made the most memorable food
or dead. in a minka. This competition is also reected in a
The opposite side suggests that, to solve critical ght for who is the wealthiest member of the
problems with the support of family and friends community during the year; however, Andean
could be so important that its achievement was society is very low in inequity. How competition
related to the activation of the brain pleasure with low inequity can be achieved without unsus-
nucleus. In this direction, it is possible that the tainable communism? The Andean culture has
daily life of Chucuna activates the evolutionary one answer with hundreds of years of
happiness brain wiring so naturally that happiness sustainability: the esta constitutes a system of
is not an issue, as observed in Chucuna, where festival redistribution with high competition. The
people did not consider happiness as a problem to daily life has few opportunities to show inequity
deal with. On the other hand, a deeply autonomic as there are no malls, and no restaurants; houses
society, with a strong welfare system that reduces are built in a functional basis, and there is no
the perception of risk to have no house, and no need of cars; nobody starves in an agricultural
food, could paradoxically lead to the inactivation society ruled by ayni. There are some few but
of the brain pleasure nucleus, leading to the hap- intense hedonic periods during the year, particu-
piness issue. This happiness not an issue larly one: the Fiesta Patronal or the Community
situation can be analogous to breathing, which is Festivity. The comuneros (ofcial members of
a problem just for the asthmatic. the community, with land, rights, and duties)
Exploratory factor analysis from open ended that achieve the highest wealth during the year
needs interviews in Chucuna brought evidence of compete very hard to be the mayordomo, the
the centrality of a family, close friends, and com- person who is going to organise and nance the
munity network. This result suggests evidence esta patronal.
coherent to evolutionary psychology that The competition to elect the mayordomo is
proposes four needs: survival and growing to a conducted by ancient rituals where all the
reproductive age (1), to select, to attract and comuneros participate, but according to their
maintain a couple for successful reproduction interest in become a mayordomo, the perfor-
(2), to support descendants to achieve reproduc- mance in the competition can be more discrete
tive age (3), and to support the successfully or more intense. The winner will organise the
reproduction of our genetic relatives (4) (Buss next years esta patronal, and take the whole
2004). An additional transversal component can year to do so. At the end, the mayordomo
be underlined: to develop a signicant position in receives the highest social achievement and rec-
a social group, where the game of survival, grow- ognition possible, if the esta was spectacular in
ing and reproduction happens. The coherence of terms to be better than the previous years esta,
the factor solution in Chucuna, and evolutionary with immense amounts of drink, food, and live
needs suggests that the Andean traditional small music, in an intense week of celebration. Despite
community resembles the ancient lifestyle. As the yearly fortune spent in a week, it could be
humans evolved to be happy in the ancient considered a subjective well-being bargain.
times, when evolution from ancestors to modern Social status is an important driver of happiness,
humans happened, the pattern of needs found in and in modern societies, no matter how spectac-
Chucuna could suggests an important source of ular is your house, your car, or your jewels; no
Latin American Happiness. In this direction, matter how many millions you spend on it, you
(Buss 2000) has stated that modern unhappiness are never going to achieve the highest social
is caused by the gap between modern and ances- status. In a small traditional Andean community
tral lifestyles. you just need to be the mayordomo some few
The esta is another core aspect to understand times in a lifetime (Yamamoto et al. 2008a). In
Chucunas well-being. Playful competition is addition, the esta is not just about social status,
34 J. Yamamoto
it is about prosocial spending,3 a behaviour that restricted to family, and the debilitation of the
has been recently proposed as a psychological community resources are related to a stronger
universal for subjective well-being (Aknin dependence on government support. However,
et al. 2013). some strong traditional values are still present,
The minimalist well-being lessons of describing a hybrid values system. A higher level
Chucuna mimics the ancestral life style, the of education and higher inuence of evangelic
deep nature where the happiness brain wiring religion can be associated to the difference
occurred. Cultural needs resemble evolutionary between Quintaojo and Chucuna (Yamamoto
needs; resources to achieve needs are available et al. 2004b).
for everyone; social interaction is ingrained in The invisible difference between these two
behaviour, supporting, working, and competing; apparently similar communities highlights the
with an annual cycle of redistribution that limitation of the classications based only in
controls inequity; all together in a system that objective characteristics of communities, as the
all components has a common characteristics: a assumption that the rural and urban classication
pervasive fun, particularly in the extremely is a reliable way to understand subjective well-
hedonic esta. being patterns; contextual and historical
Quintaojo is the second small traditional vil- variables matters. Chucuna can be an illustration
lage of the Andean corridor study, very similar in of the roots of the Latin American happiness
size and geography compared to Chucuna, and is based in a minimalist view of life that resembles
located just a few kilometres away. However, ancestral lifestyle. Quintaojo can represent the
beyond the external similarities relies a different roots of the Latin American conict and the
subjective well-being structure: a conict roots of the hybridization of modernity and tradi-
between the tradition and a look for modernity. tion expressed in urban cultural syncretism.
Traditional Andean culture is still part of the
Quintaojo villagers, providing identity and adap-
tation to the environment, including agriculture
3.3 From Andean Tradition
and livestock Andean practices. However, mod-
to Modernity: Peri-urban
ern goals and values are also observed, an aspi-
Pueblos
ration that promises progress and
development, with a cost in decreasing self-
Acostambo is a peri-urban pueblo4 with
esteem as the aspiration nally is not met. The
509 households (INEI 2004) comprising a varied
objective resources are relatively similar com-
population, from more rural, to somehow urban
pared to Chucuna, however, needs are more com-
characteristics. It is a commercial node, based on
plex and more aspirational, without correlating
monetary and non-monetary exchange that links
resources that supports them; as a result, frustra-
many communities, including Chucuna and
tion and dissatisfaction emerges (Yamamoto
Quintaojo. Acostambo has access through a
et al. 2004b).
paved road that connects two cities, Huancayo
Individualism is introduced as part of the
and Huancavelica, which provides a ow of more
modern inuence and become a source of social
modern resources. However, Acostambo still
conict, as resources for traditional lifestyle are
keeps some distance to modernity, it has a
based on a strong collectivistic interdependence.
bucolic environment, and agricultural and live-
Individualistic values of individual accumulation
stock are important activities. It represents a
without redistribution are observed, as a result,
community that keeps its traditional character,
the esta patronal observed in Chucuna is
has traditional and modern resources, and
debilitated. In this context, mutual support is
4
Pueblo is a bigger than a village but smaller than a city
3
Spending for the benet of others. settlement.
describes an adaptive integration between tradi- Needs structure of Quilcas also represent a
tion and modernity (Yamamoto et al. 2004f). step into modernity; agriculture is managed
The cited study reported that this integration more in a modern labour based, and market ori-
of tradition and modernity can be observed in the ented tendency, compared to a traditional system
values structure of the people from Acostambo. founded in ayni, minka, self-consumption, and
Exploratory factor analysis describes a mixture non-monetary exchange. Business goal emerges,
of efcient support, and some tendency to indi- and the minimalist life expectancies observed in
vidualism. Efcient support brings some instru- Chucuna is almost absent. Resources are adapted
mental emphasis compared to the support per se to the more modern goals: goods and
observed in Chucuna. The individualistic facet in emigrational labour are some examples. Values
Acostambo is related to the weakening of the acquire a pattern closer to the modern individu-
social self, however it do not has the egoism, or alistic axiology; it is about to be a good parent,
the negative competitive indicators found in and to be a successful professional, it is not
more urban settlements. This values pattern anymore to be member of a closed group of
seems like a hybrid or transitional adaptation, collaborators, involving family, friends, and
from tradition into steps to modernity. community. Financial and health services appear
Festivity is not a core episode, and it loses its as important components of the problem solving
hedonic redistributive function, it is more a network in Quilcas.
catharsis and emotional regulative event. Goal
contents go more sophisticated, with an impor-
tant increase in the number of goal factors, and 3.4 A Rural to Peri-urban
the increase of number of indicators for each Amazonian Corridor:
factor. Issues like loneliness or sports, not Differences and Similarities
observed in Chucuna and Quintaojo, are reported with the Andes
here. Acostambo seems relaxed dealing with the
tension between tradition and modernity in con- The Amazonian rainforest constitutes a different
trast to Quintaojo, that had expectations more world compared to the Andes in terms of geogra-
focused in modernity compared to Acostambo, phy and culture. Despite its relatively low popu-
with less resources to support their satisfaction lation, it is an important component of Latin
(Yamamoto et al. 2004f). This nding emphasise American social behaviour, representing a signif-
the importance of goal setting and its relation to icant proportion of the extension, history, and
resources in subjective life satisfaction. culture of the region, with important
Quilcas is another pueblo, has 554 households consequences for political and development
(INEI 2004), and in a similar way of Acostambo, issues.
its households describes variations from rural to Yamamoto et al. (2005) conducted an emic
more urban characteristics. It is located close to study that analysed subjective well-being, using
the urban city of Huancayo (343,313 inhabitants quantitative methods for analysing open-ended,
by 2004 according INEI), with a minor relative in-depth interviews. The sample was an Amazo-
isolation compared to Acostambo. Subjective nian corridor that included three households very
well-being analyses suggested that Quilcas isolated sites; villages with some 25 households;
represents the gateway to modernity. In the pre- and a peri-urban pueblo. Results showed that
vious sites, some kind of shade transitions from there is not a single homogenous Amazonian
tradition to modernity could be observed in the thought but multiple patterns under the same
transit from Chucuna to Acostambo. Quilcas geography, and culture; it ranges from a more
constitutes a sharp difference, where traditional minimalist philosophy, to a more complex,
traits tend to disappear, incorporating basic modern-like structure. The more minimalist
elements of urban life; collectivism is diluted needs pattern is related to a nuclear family,
and individualism could emerge (Yamamoto extended family and community life centred
et al. 2004d). goal. The more complex are related to the
36 J. Yamamoto
introduction of modern expectancies that biodiversity but low in species density, a combi-
cohabits with Amazonian tradition. Resources nation that is very sensitive to overexploitation.
pattern also describes steps from minimalist to As game and shing is a main source of proteins
more complex styles, from a simple focus on job, in the Amazonas, the conservancy of the species
religion and party, to more complex patterns is crucial, and religious rituals for hunting quotas
related to formal education versus sharing are present in different Amazonian cultures
moments with family. The latter describes the (Ortz 2001). Before hunting, Amazonians ask
conict of many Amazonian families that live to a deity, the Master of Animals, the number,
in isolated places, as there is no school, children sex and age of the preys allowed to be hunted.
should be separated of the family for achieving The answers of the master of the animals have
formal education. been related to an optimum load for the
It is noteworthy that despite the huge geo- sustainability of the species. A transgression of
graphical and historical differences, a similar the religious rituals is related to a negative con-
pattern compared to the Andes is found; this is sequence to the physical health, what illustrates
the minimalist lifestyle in remote sites, and the importance of spirituality as a need compo-
hybrid mixtures into steps to modernity. Never- nent, and its relation to hunting, shing, and
theless, particular Amazonian patterns are also well-being. The Master of Animals as been
identied, for example, hunting, shing, and reported in Africa, and Australia as well, with a
gathering lifestyle, with a concern of spiritual similar conservancy function (Slotten 1965).
and physical health, which was not found in the The Amazonian tension between tradition and
Andes. The gathering lifestyle component of the modernity represents the face that is in contact to
mentioned factor is related to the Amazonian modernity, and can be observed in needs,
ecology, which is a at land exuberant of life resources and values structure. For example, an
but is at the same time very fragile. An intense exploratory factor analysis yields the need factor:
agricultural activity is not possible due to a rich, Salaried job versus tranquillity (Yamamoto
but very thin layer of soil that, after some few et al. 2005). Explaining this factor, the traditional
years of exploitation, reduces drastically its life in the small native groups, as previously
harvesting capacity. As a consequence, recollec- described, is related to shing, hunting and
tion of wild plants, and horticultural activity collecting; activities that are considered leisure
with low volume, and high diversity of plants in modern world are daily activities for Amazo-
that resembles the biodiversity of the rainforest nian natives. As Amazonian natives should hunt,
, are sustainable practices that favours a culture and collect just what is required in short term in
of small, horizontal, and autonomous order to avoid overexploitation, those activities
communities (Camino 1985). In contrast, the cannot be intensive. This leads to a social routine
Andes mountains have the capacity to hold inten- of high levels of tranquillity, and leisure, related
sive agriculture in favour of a social organisation to a non-industrious job attitude. This low work-
of big, hierarchical societies; small groups would load tendency is extended to Amazonian cities,
not be able to transform the Andean slopes into where Andean migrants perceive the
agricultural terraces, and irrigate them through Amazonians as lazy,5 and human resources
water canals of many kilometres of longitude, a managers nd a labour culture that is opposed
system that maximise the exploitation of the to the modern workday standards. Punctuality;
Andean environment. This leads to the absence assistance, and 8 h, 5 days a week labour is out of
of a collecting need in favour to a highly Amazonian goals and lifestyles. For example, an
organised collective agriculture tendency. unwritten Amazonian rule is that, when it rains, a
Hunting and shing native species are also meeting is automatically cancelled (consider that
part of the hunting, shing, and collecting life-
style with a concern of spiritual and physical
5
health factor. The rainforest is very rich in In contrast, Amazonian perceives Andeans as greedy.
Amazonian rainforest has one of the highest pre- the paper work in order to get support from the
cipitation levels in the world). At the other hand, government to get the goal of sewage.
Salaried job brings important benets, in words Urban poverty sharply appears, La Esperanza
of Amazonian interviewees, money is received it is not anymore a pueblo surrounded by agricul-
each month, in big amounts (compared to what tural land where traditional houses are part of the
they usually receive selling a small volume of Andean landscape. It is a slum that brings issues
rainforest goods) despite the weather conditions, unknown in previous sites as insecurity, insalu-
in contrast to the logic of the rainforest, which brity, and lack of food resources. The interviews
according to the climate, sometimes nature also reported the emergence of physical abuse,
brings a lot, but some other times brings almost frustration and poverty. Chucuna and Quintaojo,
nothing. These paradoxes can explain the factor despite to be in the extreme poverty range, and
salaried-job versus tranquillity factor. in a poorer level compared to La Esperanza
The tensions between tradition and moder- (Copestake et al. 2008), it was a place plenty of
nity, between natural resources and industry, food resources, without contamination, and with
are related to the internal contradictions between a very strong sense of respect to the property and
the minimalism and the complexity, and the lives of others. From the point of view of the
many shades of grey between them. corridor studies, the poverty indicators make no
sense at all.
In La Esperanza, evidence of adapting values
3.5 Shantytowns: From Bucolic to the urban poverty was also observed. To be
Happiness to Urban-Marginal hard workers, and stay away from trouble is an
Stress important emerging urban value. Support at the
interpersonal and community level disappears, in
A next step into urban life, in emigrational corri- contrast, concrete work emerges, what suggests a
dor terms, is La Esperanza. Located in the Andes, reduction in the trust of future reciprocation,
is a shantytown in Huancayo City with 3,135 emphasizing tangible results. It is noteworthy
inhabitants which includes areas that ranges the appearance of conformism and gossipers
from extreme poverty to low socio-economical value factor. These values are contrary to what
class. An emic study Yamamoto et al. (2004e) could be considered politically correct; however,
found that La Esperanza described a more urban it is a common behavioural pattern that can be
hybrid adaptations, in the transit from a bucolic observed pervasively in La Esperanza and other
environment to a shantytown: a poverty culture. urban sites. One possible explanation is that con-
If the peri-urban pueblo of Quilcas was the formism can have a function of frustration reduc-
gateway to modernity and individualism, the tion in a poverty environment, as goal reduction
study reported that La Esperanza is a step is one way to obtain satisfaction, particularly
ahead, in the centre of the urban poor scenario. when barriers for goal achievement are present.
However, emigrational corridor in terms of sub- As achievement standards are social by nature,
jective well-being processes should not be gossips could function as regulator of the social
interpreted as a lineal function. Collectivism, a standards by criticising individuals that drifts
condition associated to tradition, is higher in La apart, up and down from the base line.
Esperanza compared to Quilcas. Furthermore, a A probable drawback of this adaptation is that
change from tradition to modernity was not it can serve as a barrier for progress. Let us put an
observed, but hybrid solutions that include indi- imaginary example, the staff in a Latin American
vidualistic approaches to modern problems that university is comfortable repeating the informa-
coexist with collectivistic behaviours related to tion of old classic books. If there appears a lec-
social resources are observed. Some traditional turer who introduces recent empirical research,
practices of reciprocal support, like minka, and would be a good thing for scientic update of the
ayni, are transformed in neighbourhood institution. However, if this practice should set a
committees. These committees, for example, do new standard, would imply less time for
38 J. Yamamoto
ubiquitous chatting, long table talk conversations An emic study in Huaycan reported a similar
during ofce hours, and similar collectivistic subjective well-being pattern compared to La
interdependent interaction. The alternative sce- Esperanza (Yamamoto et al. 2004c). Goals
nario is to attack the threat through strategic increases in number and in contents, possibly
social exclusion, using gossip as a vehicle, as an adaptation to the complexities of the slum.
mixing true with fantasy, discrediting the source Resources also describe a similar pattern of
of danger. If he talks with females students adaptation compared to La Esperanza; informal
would be a sexual offender, if not, his masculin- job appears as a main resource, with
ity would be questioned, a bad thing in a rela- occupations like gardener, maid, or labour for
tively macho society. Does not matter what, there house maintenance. Values show a clearer ten-
will always be something to talk badly about dency to individualism, with an emphasis in
someone, which will inuence the perception of individual study and hard work, and a wealthy
the collectivistic mind, which is particularly and altruistic professional.
concerned about others, and about own percep- Adaptations for a culture of poverty found in
tion from others. Therefore, the gossip can turn La Esperanza are more challenged in Huaycan,
the reloaded lecturer promise into a social mon- the closeness to a big city could raise
ster, conserving staffs well-being above prog- expectations due to the exposition the higher
ress. As Latin American organisations tend to living standards, and at the same time, the
be less oriented by meritocracy, and more prone resources could be scarcer due to the distance
to amiguismo,6 the group will protect tradition, from agricultural Andean land. The reciprocal
favouring subjective well-being above science, altruistic unity of the family-friends-community
wealth of the family, friends, and co-operators seems to be disarticulated, as in the case of La
above wealth of the one who deserves, and so Esperanza. The respectable comuneros, a hierar-
on. The challenge for Latin America seems to be chy of high social status in the Andes are
how to keep well-being with progress. marginalised and socially excluded in the city,
The last site of the Andean corridor study is the which raises the question about why people leave
Comunidad Autogestionaria de Huaycan the bucolic happiness of Chucuna or the
(Huaycan self-organised community) with a pop- tradition-modernity equilibrium of Acostambo?
ulation of 82,757 inhabitants, distributed in Why a massive migratory ow to urban
13,860 households, located in the peripheral shantytowns like Huaycan is a stable pattern in
area of the city of Lima (Yamamoto Latin America, and in many parts of the world?
et al. 2004c) in an arid coastal range. At the A possible answer can be found in one factor
beginning of the settlement of Huaycan, it was of Huaycan needs: Sacrice for childrens edu-
an emigrational site characterised by its extreme cation, what suggests a trade-off of personal hap-
poverty conditions. During the peak moments of piness for the tness of the lineage. Chucuna and
terrorism in the decades of 1980 and 1990 in Peru, Acostambo are happy places, but low in tness.
Huaycan was a zone controlled by Shining Path There are many abuses that Andean comuneros
terrorist movement. At present, Huaycan receive, in terms of human rights violations,
comprises a varied population, with huge unfair trading of their agricultural and livestock
differences in terms of access to basic services, production and restricted access to high quality
transportation, and public services that ranges health services, among many others. A migrant
from extreme poverty to middle class. can work hard, and in one generation be inserted
in an environment with relatively less abuses,
can be an employee and have a career
6
(by performance or by amiguismo), maybe
A group of power in an organization. It rules the career
become an executive, or even president of the
of the members of the group based in the loyalty and
belonging to the group of power, above the abilities, republic as was the case of Alejandro Toledo in
competence and performance of an individual. Peru, or Evo Morales in Bolivia.
The previous discussion can have two possible CFI 0.991, RMSEA 0.025]. Present section
theoretical interpretations. The rst is related to will report the conrmatory factor analysis of
eudaimonic well-being7: fullling an intrinsic this common structure of needs in Latin Ameri-
goal, progress for children, is superordinate to the can. The analysis used the data collected by
hedonic pleasure of stay in a happy place. Another Garcia (Yamamoto and Garca 2012) in
interpretation is an evolutionary theoretical 459 undergraduates students from different
approach where happiness is a subordinated mech- faculties in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Peru.
anism that serves as an emotional indicator of the
achievement of a superordinate function: the tness
of the individual and its lineage (Yamamoto 2008b,
3.6.1 Optimistic Adaptation
2011), in terms of inclusive tness (Hamilton
1964). If this is true, it is incorrect to state
The rst factor of needs has three indicators: to
. . .happiness and well-being as universal goals
be positive, optimist ( 0.64); enjoy and
and aspirations in the lives of human beings. . ..
appreciate what you have ( 0.60), and to
(United Nations 2012), the goal would be to pro-
cope/adapt to problems ( 0.58). Optimism
mote inclusive tness of all humans, and the con-
and adaptation are two core social psychological
sequence will be happiness; in this case, the order
processes and can be particularly found as part of
of factors do alters the product, massively, as the
a Latin American lifestyle.
difference between follow where the nger is or
There is wide evidence of the positive relation
follow where the nger points.
between optimism and well-being in different
contexts (Daukantaite and Bergman 2005; Day
2003; Hashimoto and Koyasu 2011; Ho
3.6 Urban Latin American et al. 2010; Quevedo and Abella 2010; Scheier
Happiness Structure and Carver 1987). Furthermore, a recent study in
Lebanon found no differences in subjective well-
Previous sections described the roots of Latin being in a sample of subjects assessed during
American subjective well-being in traditional peace time, and a comparable sample
communities living closer from the lifestyle of investigated during violent and tumultuous
ancient cultures, where peri-urban sites described times; optimism (not to live in peace time or
a transitional space for modernity. Urban violent times) predicted SWB Ayyash-Abdo
shantytowns appear as the grounds of Latin (2010), suggesting the role of optimism in coping
America poverty culture and the basis of social with important social problems. Carver
and individual regional conicts as well. A next et al. (2010) propose that optimism is
step in the analysis of Latin American Happiness characterised by generalized favourable
is to understand the subjective well-being (SWB) expectancies of the future that leads to a better
structure in Latin American cities. Is it a common subjective well-being in times of adversity,
structure that supports the existence of one Latin relates to more persistence, and better
American Happiness pattern? If the answer is relationships compared to pessimists. Optimism
yes, what is this structure? is considered an individual difference variable,
Here is presented evidence that the answer is however, seems to be a cultural pattern in Latin
yes. There are three factors of needs: Optimistic America which could explain part of the high
adaptation, a Good place to live, and Home level of subjective well-being in the region. The
[chi2 (11, N 458) 14.063, p 0.230, positive effects of optimism can be extended to
objective outcomes. A recent meta-analytic
study suggests that optimism protects consis-
7
Eudaimonic well-being states that happiness is not about tently against cardiovascular disease, indepen-
the maximisation of pleasure, avoiding pain; it is the dently of traditional risk factors as health
fullling of intrinsically needs.
40 J. Yamamoto
behaviours and biological functions (Boehm and develop a particular cheerful adaptation
Kubzansky 2012). behaviour, which can be a source to cope with
Adaptation is the second facet of the the many objective problems that characterise
Optimistic adaptation factor, and it is related to the region, but can also be part of the happy
cope or to adapt to problems. This suggests a dual equation: a game of problem solving contrasted
mechanism which tries to cope with problems, to the problemless society. This is an important
but if there are signals that the problem cannot be issue because some happiness models are based
solved, people are going to accept and to adapt to on the perfect welfare system idea, considering
that situation. In addition to cope/adapt to the happy place as one that is absolutely safe.
problems, to enjoy and appreciate what people However, countries with high levels of welfare,
have is another component of the adaptation like Japan, Finland, Austria, and Switzerland
facet. There is evidence that subjective life satis- have the highest suicidal rates, 36.550 by
faction is a function of the expectancy about a 100,000 inhabitants, while countries with low
goal contrasted by the achievement perception of levels of welfare like Peru, Guatemala, Domini-
this goal (Yamamoto and Feijoo 2007). That a can Republic and Honduras have lowest suicidal
person enjoys and appreciates what he or she has rates with 01 by 100,000 inhabitants (WHO
is an expression of a joyful goal adjustment to the 2003). Furthermore, depression prevalence,
level of achievement obtained. another incompatible condition with happiness
Together, to cope/adapt to problems, and to is higher in high income countries compared to
enjoy and appreciate what you have can function middle and low income countries (Bromet
as a frustration bumper to cope the difculties of a et al. 2011).
typical Latin American city as robbery, corruption, In this direction, some societies can develop a
and poverty. However, this is not a mean of medi- zoo well-being syndrome. Zoo guests enjoy no
ocrity because, as an opportunity arises, the prob- challenge for food, for health, and for risk of
lem will be faced to step to a next level. This is predators or anything similar, however, zoo
coherent with the clear tendency of development inhabitants are prone to depression, and tend to
in Latin America when real opportunities (that stop the reproductive chain, pattern associated to
usually differs of the idea of opportunities from the perception an extremely bad place to live.
international development programs) are given. Likewise, some developed countries may suffer
For example, a Good Place to Live has been from overdevelopment (Yamamoto et al. 2008),
found as an important need, where to live in a an overdraft in terms of societal safety with a
safe place, without violence and delinquency was high liability in subjective well-being. These
an indicator (Yamamoto and Feijoo 2007). In countries could provide resources without chal-
order to understand adaptations for the lack of lenge, reducing uncertainty to levels of a boring
security, a qualitative and quantitative study in a game with a possible resonance in a depressive
site with high levels of violence and delinquency society, loosing connection with the deep human
was conducted. Results suggests that people get and non-human mammalian nature: to have
adapted to the situation, perceiving low levels of problems, keep optimistic, and to cope or to
risk but taking objective effective measures to adapt to them. In contrast, developing
avoid the risk. However, when an opportunity countries are rich in basic level challenges, with
arises, people leave the dangerous site for a a degree of uncertainty about goal achievement,
safer place (Yamamoto et al. 2011). just as an exciting game.
Empirical evidence reports a positive relation
between adaptation and well-being in different
settings, particularly in immigration contexts 3.6.2 A Good Place to Live
(Klemens and Bikos 2009; Neto 2012). As
Latin American cities are subjects of intense The indicators of a good place to live are two:
migrations, this selective pressure could lead to security, without violence and without
delinquency ( 0.57), and to live in a clean previously discussed factor, Optimistic Adapta-
and nice environment ( 0.67). This factor has tion; it can be interpreted as a social psychologi-
also been found in rural Africa, rural Asia, and cal need to achieve happiness in a struggling
rural South American sites with some minor environment.
changes in the indicators, what suggests the uni- To live in a clean and nice environment is
versality of a Good place to Live as a need another indicator of a Good place to live factor.
(Yamamoto 2006, 2008a). This universality is There is evidence of the validity of this indicator
coherent with the evidence from population in different contexts, from Andean rural villages
genetics that all modern humans are related to (Yamamoto and Feijoo 2007), African and Asian
one single ancestor known as the chromosomic rural villages (Yamamoto 2008a), and urban
Adam, whose descendants started an Latin American cities (Yamamoto 2010). The
emigrational voyage looking for good places to effect of neighbourhood in Well-being is widely
live that nished populating virtually all spaces accepted (Sampson 2003), and as more than
on the planet (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1995; Wells 90 % of the land surface has been altered by
2003). This pattern is not only deeply ingrained human activity, it becomes an important issue
in human nature but also in many other (Thwaites et al. 2005). A growing body of
emigrational species. research underscores the importance of
Latin American countries describe a pattern of neighbourhood context for well-being, and
internal and external migrations. A systematic increasingly shows that neighbourhood
ow, from rural to urban areas within countries characteristics have direct effects on indicators
that creates multicultural cities with a syncretic of resident health and well-being (McDonell
culture of Andean, Amazonian, European, and 2007).
mass-media USA inuences. In addition, inter- It is possible that an optimal arrangement of
national migrations to developed countries are the urban environment for the good achieving of
part of the mobilisation of Latin American basic needs exist. The spatial structure is at one
population. side an aesthetic issue; however, its beautifulness
Insecurity, this is violence and delinquency, is can be associated to its role in achieving human
a social problem of many Latin American cities. needs. Spatial arrangement per se might inu-
Organised crime combined corruption in justice ence human well-being, and may offer restor-
administration and police enforcement; big ative potential (Forman 1995; Thwaites
inequities with social exclusion create a cocktail et al. 2005) to improve child and family well-
prone to insecurity. For example, homicide rates being through neighbourhood change (McDonell
in South America in 2010 was 18.44 per 100,000 2007). A clean environment, another component
habitants while in the USA was 4.8 per 100 000, of the indicator of good neighbourhood in the
and in Northern Europe was 2.8 per 100,000 Good place to live factor, can be part of the
(based on United Nations Ofce on Drugs and nice neighbourhood dimension but can also
Crime Data). The negative relation of violence have an functional role, a robust nding in the
and SWB is well established in the scientic literature is that in cities with higher levels of
literature (Jones and Kafetsios 2005), and is con- atmospheric pollution, respondents report lower
sidered as one indicator of well-being and prog- levels of personal well-being (Smyth et al. 2011).
ress (DAcci 2011). Therefore, as insecurity is a
widespread problem in Latin America, and it is
negatively related to SWB, it could explain why 3.6.3 Home
it becomes an important need to be satised.
In order to face insecurity, one solution is Home is the last factor and its two indicators are
migrating to a safer place, inside or outside the children ( 0.26), and household ( 0.67).
country. The other possible solution is to rein- In the Andean corridor, the equivalent factor was
force social psychological adaptive skills like the Family, with spouse and children as its
42 J. Yamamoto
indicators. In this poor Andean setting, a house leave home late, and can even stay at home with
could not be perceived as a need, when a couple the spouse and children. When leave the parental
decides to get married, they receive land, and in a home, visits in a weekly or more than once a week
big party, the whole community helps to build basis are common. This pattern can be viewed as
the house. However, in urban settings, a house is perverse from the perspective of Anglo-Saxon
not for free at all, and its perception as a need autonomy ideal. Children leaving home as high
could appear (Yamamoto 2010). school is nished is expected, unless mental
But why the indicator of spouse disappears in impairment. After this teenage separation, visits
the urban solution? A possible explanation is to former home can be far more distant than a
related with the high level of relationship satisfac- weekly basis. This difference is not just about
tion in traditional Andean communities. The cultural preferences, there is ample evidence that
homogeneity in terms of expectations, lifestyles, the contact and closeness to family is positively
and values could lead to a low chance of incom- related to SWB (Jackson et al. 2007; Kafetsios
patibility (Yamamoto and Feijoo 2007). In addi- 2006; Warren-Findlow et al. 2011).
tion, there is evidence that the number of options
for alternatives partners are negatively related to
satisfaction (Stanik and Bryant 2012), and, as the 3.7 Conclusions: Latin American
spouse options in the Andean communities are low Happiness Processes
due to demographic facts, the recipe for durable
and satisfactory relationships can ow naturally. The reviewed evidence suggests that happiness is
This could be related to an extremely low rate of not just a state, or is not just a trait, it is a process.
separation or divorce in rural and peri-urban sites The processes can start in the well-known evi-
which contrast the high rate of single parenting in dence of a trait component of SWB (Haslam
all socio-economic strata in urban sites et al. 2009; Love et al. 2012; Steel et al. 2008;
(Yamamoto et al. 2008). In sum, the Home factor Weiss et al. 2002). This heritable, person-
can reect the structure of a modern family that structural trait can interact with the environment
consists fundamentally in having children and a to predict SWB (Lyubomirsky et al. 2005;
house, where partner could play a secondary role. Temane and Wissing 2008). Therefore, Latin
Having children can be interpreted as the American happiness can be understood in terms
main issue for the successful continuation of the of a dynamic relation between evolutionary and
lineage, the main need for all the species (Darwin genotype structural components, and environ-
1859; Hamilton 1964), what suggests that this mental characteristics, through psychosocial pro-
could be the most universal need, even beyond cesses. Summarising the conclusions of the
the frontiers of human, and mammal species. If present chapter, three core processes related to
this is true, an evolutionary brain wiring three needs are discussed, nalising with a sum-
connecting the achievement perception of the mary of the roots of this processes.
continuation of the lineage with happiness brain
centres should be one of the most powerful
pathways to happiness. The signicant but com- 3.7.1 Family and Social Relations
paratively low association index of children to
the factor ( 0.26) can be explained because One pervasive characteristic of Latin American
younger people (over represented in the sample behaviour is the importance of family and social
of the present study) may not have the children relations, particularly in traditional groups. There
goal in a high level yet, leading to a lower but is evidence of an Latin American inter-
signicant association. dependent (Harb and Smith 2008; Kitayama
The importance of Home could be a central and Uskul 2011), and collectivistic (Hofstede
characteristic of Latin American Happiness. Chil- 1980; Triandis 1990; Triandis et al. 1986) self,
dren can stay at home during the post school age, and collectivistic values (Fontaine et al. 2008;
Schwartz 2006; Schwartz and Bilsky 1987; meditation, tness, drinking, and shopping in
Yamamoto and Feijoo 2007). This tendency is order to feel better, however, efforts to increase
opposed to the independent (Kitayama et al. 1997; the time, quality, and supportiveness of family
Markus and Kitayama 1991), individualistic and friend relations is rarely observed, despite it
(Hofstede 1980; Triandis 1996; Triandis is cheaper, and it has the potential to be more
et al. 1988) self, and values (Fontaine effective.
et al. 2008; Schwartz and Bilsky 1987). However,
this difference is not neutral in terms of its effect
in SWB. From an evolutionary neuroscience per- 3.7.2 Latin America: An Imperfect
spective, MacDonald and Leary concluded that Place to Live, the Happy
. . .Those of us living in individualistic societies Adventure Park
are inundated with messages trumpeting auton-
omy and individuality. Yet, a picture is emerging, For many years, welfare societies were the pro-
that people are so vitally important to each other totype for well-being, and the Scandinavian
that social needs are ingrained in our very biol- model was considered as the perfect achievement
ogy. (MacDonald and Leary 2005). A rst con- of this ideal. However, evidence of depression,
clusion is that non-autonomous interdependence, suicide, and low levels of self-reported happiness
non-individualistic collective self, and values, is challenged this classic paradigm. In some sense,
one of the explanations of Latin American a Zoo is a replica of the perfect welfare society,
Happiness. its inhabitants will have health, food, and any
This interdependent collectivism seems to be other basic need covered; all danger as
articulated in a progressive network, with family predators or competitors will be solved. How-
in the centre, close friends adjacent to them, and ever, the Zoo guest is not a cheerful, full repro-
community or neighbourhood in a more exterior ductive individual; it is more a depressed,
layer. This network can describe differences bleached, non-reproductive exemplar. Wild spe-
within Latin American sites, for example, in a cies evolved to solve problems related to sur-
small traditional community almost all vival, reproduction, and tness (Darwin 1859,
inhabitants are kin related so family and friends 1890; Hamilton 1964) and the execution of the
cant be distinguished. This nding has impor- mechanisms related to solve these survival
tant implications for well-being programs. It is problems, and the achievement of these goals or
obvious that family is an important element for needs, should be part of the nature of living
happiness, but maybe it is too obvious that is species, therefore, a core part of happiness.
underrated. In addition, as it is not an exciting Humans are not exempt of this dynamics; our
topic and it could be difcult to sell, can be ancestral history wired our brains through
overshadowed by other materialistic or millions of years to be happy facing successfully
meditation-spiritualistic goods. For example, an the challenges of evolution. Therefore, a per-
emic study in a Latin American company fect society, without insecurity, would be an
identied the family need as the main factor for unhappy place to live. On the other extreme, a
subjective well-being of the employees. The society with no rules, with no control for surviv-
company runs one of the more complete ing would be also the prototype of the unhappy
programs of incentives and benets for the place. Something in the middle, a society that is
well-being of the collaborators, however, not completely done, with some control, some
programs that support the satisfaction with fam- structure but some real challenges could be the
ily where omitted. With a low budget, and with- happier region of the world.
out challenging productivity, pro-family Lets consider an adventure park, where you
programs were implemented, and an important need to sh or to hunt, otherwise you will starve.
increase in the satisfaction was observed. In addi- Or a virtual reality game, when you must follow
tion, many people spent time and resources in the correct procedures to get a good harvest, or
44 J. Yamamoto
your family will suffer hunger. Or maybe an 3.7.3 Optimistic Adaptation as a Key
action lm, when you arrive in a city where you Feature of Latin American
need to take care of the bad guys, that will steal Happiness Adaptation
your more precious material belongings, or with
bad luck, they can kill you. You are not going to If Latin America is a challenging environment
be depressed; you are going to enjoy that park, for survival, it could be expected that the struc-
that game, that lm with high intensity and ture of needs will include a feature that is not
maybe with addictive devotion. In this direction, related with a need by itself but a psychosocial
Amazonian villagers do not need to work coping mechanism. That could be the case of the
11 months in a boring ofce or plant, to go for Optimistic adaptation factor. In contrast to a
holidays to an adventure park; they sh and hunt Good place to live, and Home, that are nal
on a daily basis for living. Andean peasants are needs to be achieved, Optimist adaptation is
not addicted to virtual reality games; they work somehow a copying style, which possibly is so
the land to get a harvest for the family and the important in the region that acquires a need
community. Any day is an action movie in urban status.
cities, with real possibilities to be a victim of the The real life challenges in Latin America
thieves, bandit or ofcials, but taking some seems not so solved to be evolutionary boring,
precautions, you can have control and live rela- but they appear to be not devastating enough to
tively safe, chapter by chapter. create an unbearable stressing environment.
In the meantime, brain is adapting to cope Family and friends are a central part for coping,
with stress, not to create imaginary stressors, resembling the key feature of human tness:
producing a resiliency to problems. But it is not collectivistic organisation. However, there
just the strengthened capability to cope seems to be an additional feature of the copying
problems, the problems itself are a source of strategy, that is, to be positive, enjoy what you
happiness if they are faced in a collective way. have, to adapt to problems that cant be solved, or
Social neuroscience evidence found that when a to cope the difculties that cant be coped: an
person is under stress, they produce cortisol, a Optimistic adaptation. It is important to underlie
substance that is used to measure stress objec- that this is not the see the half of a glass full
tively (Clow et al. 2004; Hellhammer attitude, it is to see both, the half of a glass
et al. 2009). A cortisol increase is related to empty, and the half of a glass full, and look to
oxytocin production, which has the effect to the context if there is water to ll the glass or not.
motivate the individual to look for social support. A recent study analysed the achievement of
If the individual receives support, cortisol Optimistic adaptation in different Peruvian cities
(stress) is reduced, and opioids, a substance that (Yamamoto 2012). A priori, some candidates can
produce pleasure, is released (Taylor and be selected. Cusco, with its world heritage status
Gonzaga 2007; Taylor et al. 2006). This is an as city, and excessively proud cusquenos; or
illustration of an evolved mechanism that wired maybe Iquitos, a city in the middle of the Ama-
the human brain to be happy facing the zonian rainforest, plenty of culture, natural
challenges for survival in a collective strategy. resources, and extremely friendly and collectiv-
Therefore, the second conclusion is that Latin istic people. However, the highest level of
American happiness could be based in a process Optimistic adaptation was found in Huancayo, a
that starts with real but relatively controlled noisy city, with a personalityless architecture,
challenges to survival, that are coped in a collec- without an exuberant vegetation and wildlife in
tivistic way, which resemble ancestral the surroundings. However, the Huancas are not
challenges, and solutions, which activates people whose collective self-esteem rely on the
evolved pleasure centres. glorious past of the Incas, or on the social status
of the traditional familias cusquenas, they
believe in hard work and personal familial Peri-urban pueblos describe hybrid mixtures
success. They keep the ancient traditions, but of this traditional minimalism with modernity.
are inserted in modernity. During the day they Traditional practices bring identity, and support
are hard workers, by night they are enthusiastic agriculture, and livestock activities that cohabit
and indefatigable esteros. They do adapt to with modern tendencies, which increase the
circumstances and take the opportunities when number, and complexity of goals. The transfor-
possible. They stay optimistic, enjoying what mation of interdependent collectivism into a
they are, and what they have. They live in a more individualistic pattern can be observed as
challenging environment coping with a strong a shade of grey, the closed support and affection
cohesion with family and friends. Therefore, the unity of family-friends-community that charac-
third conclusion is that an optimistic coping style terise the minimalist well-being pattern becomes
that acquires need status, taking opportunities to more instrumental, but still did not represent an
progress or adapting to the situation when not individualistic pattern. The Fiesta, that has an
feasible, enjoying what you have is an important important redistributive function in traditional
psychosocial dimension of the happiness in the settings, becomes a more hedonic episode. Col-
region. Latin American happiness is not just the lective action is also decreased, and the depen-
exotic landscape, is not about the ancient wisdom dence on government support and public services
of ancestral magic herbs, it is in an optimistic rises. The natural cultural respect of common
adaptive coping style that faces real problems goods is reduced, starting to require the vigilance
with the unconditional support and acceptance of ofcial intervention.
of family and friends. Shantytowns show the emergence of a poverty
culture. In the previous sites, a bucolic environ-
ment, and an agriculture society based in sharing
3.7.4 Origins and Final Conclusions and supporting leads to the inexistence of hunger,
of Latin American Happiness and aggressive ght for resources. In this next
step into modernity, urban poverty sharply
Where do the processes explained above come appears. It is a slum that brings issues unob-
from? The origins can be traced in the minimalist served in previous sites as insecurity, insalubrity,
well-being lessons of Andean and Amazonian and physical abuse. Still some traditional
small traditional communities which constitute patterns as ayni and minka can be observed, but
the grounds of Latin American happiness, a life transformed into the urban necessities. It is not a
style that mimics the ancestral environment, the change from tradition to modernity but hybrid
deep nature where the happiness brain wiring solutions, individualistic approaches to modern
occurred; a physical and social environment problems, with collectivistic behaviours related
that naturally activates the brain pleasure to social resources, for example.
circuits. Culture resemble evolutionary needs; Some subjective well-being patterns in rural,
resources to achieve needs are available for peri-urban and urban marginal sites have been
everyone; positive, interdependent collectivistic discussed, however, the evidence suggest that if
interaction is ingrained in behaviour, supporting, there is some rural to urban corridor, this is not a
working, competing, and sharing. lineal one. A peri-urban site showed a more
Efcient collective action reduces the neces- traditional pattern compared to a rural, small
sity for safeguarding individual rights while sus- site, furthermore, a shantytown described more
tainable practices to keep common goods reduces traditional tendencies compared to a peri-urban
the requirement of private property defence, site. This non-linearity can be explained by
which leads to high levels of competence with social inuence inserted in goals, and values,
low inequality; together, a system where all which not necessarily correlates with the relative
components have a common characteristic: a isolation from modern cities or the population
pervasive fun, particularly in the extremely size, what emphasize the idea that subjective
hedonic esta. life satisfaction is not a function of what you
46 J. Yamamoto
have but a relation between what you want, and being and cardiovascular health. Psychological Bulle-
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being patters in rural, peri-urban, and urban sites, national epidemiology of DSM-IV major depressive
however, goals and values transmitted by social episode. BMC Medicine, 9(1), 90.
inuences seems to be a more reliable indicator Buss, D. (2000). The evolution of happiness. American
Psychologist, 55(1), 1523.
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contrast of what you have, and what you want is ence of the mind (2nd ed.). Boston: Pearson.
an important indicator for subjective well-being. Camino, A. (1985). Antropologa Amaz onica. Una Vision
Finally, if happiness would be the supreme Retrospectiva. In H. Rodriguez (Ed.), La Antropologa
en el Peru Lima: CONCYTEC (pp. 133142).
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worldwide emigrational pattern from small tradi- mism. Clinical Psychology Review, 30(7), 879889.
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The Relevance of Happiness: Choosing
Between Development Paths in Latin 4
America
Mariano Rojas
4.1 Introduction with a movement from a less desired situation to a

preferred one; it is presumed that people are better
Development is a signicant word. In some off as a consequence of progress.
disciplines, such as education and psychology, Development and progress are vague by
development is associated to a pattern which necessity. It is a responsibility of each society
human beings are expected to follow in their to provide substance to these concepts; this is: to
process of growing up; some deviations from the delineate the specic conception of development
pattern may occur, but all people are expected to and of progress which is relevant in a given age
develop around the expected pattern. In other and region, and which will be used to justify
social sciences, such as economics, political sci- policy actions and the choice of social-
ence, and sociology, development is associated to organization schemes. Because progress and
a state which societies should aim to attain or to development refer to the bettering off of
the process which leads to that state. The social- societies citizens, it is impossible to disentangle
science literature makes constant reference to their specic conceptions from the conception of
concepts such as economic development, political well-being a society embraces. Hence, the con-
development and social development. Why cept of well-being must have a specic substance
societies should aim to that state and whether it in order to delineate progress and development.
ought to be the same for all societies is a matter of The twentieth century was dominated by a
permanent discussion in social sciences. The pref- well-being conception directly associated to
erence for development is justied on the pre- peoples capacity of purchasing economic goods
sumption of citizens being in a better off and services; in consequence, progress consisted
situation in a developed society. The alternative in raising per capita income and development was
to development is unclear and usually dened by understood as a state where citizens enjoyed -on
exclusion (less developed, underdeveloped, devel- average and in a generalized way- high income
oping); however, independently of the term used, levels. The rate of growth of the income indicator
it is presumed that citizens are worse off in such usually the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per
society. Progress, which is another concept with a capita- became tantamount of progress; and those
long tradition in social sciences, is also associated countries with the highest GDP per capita were
considered as developed. Under this conception
afuence in goods and services became the
M. Rojas (*) desired state, and people living in afuent
FLACSO-Mexico and UPAEP, Mexico City, Mexico societies where considered to be better off.

52 M. Rojas
Different critiques to the predominance of which is relevant to any discussion about

GDP and of related income-based measures- societys progress and economic performance.
in the assessment of development were raised Section 4.3 provides an illustration of the rele-
during the last decades of the twentieth century. vance of the happiness approach by showing how
The Social Indicators Movement stated that eco- happiness considerations would lead to a reas-
nomic measures provided limited information sessment of the development and reform
and it claimed for the incorporation of large sets recommendations made to Latin American
of variables regarding social conditions (Estes countries. Section 4.4 elaborates on the contribu-
1984). The Capabilities and Functionings tion of happiness to the concepts of development
approach argued for evaluating well-being on and progress, to the policy actions of the twenty-
the realm of opportunities to act and be rather rst century, and to social-science research.
than on the specic results of peoples actions
(Sen 1993). A more recent literature claims that
happiness, as it is measured by subjective well-
4.2 Happiness Provides New
being (SWB) indicators, provides relevant infor-
Relevant Information
mation to assess peoples well-being and, in con-
sequence, should be used to address the crucial
This section shows that conceptions of develop-
question of what development and progress
ment and progress based on raising GDP per
should mean in the beginning of the third
capita or attaining high GDP per capita levels
millennium.
are very limited to capture the multiplicity of
This chapter argues for an understanding of
sources for experiencing wellness in life.
well-being as peoples experience of being well,
as well as for measuring it on the basis of subjec-
tive well-being indicators. The chapter states that
happiness can be measured and that it needs to be 4.2.1 Standard Economic Theory:
measured in order to have comprehensive infor- Income and Well-Being
mation about well-being as it is experienced by
people. Income plays many roles in the economics theory
In consequence, this chapter argues that hap- of welfare:
piness understood as the experience of being First, it is seen as a crucial resource -maybe
well and measured on the basis of peoples own the most important one- for attaining what a
appreciation of their lives- can make a substantial person considers of relevance for her well-
contribution to the pursuit of better societies in being. It may be that income allows people to
the twenty-rst century, as well as to social- purchase valuable commodities, which, in conse-
science research. The chapter provides an illus- quence, add value to their life.1
tration about the importance of measuring happi- Second, income is a direct proxy for a
ness on the basis of data from Latin America. It is persons well-being or utility. Most economists
shown that the using of happiness would imply see income as an instrument to attain greater
reconsideration of the development strategies to well-being; the argument states that income
follow and of the reforms to implement. Those allows people to consume economic goods
countries which emerge as very successful on the (goods with positive market price) in order to
basis of their GDP per capita performance are not satisfy material needs. It is assumed that well-
necessarily the countries where people are being (utility) increases with the satisfaction of
experiencing a satisfactory life. This illustration material needs and, in consequence, that it
is used to show the limitations of the GDP per increases with greater income.
capita as well as the importance of keeping track
of happiness.
The chapter is structured as follows, Sect. 4.2 1
It could also be that income allows people to give market
argues that happiness provides new information value to those commodities that are of value to their life.
4 The Relevance of Happiness: Choosing Between Development Paths in Latin America 53
Third, in economic theory income is a proxy place in their society. Easterlin (1974) found
for a persons contribution to society. The market that the impact of income in raising a persons
retribution to a persons effort in the production happiness is negligible when everybody elses
of goods and services reects the value attributed income is also rising. In other words, he showed
by other people in society to this effort. As such, that the role of income in providing an experi-
income is commonly used to value a persons ence of being well emerges mostly from
life, and it is a criterion used by economists to providing a greater status in society, rather than
allocate scarce resources across people in an from allowing satisfying more material needs.
efcient way and even to value peoples lives. Easterlins nding has been supported by further
Furthermore, aggregate-income indicators are research made by many economists (Clark and
also assumed to be good proxies for the existence Senik 2011; Clark Frijters and Shields 2008).
of favorable habitability conditions for well- There is also a vast literature that emphasizes
being, such as access to freeways, high technol- the relevance of social immersion and interde-
ogy, appliances, health services, and so on. pendence of preferences (Postlewaite 1998).
Thus, there are many ways in which economic Thus, higher income may not necessarily be
theory stresses the use of income as a good proxy associated to people experiencing greater well-
for assessing a persons well-being. Hence, being when societies enter the race for status and
greater income ends up being associated to when purchasing of economic goods is motivated
greater well-being and dening concepts such by showing off.
as progress and development. This is a view
which has been widely used by economists; how-
ever, this view faces many deciencies, which 4.2.2.2 People May Raise Their
have been exposed by the happiness literature Aspirations and Change Their
(Leite Mota 2007). Evaluation Norms
Well-being is assumed to depend on what people
consume, but not on the gap between what peo-
4.2.2 The Limitations of Income ple consume and what people aspire to consume.
as a Proxy for Well-Being. About twenty-ve centuries ago Diogenes stated
Findings from Happiness that a rich person is not that who has a lot but that
Research who needs the less. Happiness research has
shown that the gap between what a person
4.2.2.1 Persons Are Socially Immersed consumes and what a person aspires to consume
Standard economic theory has assumed that well- matters for well-being and that aspirations seem
being emerges from the consumption of goods to be endogenous and to rise with income
and services to satisfy material needs. According (Stutzer 2004; Fuentes and Rojas 2001). Thus, a
to this theory, the relation between consumption greater income which is accompanied by higher
and well-being is an individual matter, where the aspirations may have little impact on well-being.
surrounding social conditions in which this con- Graham and Pettinato (2004) have shown that in
sumption takes place play no role at all. In con- some Latin American cases aspirations may have
sequence, the individualistic foundations of risen faster than income, generating what they
standard economic theory do imply that well- call frustrated achievers, this is: people who
being should increase with income indepen- have more consumption power than before but
dently of what is taking place in the rest of who nevertheless are less satised with their
society. However, happiness research has lives. Thus, higher income may not necessarily
shown that it is necessary to take into account be associated to greater well-being when
the social immersion of human beings, since the aspirations do matter and when these aspirations
life satisfaction they may derive from greater do not remain constant due to the strategies
income does depend on what else is taking implemented to raise GDP per capita.
54 M. Rojas
4.2.2.3 People May Easily Adapt affects). In addition, satisfactory inter-personal

to the New Consumption Goods relations do require allocating substantial time
Economic development, as measured by the to partners, children, rest of family, friends,
increase in the availability of goods and services neighbors, and colleagues; thus, the pursuing of
in society, is not only about having larger higher income levels may end up competing with
quantities of the same goods but also about hav- the production of relational goods due to a
ing new goods. Back in 1881, Edgeworth pro- persons limited endowment of time. When rela-
posed the law of diminishing sensibility to tional goods are taken into consideration it
stimuli. This low was forgotten by standard eco- becomes clear that income is not the only rele-
nomics, but it has been rescued in the concepts of vant resource for well-being, that it is not a good
habituation and adaptation. Happiness studies do proxy for well-being, and that it does not fully
show that habituation to income takes place and capture a persons contribution to society. It may
that people may quickly habituate to some con- be possible for persons as well as for societies-
sumption goods (Easterlin 2005; Di Tella to show up a substantial increase in afuence
et al. 2007). Thus, new goods may provide a (availability of economic goods) while there is
short-term impact on peoples well-being, but substantial deterioration of interpersonal
the impact will not last longer. Frank (2005) relations. Hence, happiness does not necessarily
argues that the rate of habituation to consumption increase with raising income, in special if greater
goods may be faster that than to other activities income levels are accompanied by less time to
(such as recreational activities and relational pursue satisfactory interpersonal relations.
activities); hence, from a well-being perspective
it may be better for people to allocate their effort 4.2.2.5 Not All Needs Are Material.
and time to pursuing recreational and relational Human Beings Do Also Have
activities rather than to increasing their income Psychological Needs
to purchase consumption goods. Human beings do also have psychological needs,
and their satisfaction is crucial for well-being.
Deci and Ryan (1985) mention the following
4.2.2.4 Bias Towards Economic Goods. No
basic psychological needs: competence, related-
Consideration of Relational Goods
ness and autonomy. Kasser (2002) has shown
Happiness research has shown that interpersonal
that income is not a relevant resource in the
relations matter for happiness. Having satisfac-
satisfaction of psychological needs and that
tory relations with family, friends and neighbors
sometimes materialistic values and the pursuit
may be an important source of happiness (Rojas
of greater income may get in conict with the
2007). In an analogy to economic goods, some
satisfaction of basic psychological needs. Thus,
economists and sociologists have started talking
people could end up having more income but
about relational goods, in an indication that
lower happiness. Afuence of material goods
relations have proven to be relevant for well-
may be a very inefcient way of satisfying the
being, as well as for human motivation
psychological needs which are relevant for
(Becchetti and Santoro 2007; Pugno 2007; Gui
human beings.
and Sugden 2005). However, standard economic
theory makes no consideration of relational
4.2.2.6 There Is More to Life than
goods; it assumes that well-being depends on
the Standard of Living
the consumption of economic goods alone. Fur-
The domains-of-life literature states that well-
thermore, this literature shows that income is not
being arises from satisfaction in many domains
a relevant proxy for a persons access to rela-
of life where people are being and acting as
tional goods because it is difcult to purchase
human beings. Rojas (2007) has shown that
relational goods (for example, people cannot
there is more in life than the standard of living,
really purchase love and esteem in a market of
and that for many people there are more
important things. On the basis of data from privatization and a reduction in the size and
Mexico and Costa Rica, Rojas has shown that scope of government activities (The so called
satisfaction in the family domain (with partner, Washington Consensus) (Rojas 2012a) However,
children and rest of family relations) is crucial the development debate in Latin America has
for happiness; satisfaction with availability and focused on debating strategies rather than on
use of free time as well as with health is also very debating the nal goals society should aspire
important. Economic satisfaction is less impor- for. It is clear that all strategies assume on an
tant for happiness, and its importance is similar income-based conception for development.
to that from job satisfaction (having a gratifying By providing a new conception for well-
job). Furthermore, Rojas (2007) shows that being, happiness can redene the conceptions of
income is relevant in explaining economic and development and progress and, in consequence,
job satisfaction, but that its explanatory power is lead to the denition of new social aims. From a
negligible when it comes out to explain satisfac- happiness perspective, a developed society is one
tion in such relevant domains of life as family where most people are satised with their lives,
and availability and gratifying use of free time. and progress means increasing happiness in a
Thus, even though the relationship between generalized way within societies.
income and happiness may be statistically signif-
icant in cross-section individually-based
databases, it happens that it is a weak relation- 4.3.2 Income-Based Development
ship, so that the power of income in explaining or in Latin America
determining peoples well-being is very low
(Rojas 2011). Greater income may raise eco- If an income-based conception for development
nomic satisfaction, but its impact in other rele- is followed there is no doubt that during the last
vant domains of life where people are acting as two decades Chile has shown the best perfor-
human beings is negligible. mance in Latin America. As it is shown in
Table 4.1, the GDP per capita of Chile increased
in almost 113 % between 1990 and 2009; it is by
4.3 The Pursuit of Development far the best performance in the region. Chiles
rate of growth more than doubles the mean per-
4.3.1 The Relevant Questions About formance in the region. Chileans currently enjoy
Pursuing Development the higher per capita GDP in the region; in addi-
tion, income-based poverty rates are compara-
Most societies aspire to development and to tively low in the country. As a matter of fact,
progress, since they are supposed to mean greater Chile has recently being admitted to the Organi-
well-being for their citizens. However, there are zation for Economic Cooperation and Develop-
two main issues in the pursuit of development ment (OECD), being the second Latin American
which always need to be addressed: First, it is country admitted to this club of relatively
necessary to know what routes lead societies to wealthy countries (Mexico became a member of
attaining a developed state; second, an even more OECD in the early 1990s on the basis of its early
important, it is necessary to know what that goal adoption and fast implementation of pro-market
which society is looking for is. Latin American reforms, rather than on the basis of its income
countries have been fully involved in debating achievements). Hence, it is of no surprise that
the rst issue; these countries have implemented many international organizations point out to
different strategies to attain development, from Chile as the model to follow in Latin America;
an inward-looking strategy based on import- an issue which raises the question of what kind of
substitution industrialization and a predominant development strategy has been implemented by
steering role for the State to an outward-looking Chile. Chile is not only considered an economic
strategy based on free-trade agreements, miracle in the region, but it is also a benchmark
56 M. Rojas
Table 4.1 GDP per capita and pro-market reform index

Latin America, by countries
GDP per capita Percentage change in GDP per Reform index mean
US dollars of 2005 capita value
Country 1990 2009 19902009 19962005
Argentina 6,822.8 11,961.3 75.3 70.3
Bolivia 2,801.0 3,793.9 35.4 72.3
Brazil 7,180.6 9,352.8 30.3 59.1
Chile 5,636.4 11,998.8 112.9 75.1
Colombia 4,620.4 7,528.7 62.9 70.9
Costa Rica 7,464.2 11,216.7 50.3 69.3
Ecuador 4,705.3 6,171.0 31.1 60.5
El Salvador 4,020.4 6,339.0 57.7 77.8
Guatemala 4,750.2 6,284.9 32.3 67.1
Honduras 3,112.5 3,605.0 15.8 60.2
Mexico 8,789.0 11,629.6 32.3 65.2
Nicaragua 2,178.5 2,191.4 0.6 62.0
Panama 5,619.3 10,196.1 81.4 74.5
Paraguay 3,793.5 3,704.8 2.3 70.8
Peru 4,003.0 7,279.8 81.9 71.0
Uruguay 6,049.5 11,069.2 83.0 71.5
Venezuela 7,810.2 9,115.2 16.7 55.8
Simple mean Latin America 5,256.3 7,849.3 46.9 67.8
Standard deviation Latin 1,891.4 3,270.3 32.4 6.3
America
Source: PWT7.0 Alan Heston, Robert Summers and Bettina Aten, Penn World Table Version 7.0, Center for Interna-
tional Comparisons of Production, Income and Prices at the University of Pennsylvania, May 2011
GDP per capita: PPP Gross Domestic Product per capita in constant US dollars of 2005
Reform Index: Average for yearly reform index during the period 19952005, 0100 scale
Reform Index constructed on the basis of DataGob database from the Inter-American Development Bank
with respects to the implementation of regarding what is it that Latin American societies
pro-market reforms. Chile started implementing are looking for then this strengthens the argu-
the Washington Consensus reforms in the late ment in favor of following a pro-market devel-
1980s and it is considered to have one of the opment strategy. However, this paper argues that
most pro-market economies in the region. The a lot of relevant information regarding peoples
Inter-American Development Bank keeps track experience of being well is neglected when
of progress in the implementation of the most income-based indicators are used; in other
important reforms recommended by the words, this paper states that the identication of
Washington Consensus on the basis of seven the best development strategy needs to take into
indicators related to investment, trade, scal, consideration peoples happiness.
nancial, monetary, government, and business
freedom. An overall reform indicator is
computed as the simple mean of the seven 4.3.3 Happiness-Based Development
indicators and presented in Table 4.1; the greater in Latin America
the indicator the greater the progress in the
implementation of pro-market reforms. It is Is Chile the model to follow when a happiness-
observed the Chile has one of the most based conception of well-being is considered? Is
pro-market economies in the region (only a pro-market strategy the best one to attain this
surpassed by El Salvador). kind of development? Subjective well-being
Thus, if an income-based conception of well- information is computed for the Latin American
being constitutes the answer to the question countries on the basis of information from the
Gallup Poll 2007.2 The Gallup survey is repre- about it? Which step comes closest to the way
sentative at country level. The following you feel?. The response scale goes from 0 to
variables are considered: 10 where 0 is the worst possible life one can
imagine and 10 the best possible life. This
Life satisfaction: which is the response to the variable has an evaluative orientation, since
question Taking everything in your life into it is related to the success and failure people
consideration, how satised are you with your have in attaining the life they considered
life these days?, the response scale goes from worth of. Low life appreciation reects a sub-
0 (unsatised) to 10 (satised). This variable stantial gap between aspirations and
is considered an overall assessment of life. attainments.
Affective state: this variable is constructed on Health satisfaction: This variable refers to the
the basis of factorial analysis being answer to the question: Are you satised with
implemented to a group of questions regard- your health? The answer to the question is
ing peoples affective state the day before. dichotomous: yes or no. A person may be
The structure of the questions is: Did you unsatised with her health when she cannot
experience the following emotion during a cope with the physical and metal demands
signicant part of the day yesterday? The from society. At the country level the variable
emotions asked for are: joy, physical pain, is constructed as the percentage of people
anxiety, sadness, boring, depression, anger, providing a positive answer.
and love. The response scale is dichotomous: Economic satisfaction: This variable refers to
yes or no. Principal-component techniques are the answer to the question: Are you satised
used to construct an affective variable, which with your economic situation? The answer to
is re-scaled to a 010 scale, the greater the the question is dichotomous: yes or no. A
value of the variable the better the affective person may be unsatised with her economic
state. A low affective state may reect with she cannot handle with the expenditure
limitations faced by human beings in demands which society imposes. At the coun-
satisfying all their basic human needs mate- try level the variable is constructed as the
rial and psychological- (Rojas and Veenhoven percentage of people providing a positive
2013). answer.
Life appreciation: which refers to the answer
to the following question Please imagine a Table 4.2 presents information regarding the
ladder/mountain with steps numbered from different subjective well-being variables under
zero at the bottom to ten at the top. Suppose consideration; this is not the place to make an
we say that the top of the ladder/mountain - exhaustive analysis of the subjective well-being
represents the best possible life for you and situation in Latin America.3 It sufces to point
the bottom of the ladder/mountain represents out that on the basis of a happiness-conception of
the worst possible life for you. On which step well-being the performance of Chile is very dis-
of the ladder would you say you personally appointing; out of 16 countries under consider-
feel you stand at this time assuming that the ation Chile ranks number 13 in life satisfaction,
higher the step the better you feel about your number 14 in affective state, number 8 in life
life and the lower the step the worse you feel appreciation, number 16 in health satisfaction,
and number 13 in economic satisfaction. It is
clear that the Chileans are not experiencing a
2
The information from the Gallup Poll was provided by high well-being. Income may have substantially
the Inter-American Development Bank as part of the
background work made by the author in the project Mea-
suring Quality of Life in Latin America. The author
3
expresses his gratitude to both the Gallup Corporation See Rojas (2012b) for an in-depth study of subjective
and the Inter-American Development Bank. well-being in Latin America.
58
Table 4.2 Subjective well-being indicators in Latin America

By country. Levels and rankings
Indicator Country ranking
Life Affective Life Health Economic Life Affective Life Health Economic
Country satisfactiona statea appreciationa satisfactionb satisfactionb satisfaction state appreciation satisfaction satisfaction
Argentina 7.1 7.6 6.0 85.9 68.4 8 10 7 7 9
Bolivia 6.3 6.5 5.4 84.2 67.2 15 16 11 11 10
Brazil 7.5 7.7 6.2 84.5 70.9 5 8 5 9 7
Chile 6.5 7.2 5.8 69.0 62.4 13 14 8 16 13
Colombia 7.4 7.4 6.2 84.9 72.2 6 12 6 8 5
Costa Rica 8.5 7.9 7.4 93.8 85.0 1 6 1 1 1
Ecuador 6.4 7.5 5.0 80.4 72.1 14 11 15 13 6
El Salvador 6.7 7.9 5.3 84.3 63.2 12 7 12 10 12
Guatemala 7.9 8.0 6.4 93.2 84.1 2 3 4 2 2
Honduras 7.2 8.0 5.2 88.6 70.3 7 4 14 4 8
Mexico 7.8 7.9 6.6 87.3 75.7 4 5 3 5 3
Nicaragua 7.1 7.3 4.9 80.4 64.3 9 13 16 14 11
Panama 7.8 8.5 6.9 89.8 73.3 3 1 2 3 4
Paraguay 6.8 8.3 5.2 80.9 58.1 11 2 13 12 15
Peru 6.0 7.0 5.4 79.9 54.1 16 15 10 15 16
Uruguay 6.8 7.7 5.7 86.1 62.2 10 9 9 6 14
Simple 7.1 7.7 5.9 84.6 69.0
mean
Standard 0.7 0.5 0.7 5.9 8.4
deviation
Source: Variables constructed on the basis of information from the Gallup Poll 2007
a
Mean values
b
Percentage of respondents answering yes
M. Rojas
raised in Chile during the last years and Chileans 4.4 The Contribution of Happiness
may have more material goods, but there seems Research to Development
to be some problems in the satisfaction of basic Studies
psychological needs (relatedness, competence
and autonomy) which reects in the low affec- Happiness is a nal aim, while GDP per capita is
tive state-, in the mental and physical just a potential instrument to attain happiness. It
requirements made by a competitive and is better to assess development and progress on
market-oriented economy which reects in the basis of attaining the nal aim rather than on
very low health satisfaction and in low affective keeping track of one of its many potential inputs.
state-, in dealing with the material-status race The relevance of GDP per capita as an instru-
which reects in low economic satisfaction-, and ment can only be assessed on the basis of its
even in the capacity to attain ever-increasing impact on peoples well-being. The measurement
aspirations which reects in about average of happiness would allow for measuring the well-
life appreciation-. Thus, it is of no surprise that being productivity of GDP per capita, as well as
Chileans overall evaluation of life as measured its well-being costs.
by life satisfaction- is one of the lowest in the Policy makers can rely on happiness to
region. address some public-policy decisions; for exam-
On the basis of a well-being conception of ple, whether to allocate more resources to recre-
development it is clear that the best performance ational facilities or to road infrastructure,
in the Latin American region is shown by Costa whether to allow for work exibility, more holi-
Ricans. Costa Rica has the highest mean life days, and a shorter working week, and so
satisfaction and mean life appreciation, as well on. Happiness can also be used to design and
as the highest percentage of people being evaluate social programs (Bok 2011). There is
satised with their economic and health situa- substantial research on happiness which can be
tion. In addition, the affective state of Costa used to guide policy; and measuring happiness in
Ricans is above average in the region. Thus, it a systematic way will allow for better and more
is clear that Costa Ricans live in a society that precise research.
allows for a good combination of production of As a nal aim, happiness connects directly
material and relational goods, for availability and with people; in other words, people can easily
gratifying use of free time, for satisfaction of relate with a social objective such as increasing
material and psychological needs, for aspirations peoples happiness because it is a concept they
that raise at a rate that does not generates frustra- use on a daily basis to make important decisions.
tion, and where the idea of success is not only As a matter of fact, the most important decisions
associated to the possession of luxurious goods. in peoples lives (such as whom to marry, where
A look at Table 4.1 indicates that Costa Rica to live, whether to get divorced or not, whether to
has a development strategy which has not move abroad, to change jobs, and so on) involve
emphasized pro-market reforms; as a matter of some consideration of expected happiness. As
fact, Costa Rica has been relatively slow in such, happiness is not an academically-
implementing privatization and trade reforms, constructed concept but a concept people use
and it is a country where the scope and size of and understand.
the government remains signicant. Thus, when Happiness is trans-disciplinary and people-
well-being is understood as peoples experience centered; as such, it has two important
of being well and when a happiness-conception contributions to make to social-science research.
of development is used, it becomes evident that First, since it is impossible to fully understand
Chile is not the model to look for and that peoples experience of having a satisfactory or
pro-market reforms constitute no answer to attain happy life from any single discipline, the under-
development. standing and explanation of happiness forces
60 M. Rojas
researchers to move beyond their understanding of interpersonal relations; while

compartmentalized area of comfort in order to the current rationale is concerned about how
incorporate knowledge generated beyond their human relations foster social capital so that
discipline. Thus, happiness research contributes societies can grow faster; the happiness frame-
to promoting inter and trans-disciplinary work sees intrinsic value in human relations, as
research in social sciences. Second, the happi- they contribute to the production of relational
ness assessment is made by real people who goods and to satisfaction with life. Furthermore,
assess their lives. Thus, happiness forces the availability of free time and its gratifying use
researchers to deal with human beings of esh acquire new relevance from a happiness perspec-
and blood (as in Unamunos Tragic Sense of Life) tive, even though having more leisure may imply
rather than with academically-constructed a reduction in income, it is no longer seen as
agents, which overemphasize some aspects of detrimental to well-being.
human beings and neglect many. Happiness also demands for a reconsideration
Happiness recognizes and respects diversity of the scope of public policy. It becomes neces-
across people, as well as heterogeneity across sary to take into consideration how public policy
nations and cultures. Thus, happiness avoids the impacts on the satisfaction in the many domains
common practice of presuming or imposing a of life where human beings are being human. The
uniform list of variables as well-being relevant focus is no longer restricted to economic satis-
across cultures and countries and even across faction or to the well-being of academically-
persons-. constructed consumers. It can be say that the
Happiness recognizes the complexity and happiness framework allows for unveiling the
richness of human beings and of their lives; currently hidden costs of policies and programs,
thus, it calls for a broader scope in public-policy as well as its hidden benets.
design and evaluation. Public-policy The Latin American illustration shows that
deliberations should no longer be narrow- some countries, such as Chile, may show very
focused on how income evolves, but they should good per capita income indicators but relatively
take into consideration other relevant aspects in poor happiness indicators. Keeping track on
the quality of a persons life, such as: how the income indicators while neglecting happiness
production of relational goods is modied, what indicators may lead to recommending develop-
happens to peoples affective states, how their ment strategies which may contribute to higher
satisfaction in domains of life change, what income but which are in detriment of peoples
happens with the availability of free time, well-being. Many countries could end up
whether a status race emerges and aspirations choosing the wrong development strategy due
raise, and so on. to the lacking of happiness indicators, and
The recommended policies that emerge from millions of people could end up experiencing a
the happiness framework may substantially dif- less satisfactory life as a consequence.
fer with respect to standard-economic advice Happiness could become the dominant con-
based on increasing income. For example, edu- ception of well-being in the twenty-rst century;
cation acquires a completely different role within as such it could redene the conceptions of prog-
the happiness framework; while education is ress and of development and introduce new aims
associated to human capital in the current domi- and considerations to public policy. Happiness
nant rationale which is worried about a persons could also inuence social-science research in a
capacity to produce goods and services and to positive way. However, happiness main accom-
increase her income, the happiness framework plishment could be to make a substantial contri-
leads to an education that provides the skills for bution to having societies where human beings
having a life that is satisfactory for the person. who are much more than mere consumers- are
The happiness framework also implies a different having satisfactory, and not only afuent, lives.
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Trends and Challenges for the Research
of Happiness in Latin America 5
Emilio Moyano Daz
5.1 Introduction For instance, from S. Bolivars point of view:

The most perfect system of government is that
If you wish others to be happy, practice which produces the greatest amount of happi-
compassion. ness, the greatest amount of social security and
If you want to be happy, practice compassion. the greatest amount of political stability A
(Dalai Lama) persons rights: freedom, security, prosperity and
On the 12th of June 2012, the International day of equality. Overall happiness, which is the object of
Happiness to be celebrated on March the 20th society, consists in the perfect enjoyment of these
was approved by the UNs General Assembly, rights (Mier 2012).
proposed by the rst minister of Bhutan, Jigme Nowadays, the term happiness appears
Thinley. It was celebrated for the rst time in increasingly in public discourse, either slipped
2013 when the importance of happiness as a in as a possible purpose of government or as a
universal aspiration of human beings was public demand. This might be due, among other
recognized. The UN urged member states to reasons, to the populations aspirations to satisfy
boost public politics which include the impor- higher needs, spiritual or psychological, includ-
tance of happiness and well-being in their ing those relating to self-fulllment and personal
attempt of development (Azteca Noticias 2013). happiness becoming increasingly pressing, once
The idea that every human being has the right their basic and biological needs have been met.
to achieve happiness was being set throughout the In the next chapter, the scientic production
Iluminismo (the Enlightenment, a Spanish reli- about happiness in Latin American is examined.
gious movement in the sixteenth century), and A general outlook is presented, which covers the
even the French Revolutions ideals considered understanding of happiness, its characterization
the pursuit of happiness for every citizen as a according to its orientation and range, and the
social goal. The subject of happiness was gathered theoretical approaches, methods and concepts of
by the Declaration of Independence of the United happiness currently in use. Regarding the
States of America, granting every man the right to methods, it is expected that the procedures and
nd it. It branched to Latin America as a primary instruments normally used to measure it or to
political concern of some of our nations founders. understand it will be identied. Finally, some
conclusions will be drawn about the whole of
the analyzed information, its distinctive aspects,
E. Moyano Daz (*) and its strong or weak points. The questions
Universidad de Talca, Talca, Chile guiding this research are: What is the amount of
e-mail: emoyano@utalca.cl

64 E. Moyano Daz
Latin American production of happiness Knowledge from now on WoS and Scielo,
published in rst-line databases such as Web of with the term happiness in their titles, and having
Science (WoS) and SciELO? What type(s) of been written in the 20012012 period, by authors
studies have been carried out? What theoretical, from Latin-American institutions (i.e.,
conceptual and methodological approaches have universities or research centers). These databases
been undertaken on the subject? Are there any have been chosen because both of them have
studies which identify what happiness is for the information recognized by the scientic commu-
Latin American population from an emic point of nity, which guarantees a scientic approach of a
view, capturing the meaning the participants subject traditionally related with philosophy, lit-
themselves give to the concept? Will participants erature or humanities studies. Also, indexed
from different countries have the same concept? journals such as Scielo have been included so
Initial answers to these questions will be as to ensure nding production on the subject,
presented in advance according to the informa- considering the low number of ISI (Institute for
tion found while trying to research the main goal Scientic Information) indexed journals in Latin
of the present study, namely, describing the sci- America. Consequently, the research consisted in
entic research on happiness() carried out and selecting from those big scientic databases
published in Latin America by Latin Americans through the introduction of the term happiness
in recent years. Some distinctions regarding (felicidad, felicidade), those articles that fullled
ndings in other parts of the world will be made. the following requirements: (i) being focused on
Findings will be presented in four sections; the the subject of happiness, including this term in its
rst of them addresses article production on happi- title, (ii) being written by Latin American
ness and its distribution by country, scientic authors, (iii) having been published within the
journals and areas. In the second section, the con- 20012012 period (both inclusive). This period
cept of happiness applied in studies is identied, was established in a time when the scientic
under a critical analysis of the use of terms, or the treatment of happiness had improved, taking
eventual creation by Latin American authors. The into account essential references such as Ryan
third section focuses on methods that try to deter- and Deci (2001) or Seligman (2002) within the
mine if there are any key tools and methods in the eld of psychology, or Di Tella (2003) and
study of happiness among the reviewed research. In Layard (2004) from the economy eld (without
the fourth section, the eventual existence of emic leaving aside previous works such as Argyle
denitions, typical of sample populations in these (1992) for example). The search was carried out
studies, is discussed. The results in the present in the category of social sciences using happiness
chapter are discussed in the conclusion section, as a key word, which identied 1,457 articles
focusing on what denes the research on happiness within that period. These were classied by terri-
in Latin America regarding conceptual denitions, tory Latin American countries including Brazil
methods, instruments and results. It is to be hoped which nally yielded 44 articles for the
that readers may clearly identify the possible analyses. Book reviews, doctoral (PhD) thesis
searches and challenges presented in the research and conferences on the subject were not
in this continental region and, thus, boost efforts included.
and new orientations in order to deepen knowledge
on this passionate and desirable subject.
5.2.2 Instruments
5.2 Method Each article included in this research was dened

with the following information: (1) country
5.2.1 Population and Sample where the article was published, (2) science
area to which the research belongs, (3) name of
The population base is formed by all the articles the magazine the article was published in,
included in two scientic databases, Web of (4) classication of the research type, according
5 Trends and Challenges for the Research of Happiness in Latin America 65
the criteria of the theoretical (with three sub was built to show the characterization of every
categories), applied and mixed studies typology article with the information previously men-
created by Moyano and Ramos (2000). tioned, all of which was required for its classi-
According to this typology, theoretical works cation. Subsequently, the three-typology
are subdivided into three sub-groups: (1.1) The- classication instrument was applied by two
ory divulgation, which presents, translates o independent researchers, in such a way that
reviews a theory from other authors, without a each of them classied the same group of six
higher elaboration on behalf of the author, (1.2.) articles at the beginning, in order to verify the
Reection on a subject or theory, which is agreement degree, and repeated until a third trial,
analyzed, discussed, suggested, discussed and obtaining a 100 % agreement.
eventually hypothesis tested through logical
demonstration of some proposal of such theory,
(1.3) theoretical expansion, where the author 5.3 Results
uses the currently existing research so as to con-
tinue with the theory, and to spread and clarify Results disclosure is organized in four sections,
the theoretical construction. It also can include namely: (1) quantitative summary of the
the critical analysis of a theory, pointing out obtained studies and their origin and range
contradictions and imperfections or characteristics, (2) the concept of happiness and
demonstrating the superiority of one against approaches for its study, (3) currently used
another. (2)- Applied or empirical works, explore methods and instruments, (4) happiness dened
some phenomena through the application of dif- upon an emic approach. The analyses of all the
ferent psychological instruments: tests, information obtained from the selected articles,
questionnaires and others, nding which constituted the sample, was also guided by
psychometrical properties from the data itself or the knowledge from the international literature,
using empirical data, allowing descriptions to be beyond Latin America, so as to detect inuences,
made, without attempting bigger connections and distinctive local features from regional
with previously developed theories or theoretical production.
foundations. This type of study often does not
nd explanations for the phenomenon studied,
and in many occasions this simple approximation 5.3.1 Happiness Contributions in Latin
to the phenomenon is left isolated from the rest of America
the knowledge on the subject. (3)- Mixed-
research studies are those where it is possible to The search, using the term happiness, of articles
see efforts to connect theories or hypothesis that written by Latin American authors within the
come from well known, developed or original period 20012012, ended with the nal selection
theoretical frameworks with empirical data. of 44 articles (please see Appendix at the end of
Searching or nding explanations would be the text, for a full list and references details). The
their main objective and not merely making articles were published in magazines edited in:
descriptions or predictions about the phenomena Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba,
being studied. Sometimes they involve new Mexico, Peru and Venezuela. With the collected
hypothesis, techniques or procedures based on information, quantitative results were presented
others that already have a strong theoretical in three charts. The rst (Table 5.1), contains the
foundation. article distribution by authors country, and
within each one, a classication by database
and chosen subject of study. The second
5.2.3 Procedure (Table 5.2) contains the number of articles on
happiness published by Latin American authors
The search was started on the WoS database and organized by journal (WoS and Scielo),
continued afterwards on SciELO. A review chart 20012012. Finally the third, (Table 5.3)
66 E. Moyano Daz
Table 5.1 Number of articles by authors country, database and discipline (n 44 articles)
N of articles by discipline*
Database
Country W. of Sc. Scielo Total number of articles by country and %
Argentina 0 1 Ps 1 1(2.27 %)
Brazil 1 12 Ps 9; Me 2; Ec 2 13 (20.59 %)
Chile 4 6 Ps 5; So 2; Te 2; Ec 1 10 (22.72 %)
Colombia 5 3 Ec 1; Ps 7 8 (18.18 %)
Cuba 1 1 Me 1; Ps 1 2 (4.54 %)
Mexico 4 4 Ec 6; Phi 1; Psi 1 8 (18.18 %)
Peru 0 2 Ps 2 2 (4.54 %)
Total 15 29 (44) 44 (100 %)
*Abbreviations by discipline: Ec Economics, Ed Education, Phi Philosophy, Li Literature, Me Medicine, Ps Psychol-
ogy, So Sociology y Te Theology
Table 5.2 Journals list (Wos And Scielo) and number of articles (n 44) on happiness, published by Latin American
authors within the period 20012012
N of N of
Magazines name articles Magazines name articles
Universitas Psychologica (ISI, 4 Journal of Occupational Health Psychology (ISI, 1
Colombia) USA)
Teologa y Vida (Sc, Chile) 3 Journal of Social Psychology (ISI, UK) 1
Psicologa em Estudo (Sc, Brazil) 2 Psicologia: Reexao e Crtica (Sc, Brazil) 1
Psico-USF (Sc, Brazil) 2 RAC, Curitiba (Sc, Brazil) 1
Acta Colombiana de Psicologa (Sc, 1 Revista Bras. Geriatra Geront. (Sc, Brazil) 1
Col)
Applied Research Quality Life (ISI, 1 Revista Cubana de Enfermera (Sc, Cuba) 1
USA)
Argumentos (Sc, Peru) 1 Revista de Economa Poltica (Sc, Brazil) 1
BMC Public Health (ISI, England) 1 Revista Desarrollo y Sociedad (Sc, Colombia) 1
Cadernos de Saude Publica (Sc, Brazil) 1 Revista Interamericana de Psicologa (Sc, Panama). 1
Cuaderno del Centro de Estudios en 1 Revista Latino-Americana de Enfermagem 1
Diseno y Comunicaci on (Sc, Arg)
El Trimestre Economico (Sc, Mexico) 1 Revista Latin.de Psicologa (ISI, Colombia) 1
EN-CLAVES del pensamiento (Sc, 1 Revista Mexicana de Sociologa (Sc, Mexico) 1
Mexico)
Estudios de Economa (Sc, Chile) 1 Revista de Psicologa Liberabit (Sc, Peru) 1
Estudios de Psicologa (Sc, Brazil) 1 Revista de Psiquiatra Clnica (Sc, Brazil) 1
Human Ecology Review (ISI, 1 Revista Semestral da Associacao Brasileira de 1
Australia) Psicologia Escolar e Educacional (Sc, Brazil)
Investigacion & Desarrollo (Sc, 1 Revista Universum (Sc, Chile) 1
Colombia)
Journal of Economic Psychology (ISI, 1 Social Indicators Research (ISI, Canada) 1
Austria)
Journal of Happiness Studies (ISI, 1 Terapia Psicol
ogica (ISI, Chile) 1
Australia)
Table 5.3 Classification of the 44 articles on happiness, according their orientation, or prominent kind, published in
Latin America within the 20012012 period
Four qualifying categories Sub-categories Number and % of articles
Theoretical studies Divulgation 3 (6.81 %)
Reection 7 (15.90 %)
Applied studies Expansion 2 (4.54 %)
29 (65.90 %)
Mixed studies 3 (6.81 %)
Total 44 (100 %)
contains the result of the three-typology classi- measures that associate happiness with other
cation according to their dominant orientation: socio-demographic or psychological variables.
theoretical, applied or empirical and mixed The applied kind of studies is more than twice
studies. the theoretical kind, which follows in frequency.
The publications on happiness are rather Among these, the divulgation and reection kind
scarce -44- for the considered time period. A are the majority, correspondingly with the rst
mathematical transformation discloses 3.6 levels of theoretical development. Finally, the
articles per year for these seven countries, being mixed kind of studies presents the lowest number
Brazil the largest by far- followed by Chile and of articles. These articles are explanatory in char-
Mexico, the countries where the majority of the acter, and the ones that are currently providing
magazines that published these articles came new hypothesis derived from theory.
from. The discipline criteria or knowledge area In the next section, the happiness term and the
shows eight categories in this search, namely, by theoretical approaches or perspectives that have
alphabetical order: economy, gerontology, phi- been addressed in these publications will be
losophy, psychology, psychiatry, sociology and analyzed. Throughout a characterization of the
theology. From the 44 identied articles, analyzed studies, the possibility of the deduction
26 (59.1 %) belong to psychology, and of any kind of individuality or singular charac-
10 (22.7 %) to economy, both of them accounting teristic in Latin American production of research
for approximately 82 % of the total production. on happiness, regarding the conceptual approach
In Table 5.2 the names and number of the and the theoretical approaches used to address it,
magazines that had published these articles are are explored.
included. The magazines have been arranged
presenting those with the highest number of
articles on the topic at the beginning, and then 5.3.2 The Concept of Happiness
followed by the rest of the magazines in alpha- and Its Approach
betical order.
Brazilian magazines have published the Happiness consists in neither acquiring nor
greatest amount of articles (14) followed by enjoying, but in not wanting, as it consists in
Chile (9) Colombia and Mexico (8 each of being free. (Phrygian Epictetus (55135), Latin-
Greek philosopher)
them) and the remaining studies have been
published in either Peru, Cuba or Argentina.
Table 5.3 presents the 44 articles that have 5.3.2.1 From Philosophy and Theology
been classied according to their predominant to the Psychology of Happiness
kind of research. It is possible to observe a Some reections and analyses are obtained from
mainly applied kind of research, consistent with disciplines different to those prominent in the
the application of instruments, some of them of a subject psychology and economy- and they
psychometrical type, which always include can inspire research on this or other factual
68 E. Moyano Daz
sciences. In this way, Noem (2006) illustrated morality, a person-centered morality rather than
through theology that happiness has been totally a law-centered morality, a discipleship morality
absent in the theological debate in the modern that poses love before normative compliance. He
centuries, where Christianity has been perceived goes deeper into Jesus Christs logion: The one
as a threat to happiness, as an unhappiness vehi- who loves me, fullls my commandments. This
cle or, at least, as unhappiness o on earth (p. 210). teaching sets out the sequential order of all Chris-
Apparently, it has been considered that Chris- tian moralities: since Jesus is loved, the compli-
tianity demands a total abdication of happiness ance of the norms is understood. Hence, these
on earth, so dissociation between happiness and norms transform into a verifying test of love,
salvation takes place, an all-or-nothing game, which, on the contrary, would remain a norma-
which might be seen as being happy and not tive ritualism, which sickens and does not entail
being saved, or being unhappy but being saved. happiness.
In Christianity, happiness is a promise, radically Romo (2006) answers the question about the
rejected by Marx, claiming: Overcoming reli- concept of what is happiness. He takes as a basis
gion as the illusory happiness of the people is the the Aristotelian proposal that relates ethic and
request of its true happiness (Noem 2006). In good, end and happiness (eudemonia). This
accordance with Noem, the concepts about hap- takes under the consideration that good seems
piness and salvation until the beginning of the to be different in every activity and art, proposes
modern era were a translation of the old concept a good that allows unifying reason to act, in other
of eudemonia (beatitude) and were used words, it is based on an aim (theological ethic)
indistinctively. However, salvation turned into a that is so perfect, and it is appreciated for itself
transcendent and future summit, given by God, and not as a consequence of another good. This
and happiness turned into something almost seems to be happiness, always chosen for no
exclusively considered as the pleasurable satis- other reason but for happiness itself. According
faction of living. In this way, if mens happiness to the author, happiness is an activity of the soul
does not concern God, a theological discourse on in accordance with the perfect virtue
it would not make sense. In the authors words, in (Nicomachean Ethic, Book 1, speaking of the
the centre of Jesus message and behavior, hap- soul, its parts and virtues). The issue will be
piness is the core, as the gospels prove. The analyzed again in Book X in order to reach the
proximity of Gods kingdom (Mc 1, 15) is conclusion that supreme happiness lies in the
explained both, through the beatitudes proclama- contemplative life, which has as objects the
tion (Lc 6, 2021) and Jesus thaumaturgical most sublime realities (p. 251).
acting. Jesus announced and created happiness Romo (2006) adds another interesting deriva-
from God: Happiness as the announcement of tive due to its possible consequences in under-
the arrival of Gods kingdom. For this reason standing the behavior in this topic. Depending on
happiness is essentially given as a promise the answer to the question (what is happiness?),
(p. 215). an ethical system will be proposed, and therefore,
Also from the theological approach, Romo happiness and ethic are united. If happiness is
(2006) titled his reection Does Christian conceived as maximizing prots, it is considered
morality allow for happiness? In his study, the a utilitarian ethic; if it is conceived as obtaining
author proposes answers to Nietzsches critic the greatest pleasure possible, it is considered a
and in a similar way, to two other suspicion hedonist ethic; if it is conceived as rational per-
masters, Marx and Freud who have argued in formance, following categorical and determined
different ways, denying that Christian morality imperatives, a Kantian ethic and so on and so
grants the human being the possibility of being forth (p. 251). Even though it was not stated in
happy. Romo points out what would be the Romos work, Kants concept of happiness was:
probabilities for that to happen: changing from the satisfaction of all our wishes, closely
a heteronymous morality to a theological attached with its variety, intensively connected
with its different grades and extended in time proposed (from now on PWB) (Ryff 1989; Ryff
according to its respective lengths (I. Kant, and Keyes 1995). Ryff (1989) created a multidi-
Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. A806.8). mensional model of PWB with six dimensions:
Buganza (2009) carries out an analysis of the self-acceptance (the positive evaluation of one-
Italian philosopher Franceso Maria Zanottis self and the own past life); personal growth
concept of happiness, who presents the topic as (a continuous sense of growth and development
a dark problem. Happiness has been thought of as a person); purpose of life (the belief that ones
as a corporal pleasure to the hedonist or life has a purpose and a meaning); positive
spiritual virtue to the Stoic exaltation. Happi- relationships with others (developing and
ness would be the end of all deliberated human keeping quality and trustworthy relationships
behavior, and the addition of all the goods with others); surrounding power (the ability of
attached to human nature. From a Platonic point running effectively ones life and the surround-
of view, ideas are prior to the body, and happi- ings so as to satisfy ones needs and wishes); and
ness would consist in the contemplation of the autonomy (a sense of personal self-
ideas, from which, the biggest would be the idea determination).
of good. For Aristotle, there would be two kinds The concept of SWB has been made opera-
of happiness; the rst, lonely and only partly tional from the hedonist approach as formed by
reachable to man (as it is reserved for the gods), two components: positive affection minus nega-
and the other, human or earthly, urban, related tive affection happiness and vital satisfaction
to the addition of all goods that come from (from now on, VS). That is, a distinction between
nature. In order to obtain it, it is indicated that happiness and satisfaction has been made in a
man must practice rational performing, without conceptual way (Ryan and Deci; Moyano Daz
falling into the reductionism of attempting the 2010). Consequently and essentially, the concept
only practice of virtue in the world of ideas, since of SWB should only be used when (and only
man is also body (and through it, it is possible to when) both components are being measured
become a citizen). (Moyano Daz et al. 2011). In some reviews,
Ideas from philosophy, mainly those referring the SWB construct has been considered as the
to hedonism, utilitarianism and eventually main concept of the hedonist tradition and the
Kantian virtuosity, might have served in an PWB construct as the main concept of the
implicit or explicit way as a foundation for eudemonic tradition (Moyano Daz 2010).
the scientic study of human well-being and The research articles which are analyzed in
more recently, of happiness. For this reason, the present study are, from their epistemological
authors such as Ryan and Deci (2001) have foundation (generally not specied) mainly
pointed out how concepts from hedonism and located in the hedonist tradition and according
eudemonia have served as a platform for the to their methods and purposes empirical or
study and development of the concept of subjec- applied. The most cited author in this context
tive well-being (from now on SWB), whose evo- might be E. Diener, whereas in the eudemonic
lution as a concept has been analyzed by Diener tradition, the key authors are C. Ryff (1989) and
et al. (1999) as well as its relationship with per- C. Keyes (Keyes et al. 2002).
sonality and culture (Diener et al. 2003).
From hedonism, it is assumed that happiness 5.3.2.2 The Essay Genre of Happiness
and pleasure are the base of well-being, whereas The essay-dominated literature genre is rather
from eudemonia, it has been proposed that it exceptional about the topic of happiness in the
comes from the search and nding of sense of sample currently under analysis, and an attempt
meaning, the self-fulllment, humans potential will be made to try to reveal from the three essays
development, overcoming existential changes, a found, their contribution to the concept of happi-
full psychological functioning, for which the ness. The rst of them a sociological study is
concept of Psychological Well-being has been carried out by Mascareno (2006) who claims that
70 E. Moyano Daz
in the current society there is a high individualis- cybernetic world has transversally seeped
tic autonomy, which has less normative links. through society and it leads to a techno-addiction
Therefore, the less normative linkage there is, among the youth. It also claims that, in this post-
the less possibility of sharing happy or unhappy modern era, the individual-capitalistic paradigm
sensations. This author claims that neither hap- is presented as where the individualism is so
piness nor unhappiness are symbolically wide- exalted, that it brings to paroxysm the idea of a
spread, which makes both of them isolated happiness distant from the public and common
(p. 4). This authors analysis is based on good (p. 160) and where interpersonal
Luhmans theory on social systems and society relationships and participation, as a part of a
as communication, and proposes that under this social collective are not highly taken into
individual context, happiness becomes impossi- account. Private happiness is a kind of happiness
ble to communicate, even though its impossibil- that, seeping through the new technologies,
ity to communicate may contribute to the social seems to be in sharing with others; however, it
activation of love. Happiness would not comply supposes a strictly individual consumption.
with actions, and would remain hidden to com- Based on Lipovetsky (1987), it is argued that
munication, whereas the modern semantic of the concept of man as a social being has turned
happiness associated to the self-reference of the into something from the past: the end of homo
individual does not denote preferences by the politicus since it has been replaced by the homo
nature of happiness under the spotlight. The psychological, who only believes in personal
author suggests that a person is able to be well-being. It is indicated that the current indi-
happy in a dictatorship or democracy, with a vidual is self-referent exactly as presented in
law abiding family or without one, as a religious Mascareno (2006) and is lonely, immersed in
person or as an agnostic. Leaving the values its cyberspace, trying to solve singular situations
aside as unconditional preferences that gather from external proposals that continuously push
individuals in one side or another, depending on the individual to make choices among many dif-
the distinction happiness is able to stand up for ferent options in a short amount of time. When
itself, only by self-reference, is a self-governed there are worries and the important thing is the
individuality and also not communicable. Values self, life continues without any kind of commit-
unite, are symbolic; happiness divides, is diabol- ment, no other interest but taking care of ones
ical (p. 14). Being happier in a dictatorship or in own wishes. Psychoanalytically, and through the
democracy depends on a value-based matter authors vision, this situation would be compara-
which does not correspond with happiness; and ble to the rst stage of a babys development,
where worry is an after-thought, once the deci- where the rst source of pleasure is completely
sion (according to values) has been made (or by auto-erotic, where nowadays, pleasure is the
other means: money, power, love, truth). contact and the depersonalized bond; today the
According to Mascareno, since an external crite- enjoyment is an onanism 2.0 (p. 159). The
rion which proves the happiness experienced by author concludes that, even though the current
a person does not exist, happiness is simply self- psychological homo from this narcissistic era
reference. Within love, it would operate as a has the possibility of managing his own life in
contingent formula, since it is always said a freer way, breaking with traditions, without any
that people want to make each other happy, but political or dogmatic ties, making a cult out of
actually there would be no love if happiness were desire, the price that will have to be paid, will be
complete, because no one would require some- living in social indifference, which is particular
body elses conrmation (p. 15). of a model that eliminates sociability and reci-
The second essay deals with the relationship procity bonds (p. 166).
among new communication technologies and The third essay is from the psychiatry eld
happiness (Pagano 2012) and it is built under and was written by Ferraz et al. (2007) who
psychoanalytical concepts. It states that the analyzed happiness related with mental health.
They dened it as . . . a basic emotion factors; therefore there will be different referents
characterized by a success-based perception and and consequently, different ways of behaving
a coherent and lucid comprehension of the when searching or pursuing happiness (Rojas
world (p. 234). They dened happiness as a 2007).
mainly subjective phenomenon, being
subordinated to mood features and lifes 5.3.2.3 Happiness in Economics
outlooks, rather than externally determined The subject of happiness was present for the
factors. The authors based their work on classical economists, but was set aside, paying
Csikszentmihalyi (1998) and suggest that the more attention to the study of material wealth
occidental worlds promise of reaching happi- among nations. It is only since about 20 years
ness is well known; by means of exalting the ago, economists like Esterlin, Clark and Oswald,
values of beauty, wealth and consumption, it Di Tella, Frey and Mc Bride among others,
goes in the opposite direction of what has been cited by Rojas (2009) started to study the sub-
presented through scientic evidence, and would ject of happiness (a little late, in Rojas words).
cause people to suffer from tedium, anxiety and In psychology, the systematic study apparently
dissatisfaction. appeared over a decade earlier, under the name of
In many different articles about well-being subjective well-being (SW), if taking as a tem-
and happiness and from different approaches poral reference Dieners studies, from 1984, or
-several references to philosophy have been the references that appear in three decades of
made. Aristotle, Plato, Philo (Alesso 2008), studies of SW (from the same author with Suh,
Cicero, Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Zanotti, Lucas and Smith in 1999), or in Kahneman
and others are frequently mentioned. When stud- et al. (1999). It experienced a growing develop-
ies follow a mainly theological or philosophical ment and renovations, for which Seligmans con-
character on happiness, the reection about the tribution (2002) might be considered. In
issue is guided by a method that is mainly deduc- economics, the psychological approach on SW
tive and arguable, without measuring the phe- has been taken and thus, there is a Latin Ameri-
nomenon, and consequently, without being able can production especially by Rojas- of an eco-
to have the proof or the empirical contrast of nomic psychology with studies about income-
hypotheses so as to formulate any conclusion. related life satisfaction, affections role on hap-
However, these reections eventually have a piness and, considered as highly original, cross-
huge heuristic value for inspiring hypotheses cultural studies about the conceptual reference of
and also for the creation of verication and mea- happiness. From a conceptual point of view, it is
suring devices. In this way, an interesting line of possible to say that the psychological approach
work in economy has been created, based on considers happiness as a category which refers to
essays about classical philosophers concept of an emotional phenomenon in psychic life,
happiness, generating an instrument to measure whereas, in economy, the concept of satisfaction
and contrast hypotheses to the theory referred to (used at the same level as happiness) is more
as the conceptual referent of happiness (Rojas used, as will be detailed in the following
2005, 2007). In this theory, an evaluation of sections. The concept of happiness
happiness is proposed, as understood by (in psychology) is understood as being part of a
Venhoveen (2009, p. 284), as the degree used major construct (SW), with another component
by a person who favorably judges his own lifes of a cognitive nature, called vital satisfaction. In
global quality as a whole, which is inuenced administration economy and in Medicine as
by the notion that the person has about how well as psychiatry the term SW is usually used
happy that life is. In addition, it is proposed that (from psychology), even though it is limited only
the conceptual referent of happiness would not to the vital satisfaction component
be the same for everyone, and it would be (e.g. respectively, Islam et al. 2009; Mella
inuenced by cultural, social and situational et al. 2004).
72 E. Moyano Daz
Among the studies related to an economic overcome by far the ways people have to satisfy
approach, are those written by Aparicio Cabrera them, which will transform into a cause of
(2009, 2011), which include some explicit and unhappiness. Thus, the proposed model predicts
theoretical contents as foundation for his models that happiness will increase when the aspirations
or measures. This author takes contributions for consumption are fewer than the ways for
from ethical doctrines in philosophy related to satisfying them and, in an opposite way, happi-
happiness, reviewing conceptions from Bentham ness will decrease if the aspirations of consump-
(when searching for happiness, it is also for plea- tion are more than the ways for satisfying such
sure, and vice versa), Cirene (happiness is the aspirations. These hypotheses were formalized
system of pleasure), from cynicism (happiness is (among others) by the author in order to test
reached through autarky, where the contribution them in subsequent empirical studies.
of goods has no place), Aristotle (the concept of
eudemonia and virtue according to the half 5.3.2.4 The Concept of Happiness
point), Stoicism (to live following nature and and Some Counter-Stances
reason) and Epicurus (happiness is reached A study that could be considered important for its
through ataraxia). Cabrera centered his interest conceptual reection, but mainly for its contribu-
on consumption and, synthesizing from these tion to the assessment of happiness which will
doctrines, claimed: the conceptual referent of be discussed in detail in the next section is the
happiness from Cyrenaican ethics to hedonist work proposed by the psychologist Alarcon
utilitarianism considers consumption (2006). The authors proposal about what happi-
(i.e. satisfying material needs) as an important, ness is based on an idea that there would not be
determinant and meaningful concept to achieve differences in the Spanish language or in the
happiness. whereas in relation to the conceptual Peruvian speech between well-being and happi-
referent of happiness from cynicism Senecas ness, even though the last term is semantically
stoicism, from Epicures and Aristotles hedo- more complex and richer than the rst one. How-
nism, the consumption of satisfactory elements ever, the author chooses to make both concepts
will have a relatively or even useless importance synonymous, and denes happiness as an affec-
in achieving happiness. tive status which is subjectively experienced by
Aparicio Cabrera (2011) indicates that the the individual in full possession of a long-
postmodern culture stimulates the growth and awaited good (2006, p. 101). The scales con-
aspiration of consumption, specially trying to struction Happiness Scale of Lima (EFL in
transform it into a peaceful experience. Inspired Spanish)- is based on that idea, and also on
in Schopenhauer, whose vision of happiness was some Anglo instruments that are connected with
nothing else than those exceptional moments the hedonist approach.
when constant pain and suffering is interrupted Even though the presented focus is happiness
(and which has to be looked for when avoiding and the studies are centrally aimed at it, the fact
pain and not when trying to reach pleasure), the that there are studies which are not connected to
author developed a theoretical model related to happiness as the main variable, cannot be set
the negative effect that consumption has on hap- aside. This event frequently happens in studies
piness. For the orthodox economic theory, related to SWB, when it is correctly assumed in
greater consumption is always considered posi- its dual complexity as vital satisfaction and hap-
tive and conceived as a carrier of well-being to piness. This kind of study on SWB exists not
the consumer. This would make it reasonable to only in psychology, but is also found in medical
think that people might aspire to the maximum literature.
consumption possible with the expectation of A study by Scorsolini-Comin and Dos Santos
pleasure and to consume pleasant goods in a (2010), titled The scientic study of happiness
high amount. Nevertheless, the multiple ways and health promotion: an integrative review of
and wishes to consume that people have the literature states at the beginning that its
major aim was to research the prole of the the granted emphasis to the different components
contributions referred to the concept of subjec- among different authors (315). With Diener as a
tive well-being, highlighting the lack of distinc- referent, they join the conception of a SWB
tiveness when the terms SW and happiness are formed by VS, happiness and positive and nega-
used. In the study, a recount was carried out tive affection, in other words, considering happi-
using the key term SW within the period ness as a component of a higher construct.
19702007 through the databases PubMed, In the same way, from the weaknesses in the
Medline, PsycINFO, Scielo, LILACS and denitions and conceptual distinctions about
PEPSIC. After applying several inclusion happiness, it is observed that in some of the
criteria, the nal analysis was performed over articles collected in our database, there is a cer-
19 studies, yielding the following: (i) the major- tain counter-stance in the use of the concepts of
ity of studies on SW are within the health area, SWB and happiness, since they are referred to as
(ii) the concept of SWB is not directly addressed synonyms. This aspect, with a relatively low
but it is jointly recalled with the notions of satis- frequency in the reviewed Latin American
faction and life quality. It is also reported that publications (and among other regions of the
(iii) few studies go deeply into the conceptuali- world as well), does not contribute to the needed
zation of the term, or dene the instruments used clarity and precision required in science and fur-
for the assessment of SW. Scorsolini-Comin and thermore, it confuses, especially those starting on
Dos Santos (2010, p. 4) are critical when stating this subject. Apparently, it is highly frequent
that the denitions on the concepts of life quality among medical studies to nd a reference to
(from now on, LQ), SW and happiness are still SW even though the measuring instruments
confusing and subsequently, their rendering used are those used to assess life satisfaction, as
operational (when measuring) is often it commonly happens with Diener et al. (1985)
deformed. These researchers point out that in popular SWLS (in Spanish, vital satisfaction
the reviewed literature, the interest lies in how scale). Another example in the same line, but
the concept must be applied in the clinical prac- taken from the eld of economics is found in
tice and especially, in the promotion of health, Gerstenbluth et al. (2008) study, that proposed
rather than its discussion and its own denition that satisfaction with life was related to health,
problems. They also state that, even though SWB using the data from Latinbarometro, from 2,400
is a concept related to others, such as VS, PWB people of Ro de la Plata (1,200 Uruguayans and
and LQ, all of them are different and must be 1,200 Argentineans). The authors decided to
considered for their subtleness and specicities, assess happiness through a self-conducted report
which does not occur in the majority of the of satisfaction with life, specifying a binary vari-
selected studies. Under these circumstances, able happy, with 1 if the individual reports
future studies are needed in order to resolve a being highly or quite satised with life, and 0
possible semantic dissociation among these if he reports being not very happy or not all
concepts when thinking and researching about happy (p. 71). Consequently, alchemy is quickly
well-being (p. 8) and therefore, they understand pursued about the conception of satisfaction in
that SWB is a growing area of study. After hav- happiness. Not distinguishing between these
ing analyzed the concept of SWB from classical similar to other psychological concepts is not
authors in psychology, Gomez et al. (2007), as only a matter of conceptual or theoretical order,
well as the previously mentioned authors, con- but also empirical. However, until the present
clude that the concepts of well-being, happiness moment, this counter-stance seems to be not
and satisfaction . . . try to describe a state which founded on conceptual considerations, but rather
is composed of cognitive and affective on matters of practical or political order. As far
dimensions. These states are referred to as satis- as we are concerned, satisfaction besides hav-
faction by some, and happiness by others, due to ing a large research tradition in psychology
the lack of agreement in the denomination and seems to be a rather stable variable compared to
74 E. Moyano Daz
happiness (less volatile or emotional). Many studies have been found. When two or more
economists prefer to use it as a measure in their measures are used in the same study, the purpose
studies because they consider that these features was to re-test in order to have a liability measure
make it more useful and reliable, making it easier (Alarcon 2006; Moyano and Ramos 2007;
to incorporate into public politics. According to Moyano Daz 2010; Vera et al. 2011) or, under
Alarcon (2006), taking happiness and SWB as controlled conditions, to evaluate the effective-
equals is justied, under the assumption of lin- ness of an intervention, especially in health areas
guistic and content considerations within the (i.e. not the studies in the present sample, even
Spanish language. though it is well known how frequent these are in
the studies on SW in medical or sanitary
interventions).
5.3.3 The Methods and Happiness The majority of the articles present an asso-
as a Variable ciative or correlational research paradigm (not
experimental), with the variable happiness
Experienced happiness comes from given love.
(among other ones) occasionally considered as
(Isabel Allende (1942-). Chilean writer) a dependent variable. The main focus is its asso-
ciation with others, where the use of socio-
When referring to methods, we refer to the ways demographic variables age, sex, civil status
or mechanisms with which researchers identify, mainly (e.g. de la Coleta 2012) is frequent. These
capture, describe, measure or eventually try to variables only marginally contribute to explain
explain in this case the variable happiness. happiness in North Anglo American
Though they do not fulll the inclusion criteria (Lyubomirsky et al. 2006; Sheldon and
used in this study included in WoS or Scielo-, Lyumirsky 2006) and in Latin American
world-wide databases on the subject cannot be populations (Garca Vega and Sales Heredia
excluded (World Database of Happiness 2011; Moyano and Ramos 2007; Moyano Daz
(Veenhoven 2009); National Well Being Index; 2010).
The Happy Planet Index, World Values Survey, One of the few reections found on the meth-
or, for Latin America, Latinbarometro, among odology of the studies in the area of SWB
others). The databases have become popular happiness included- belongs to Daz (2001),
and frequently cited, especially in the media who points out that the dominant paradigm in
and often in the political world, so researchers these studies, quantitative and positivist, with a
have gradually started to use their information. characteristic approach of science, would lose
Measures reported in those databases are directly effectiveness if applied to the social complexity.
aimed at the satisfaction or happiness variables The author highlights the lack of consideration at
among others, where the main objective is sim- the micro and, especially, the macro-social levels
ply their estimation or measure, for purposes of a that would be the basis of the results found.
descriptive character, and obtained with short These seem to be contradictory or difcult to
instruments, typically mono-item based, conciliate (income and SWB, for example) and
reporting dispersion and central tendency are normally attributed to methodological weak-
measures. ness. This author defends a systemic and dialec-
tical approach, even though his critical reection
5.3.3.1 About the Research Design does not include any specic proposal or any
and the Instruments kind of illustrative example of how it could
Regarding research designs, those used in the be done.
studies of the sample are mainly transversal, Regarding the measuring instruments, it is
with only one measure. It was rather exceptional possible to remark as positive that within
to nd two or more measures in the same study the Latin American contributions on happiness,
on happiness, and no longitudinal or temporal a noticeable interest for measuring is observed.
This is evidenced in the number of studies will probably be happy in those areas, which is a
marked as applied or empirical (which are the highly weak statement and has especially little
majority and whose number increases when value for public politics, traditionally of a secto-
mixed studies are added). The used instruments rial (health, economics, housing, etc.) nature.
are generally of Anglo-Saxon origin, taken from Lyubomirsky and Leppers (1999) EFS and
positive psychology approach, and also from Diener et al.s (1985) SWLS scales of happiness
economy, which even without stating their theo- are frequently used and the results obtained using
retical background, can be framed within the the latter scale are usually referred to as happi-
hedonist or utilitarianism approaches. ness. Both the EFS and SWLS have been adapted
Psychologists from Latin America who study from English into Spanish, after been created for
satisfaction or happiness, tend to use the hedonist Anglo-Saxon populations from USA or other
approach, quoting and using Dieners English-speaking countries (Canada, in the case
instruments (Diener et al. 1985). In spite of this, of MUNSH). For its versions and psychometrical
some psychometrical studies exist that use a properties in Spanish (Chile), please refer to
mixed approach hedonist and eudemonic Moyano and Ramos (2007) (or Moyano Daz
such as the concept of underlying happiness of 2010) for both scales, or to Vera Villarroel
Kozma and Stones MUNSH scale, which assess et al. (2011) for the EFS scale. The EFS scale
happiness among adults and the elderly (Moyano obtained a reliability (Cronbachs alpha) of
Daz et al. 2009) or some studies with an 0.79 using 957 Chilean participants from the
eudemonic approach related to psychological general population, and with a 10-week test-
well-being (Gallardo and Moyano Daz 2012). retest with university students with a level of
In general, the characteristic or most frequent 0.77 in Moyano and Ramos (2007). Vera
procedures used in the measure of happiness et al. (2011) also have reported alpha levels of
consist in handwritten instruments. They range 0.78 among the general population (n 300),
from very brief instruments, with only 1 item, or with an 8-week test-retest (n 779) of 0.61.
less than 5, (such as Lyubomirsky and Leppers Factor analyses in both of these studies have
(1985) EFS, with 4 items with a 7 point Likert found a single-factor model explaining the
scale response format), to longer ones, like the 61.08 % of the total variance for Moyano and
MUNSH, created by Kozma and Stones (1980) Ramos (2007), and from 59.92 % to 72.11 %
to assess happiness among adults (Moyano Daz according the sub-sample analyzed in Vera
et al. 2011), with 24 items answered yes, no, et al. (2011).
or I dont know. The MUNSH scale is built In psychometrical studies, besides the socio-
with 10 items related to affection (5 to the posi- demographic variables, the application of other
tive affect [PA] and 5 of negative affect [NA]), instruments is added to assess the emotional
and 14 items about experience (7 positive states generally incompatible with happiness,
experiences [PE] and 7 negative experiences such as sadness, or more frequently, depressive
[NE]). This MUNSH scale shows internal con- symptoms or depression, for a divergent valida-
sistency values of 0.85 and a temporal stability of tion. In order to increase convergent validity,
0.70, and also a high convergence with other parallel instruments are also used to evaluate
scales which express happiness indicators. How- the same variable (happiness) in the same study
ever, the majority of them are global instruments, or associates states, such as satisfaction. Some
using top-bottom approaches regarding the examples correspond to the use of MUNSH with
assessed variable, generally one-dimensional, SWLS (Moyano et al. 2010) or the application of
since they do not cover areas related with EFS with LOT-R (dispositional optimism)
performing areas of human development, such (in Vera et al. 2011), with the SWLS (Moyano
as family, work, friends or leisure. Therefore, in and Ramos 2007), or with the Positive Affection
an implicit way, it is assumed that, if a person Scale (Alarcon 2006; Caycho 2010).
seems to be globally happy (or satised, in accor- In some cases, a number of different or inde-
dance with what is being measured), he or she pendent instruments are effectively applied,
76 E. Moyano Daz
reecting the complexity of the SWB construct (Scorsolini-Comin and dos Santos 2010). It has
in its different components. In this way, Gomez 2 Likert-type sub-scales with 5 points. The rst
et al. (2007) generate an SWB index using the subscale from item 1 to 47 positive and
application of Diener et al. (1985) SWLS scale as negative affections are described, where the par-
a starting point, with Andrews and Witheys ticipant has to answer how he/she has felt
(1976) one reactive happiness scale, Gohm recently (from 1, not at all, to 5, extremely). In
et al. (1998) positive and negative affections the second subscale items 48 to 62-, relative
scale and others relating to 14 specic areas of opinions related to the evaluation of satisfaction
satisfaction (as well as a self-efcacy one). or dissatisfaction with life are described, so as to
A review of the instruments used in positive be answered in a format from 1 (completely dis-
psychology in which happiness is a central agree) to 5 (completely agree). EBES has three
concept- in Brazil, through the LILACS and factors: positive affect (21 items with Cronbachs
Scielo databases from 1970 to 2008 (Scorsolini- alpha of 0.95), negative affect (26 items with
Comin and dos Santos 2010) uncovered Cronbachs alpha of 0.95) and satisfaction with
245 articles and, after applying some exclusion life (15 items with a level of 0.90). According to
criteria (specic pathologies, AIDS, experimen- Scorsolini-Comin and dos Santos (2010:445),
tal psychology associated to the concept of rein- international instruments used in research studies
forcement, among others), the nal number was in Brazil, are only semantically translated or
reduced to 6 indexed articles carried out in a adapted, without using rigorous statistical valida-
Brazilian context. The analysis yielded measures tion studies.
corresponding to well-being and VS instruments, Some scales that do not require reading or
such as SWBS (Lawrence and Liang 1988), writing can occasionally be used, for special
PANAS-X (Positive and Negative Affect Sched- populations, such as illiterate or with a low
ule, Expanded Form of PANAS) (Watson and level of literacy, infants, or simply for economi-
Clark 1991; Watson et al. 1988); SWLS (Diener cal reasons among normal population, as they are
et al. 1985); or to happiness, such as OHI (Oxford considered to have a high level of reliability, just
Happiness Inventory, OHI, by Argyle like any other scale with a traditional answering
et al. (1989)), EFS (Lyubomirsky and Lepper format. The application would consist on using
1999); DHS; DHS-Brief; Depression-Happiness images or gures, such as McDowell and
Scale (Joseph et al. 2004). The last one is a Newells (1996) faces that have a wide smile
one-dimensional instrument, with a bipolar struc- (very happy) or with a mouth in omega style
ture, where one pole is happiness and the other (very unhappy). These kinds of instruments, also
pole is depression, with 25 items, or its from Anglo-Saxon countries, are rarely used in
abbreviated version with 6 items, which retains studies about happiness in Latin America. An
psychometrical properties regarding internal example of this type of study is Scalco
consistency, test-retest reliability and discrimi- et al. (2011) article, which applies a version of
nant validation. All the mentioned instruments the scale with seven options (AG) with faces
are from North America, and this review only (p. 650) in the following way: Now I will pres-
found one from Brazil: the Escala de Bem-Estar ent some faces expressing several feelings, from
Subjetivo (EBES) by Albuquerque and Troccoli a very happy person (show the rst face, A) to a
(2004) and Scorsolini-Comin and dos Santos very unhappy person (show the last face, G,
(2010). going through the intermediate). Which one of
EBES is inspired by some of the mentioned the presented faces best shows the way you feel
traditional scales (PANAS, Positive and Nega- about your life as a whole?
tive Affect, EVS, SWBS) and is formed by some In general, regarding the measure of happi-
items from these scales, analyzed in semantic- ness, Latin American authors have opted to adapt
validation groups for its adaptation to the the most well-known instruments in the interna-
Brazilian culture, and some new items tional Anglo-Saxon literature on the subject into
Spanish, for their respective countries, through with less than 8.2 % each. For Rojas (2007), this
the use of standard procedures regarding the result shows heterogeneity in the conceptual ref-
construction and the validation of instruments erence people have in mind when choosing the
and accurate statistics. concept of happiness that best suits them. In a
second analysis, the author gathered these eight
5.3.3.2 Contributions to Instrumentation models into two types, those inside-oriented
in Psychology and Economics (virtue, stoicism, etc.) and those outside-ori-
A previously mentioned author who has ented (enjoyment, satisfaction, etc.) and related
advanced further than the mere adaptation and them with the variable economic income, showing
application of Anglo-Saxon instruments in the that this income variable is only relevant to those
measurement of happiness is Alarcon (2006). In who have outside-oriented models of happiness,
fact, taking items from the Oxford Happiness but not to those who have inside-oriented models.
Scales (Hills and Argyle 2002) and from Diener Without any doubt, Rojas work is distinctive
et al. (1985) SWLS and adding some new items, for having made operational philosophical essays
Alarc on has built the EFL (Escala de Felicidad and measured concepts with a high level of
de Lima-Alarc on 2006 [Limas Happiness abstraction without ignoring the simplication
scale]). This scale contains 27 items in that this entails. This author has initiated a
5-Likert-style points, with a consistency level research line that allows advancing in the com-
(Cronbachs alpha) of 0.92, and formed by four prehension of the cultural differences of happi-
factors which explain 49.8 % of the total vari- ness in the region.
ance. This scale has been recently adapted for With a different approach, but contributing to
elderly Venezuelan adults (n 103, between the relative discussion about the components of
60 and 85 years old), reducing to 14 items and the construct of happiness, and using a theoreti-
reproducing its factorial composition of four cal and empirical point of view, A lvarez Ramrez
factors in this case of 61.4 % of the total (2012) designed a Likert-type scale to measure
variance, with an internal consistency of 0.84 happiness, with a multidimensional perspective
(A rraga and Sanchez 2012). In Economy, Rojas of the construct. Six hundred Colombian adults
(2007) created a measuring instrument in order to (between 19 and 40 years old, 50 % Males)
identify the concept of happiness people have, whose socio-economical level was controlled
based on eight different philosophical schools participated in the study. The aim of this study
and producing a synthesis sentence-afrmation was to characterize the underlying psychological
about happiness. The application of the instru- dimensions of the beliefs about happiness and the
ment consists in requesting participants to choose possible relationships among them, the socio-
the one that best represents their notion of happi- demographic variables of age and socio-
ness (model). The models of happiness included economical level and gender differences. The
are eight: stoicism, virtue, enjoyment, carpe scale nally consisted of 47 Likert response for-
diem, satisfaction, utopia, calmness, self- mat items (totally agree to totally disagree) and
realization. An application of the instrument to was jointly applied with Alarcons EFL (2006)
a population of 1,540 Mexicans yielded that and Vera et al.s (2011) version of EFS. The
almost a quarter (24.2 %) chose the satisfaction Varimax rotation in a principal-components
model (happiness is being satised with what I analysis showed a nine-factor solution, which
have and what I am); followed by stoicism and explained 92 % of the variance in 47 items. The
enjoyment (14.6 % chose happiness is accepting total scale presented a Cronbachs alpha of
things the way they are and 14 % chose happi- 88 and, by factor, between 0.88 and
ness is enjoying what I have reached within life, 0.78. The item-factor correlations were from
respectively); and self-realization (with 11.7 % 0.53 to 0.71 and item-test from 0.59 to 0.70
choosing happiness is applying in a complete without any gender differences being found.
way our capacities); leaving the remaining ve According to its author, the validation of the
78 E. Moyano Daz
beliefs scale about happiness in an adult popula- 14 questions. Some of these questions are:
tion conrms happiness as a multidimensional What is the rst thing that comes to mind
construct in psychology (Alarcon 2006) and not when you think about happiness? and What
as the one-dimensional construct posed by some does being happy mean? The results yielded
authors (Lyubomirsky and Lepper 1999). The that, according to teenagers, the concept is
author concludes by stating that the obtained associated with sensations of well-being, plea-
results of the study indicate that happiness is a sure, acceptance and autonomy in rst place. In
diverse, heterogeneous, faint and multiple repre- second place, it is associated with family, while
sentation of emotions, sensations, feelings, relationships and leisure activities are less impor-
attitudes, values, motivations and bio-psycho- tant. They also found gender differences, since
socio-cultural experiences that are interwoven for women happiness is associated to different
within the individual, in the bond with others socializing relationships, whereas for men, it is
and with the perception of the world or the associated to material goods and life conditions.
individuals life (p. 325). This conclusion The third study is the only one from the sam-
draws us closer to a denition of happiness ple where the method exclusively consisted in a
from the participants perspective, which will non-directive interview, followed by qualitative
be the topic of the next section. and phenomenological analysis. This study was
carried out on only three elderly participants, two
women and one man, not institutionalized, with
5.3.4 About the Emic Studies an active working status, and between the ages of
on Happiness and Others 59 and 65 years old (Carvalho Luz and Martins
Studies Amatuzzi 2008). The authors presented evidence
to conclude that the moments of happiness are
An important objective in the present study about related with social and family contact, autonomy
happiness in Latin America was to investigate if and working capability, which yields a feeling of
there was any progress regarding the identica- personal value, self-esteem and well-being.
tion or denition of the concept of happiness Even though the next study does not belong to
from an emic perspective, or from the meaning the emic category, it contributes to the underly-
the participants in the studies given. Within the ing question of how important happiness could
44 articles of the sample, 3 have been found to go be for people, which is an underlying assumption
in this direction and will be reviewed in the next of all studies and is rarely veried. Angelucci
section. et al. (2008) report a study performed with
In Acosta et al. (2008) study, the authors try to 3,384 Venezuelan university students, with an
nd the meaning of happiness (and also death) average age of 21 years old. The question was
according to students (n 83) in their rst about the importance of a whole group of values
3 years of nursing school in Cuba. The instru- and other concepts (55), which had to be
ment is a single reactive that asks the participant answered using the scale of 1 (not important) to
to Dene happiness in one word or sentence. 6 (very important). The rst ve values with
The results (expressed in non-addable very important points were: family, happiness,
percentages) showed the majority of participants respect, health and honesty. The last ve values
expressed, as a rst category a feeling (36 %), in hierarchy were appearance, ambition, rebel-
afterwards, a moment (33 %), love (33 %), being liousness, cowardice and laziness.
loved (30 %), reaching a goal (30 %), and joy From the last four studies, the rst two were
(23.3 %). aimed at identifying the concept of happiness
The second study by Hoher et al. (2011) was that young people from university and primary
conducted with 95 teenagers, aged between school have and express, in their own opinion
12 and 20 years old, from Brazilian public emic , making singular efforts in order not to
schools through a semi-structured interview of attribute or assign external concepts, but to
capture the sense of the concept directly from the Other Studies
actors. The fourth study among university There are investigations where happiness
students highlights the importance happiness appears as a variable within a bigger group and
has relative to other values. The fact that it was where the other variables take more central roles
placed second is an interesting fact due to its in order to explain or to be explained. Hence, an
convergence with other Latin American studies informative theoretical study related to
with similar sample type, which, from a different Feuersteins Structural Cognitive Modiability
perspective, points out that happiness mainly and the concept of mediated learning can be
comes from the family. These four studies are observed, suggesting a relationship among
singular in their objectives regarding the articles these, optimism and happiness (Kohler Herrera
under analysis because, unlike the majority, they 2004). Other empirical studies show a large
do not try to measure the variables intensity in a group of expressions being analyzed among chil-
direct way with instruments of psychometric ori- dren some of them related to happiness and
entation, but try to reveal its emics meaning positive feedback given by the parents, making
through open questions. those expressions to be leaping and singing if the
In a cross-cultural study, where the subjective home-situation is deprived of conict at that
representation of the concept of happiness and its moment, or, on the contrary, the demonstration
achievements among the elderly in countries is not reinforced (Retana-Franco and Sanchez-
with different economical and social conditions Aragon 2010). Other studies can be found that
Cuba and Italy (189 and 209 participants, show happiness is associated to general satisfac-
respectively)- was investigated, participants tion, full knowledge, pleasure sensation and
were asked to name ve things or components school behavior with higher-education students
that made them happy. Happiness was assessed (de la Coleta and de la Coleta 2006) and, among
by asking participants to assign a measure of the general population, to vital orientation and
achievement for each of these components. The state-mood anxiety in a negative way (Pavez
values assigned were later averaged. Initially, et al. 2012).
25 categories were generated but the 5 with Correa Bastos et al. (2012) identify the
least amount of references were eliminated: attributed importance given to sex and its associ-
Security and adversity by Cuban participants ation with healths self-perception and happiness
(7.6 % and 5.4 %. respectively) and hobbies feeling in 938 older adults from Brazil (60 years
(12.4 %), sex (1.4 %) and good luck (1.0 %) by old or older), relating to socio-economical and
Italian participants. Out of the nal 20 categories, health data. Even though the method does not
the most cited by Cubans were health, love, faith, specify how the happiness feeling was
good affective relationships, serenity/well-being, measured, the analysis section indicated that all
altruism and absence of unpleasant events; and of those who answered the question are you
the most cited by Italians were health, family, happy most of the time?, were included and
money, friendship, good affective relationships, the 92 % who answered, did so in a positive
serenity/well-being and values. The participants way. A total of 542 (57.8 %) participants consid-
converged in indicating the components of hap- ered sex to be very important or important;
piness, but there were differences according the highly important to the 16.6 % of men and 7.0 %
frequency of quotation and the importance of to women and of little importance for 30.3 %
these components. The fact of living in Italy or of men and 47.2 % of women ( p < 0.001). There
Cuba does not predict the general happiness in was not any association between sex-attributed
spite of the income difference in both countries, importance and feeling happiness ( p 0.299).
which conrms previous results about the lack of Studies with an environmental psychology
a complete dependence on economic well-being background among general population from
(Sotgiu et al. 2011). Chile, have shown that happiness is positively
80 E. Moyano Daz
associated to pro-environmental behavior and to frequent that SW is measured in its full richness
liberal thinking (Moyano Daz et al. 2011). In the and complexity, composed of VS and happiness
same direction, a study with university students at the same time. A limitation of this study that
from Mexico, whose participants answered an becomes apparent once it is nished, is that per-
instrument to asses pro-ecological, altruistic and haps the production of articles on happiness
frugal behaviors and equity and happiness, could be a little higher if the search criteria
allowed shaping of the construct of sustainable were extended to research on the concept of
behavior, which was signicantly inuenced by subjective well-being (SW), which should, but
the happiness factor (Corral-Verdugo it does not always, include the variable
et al. 2011). Studies from economics have happiness.
shown correlations between economical well- Latin American authors mainly show a
being (income, perception of the satisfaction of stressed and predominant interest in using mea-
material goods and others) and general well- suring instruments to estimate the intensity of
being (measured by a combination of Fordyces happiness, rather than conceptualizing, rening
scale and the DT by Andrews and Withey or performing critical analyses of the happiness
(1976)), are signicant, but with a low-range (or satisfaction) concepts coming from Anglo-
magnitude and without being able to include Saxon literature, or even producing a theoretical
happiness (Fuentes and Rojas 2001). and conceptual contribution to the concept of
happiness. Studies with an empirical or applied
character are the most abundant. This
5.4 As a Conclusion predominating interest that authors of this region
hold for measuring frequently includes the adap-
The research eld of happiness and positive psy- tation of Anglo-Saxon instruments that measure
chology or the economics eld of happiness or happiness or associated concepts vital satisfac-
well-being, which are the usual elds of study, tion, subjective well-being, psychological well-
are relatively new elds in the occidental world being, optimism, etc.- using a standard method-
and even newer in Latin America. The scientic ology and rigorous statistics (in Spanish lan-
production by Latin American authors on happi- guage), especially those with short instruments,
ness in indexed journals (WoS and SciELO), and, more exceptionally, includes making new
yielded 44 articles from the countries in this instruments (Alarcon 2006; Rojas 2007).
continental region and in the 12-year period Theoretical studies follow empirical and
taken into consideration. From a disciplinary applied studies in frequency, focusing on general
point of view, this production occurs and reviews, or in some cases, relating generic
concentrates in the psychology eld mainly, relationships with other terms, rather than deep-
followed by the economics eld. Reviewing the ening or analyzing the concept of happiness as it
content of these studies reveals an even lower is received from Anglo-Saxon literature. Even
number of articles that are aimed at studying though two out of three analyzed essays are not
happiness as their central and unequivocal related to the dominant scientic mainstreams
object, its concept or denition or the factors empirical and positive in the study of happiness
that determine it. It is much more frequent to in psychology or economy, both contain theoret-
nd studies where the central focus is SWB, ical reections about the topics and the concept,
and where happiness, if present, plays a constitu- highlighting in a convergent way what is
tive or explicative role depending on the case considered as a weakness of the concept and
to the main variable. phenomenon (incommunicable or dark prob-
The analysis also shows that, in many studies, lem or scientic category under construction),
the concept of happiness when present and which interrelates the scientic episteme about it.
measured is indiscernibly used as a synonym Mixed studies aim to make new progress in
of VS or SWB. Additionally, it is even less the verication of new hypotheses (not replicas)
and are the exceptions in the analyzed sample. cultural traditions or from native populations
This could be explained (from a positive point of (folk or others) in a written or oral style about
view) due to the short history of the subject and happiness have been observed in the analyzed
therefore, is a developing level of knowledge sample. With the exception of studies recently
which is apparently in its rst stages, in other synthesized, a strong assimilation generally
words, exploratory, descriptive or correlative, acritical of the modal denition coming from
more than explicative. the Anglo-Saxon psychology is generally
No study or reference of eventual conceptions observed. Nevertheless, it is an essentially an
of happiness (music, folklore) from the respec- operational denition, not conceptual. In this
tive countries, or from the belief systems of way, the denitions from referenced authors are
native populations, or their literature has been broadly assumed in most studies. The concept of
found, even though some countries have been happiness is adequately used in instruments such
awarded the Nobel prize in literature, as is the as EFS, MUNSH or OHI scales, which were
case of Chile (two prizes), Guatemala, Mexico, originally built for only the purpose of measuring
Colombia and Peru (one prize each). happiness. However, there is a greater amount of
From the 44 studies in the examined sample, studies that use Diener et al.s (1985) SWLS
only 3 of them (6.8 %) have a proper emic inadequately, when this scale actually deals
approach: trying to identify the concept of happi- with satisfaction with life (VS). This can reect
ness the participants (teenager students) have in several different things, but its immediate conse-
their respective investigations. These studies quence is that it leads to confusion, especially to
show that for Brazilian public-school teenagers, those starting in this area of research. Even
happiness is associated (primarily) with a sensa- though both variables share common elements,
tion of well-being, pleasure, acceptance and they are different variables. It is possible to be
autonomy. In the second place, it is also satised and not happy; however, the opposite
associated with family, whereas leisure activities might be less likely. Nevertheless, clarifying this
and relationships are less important in their asso- distinction is a theoretical and empirical chal-
ciation with happiness. Women nd happiness to lenge in an area that is considered to be under
be associated to several types of relationships, development by some authors just like the con-
whereas men nd a greater association to mate- cept of happiness as a scientic category.
rial goods and life conditions. For Cuban univer- Studies with an analytical or deconstructive
sity students, happiness is a mood, a feeling, view of the concept, of its eventual components,
moments, love and being loved, reaching goals, phases or stages, and of its status as a scientic
and lastly, joy. For elderly Brazilian people, hap- category (Silva Colmenares 2008) are lacking in
piness is associated with social and family con- the current scientic literature. Studies that ana-
tact, autonomy and ability to work, all of them lyze its possible relationships with other psycho-
interpreted as situations that generate self esteem logical concepts from the same family or analysis
and well-being. level are also lacking. A conceptual and not only
When Happiness is analyzed as a value, it operational denition of happiness must state its
takes second place after family, in a hierarchy genre and characteristics, its distinctiveness from
of more than 50 other values and aspects. The other psychological phenomena, and its own sin-
family value also takes rst place as a source of gular characteristics. The conceptual problem is
happiness in different Latin American countries. no less when it comes to shaping a scientic
This occurs in Mexico and Chile with particu- concept, and the present study has disclosed
larly big samples, especially in an unpublished that it not only affects happiness, but would
article with 26.853 people from ten Mexican also include relationships between other
states (Rojas 2013). concepts such as quality of life, SWB, positive
No inspiration, or theoretical or conceptual and negative affections or affective balance, to
approximations, taken from Latin American name the most important ones. The literature
82 E. Moyano Daz
review here presented has shown that the inves- populations elicited from worldwide databases
tigative production follows independent roads in or international indexes. As a favorite technique,
every eld of knowledge, even though econom- used for measuring happiness or vital satisfac-
ics seems to be more open to inuences from tion, the direct question is used, which is
philosophy and psychology on the topic (in an answered through a Likert-style scale, or through
advantageous way), than vice-versa. the dichotomous system yes or no. In the eco-
Happiness and vital satisfaction have a differ- nomics eld, the indistinguishable use of the
ent history, where the latter is part of a long terms happiness and satisfaction is even more
investigative, conceptual and empirical path in frequent, although that may not be where the
psychology (and referred to several elds, such missing conceptual distinction should be sought.
as work, family, etc.). Whereas happiness as a Regarding the concept of happiness,
systematic investigative line- is comparatively Alarcons contributions (2006) are remarkable
recent, with no more than 25 years of history, if and promising. That author has proposed, based
its origins are placed in positive psychology. on international psychology mainly Anglo-
Under these circumstances, it may be more ade- Saxon, and the authors own heritage- a deni-
quate to favor the use of the satisfaction concept tion for happiness and a proper instrument to
for use in public politics, and to allow the con- measure it. That proposal presents it as a multi-
cept of happiness to be further researched until it dimensional concept and therefore, with a greater
acquires a less controversial level of scientic richness and complexity than the dominant
category, more differentiated from other previ- Anglo-Saxon (or European) denitions, which
ous concepts, and with a greater agreement are essentially operational. Only time will clarify
among the researchers in the eld. how much acceptance and use is obtained of this
In relation to the conceptual reection on instrument. An effort to reach a conceptual crea-
happiness in economics, Rojas studies tion is also observed in A lvarez Ramrez (2012)
presenting the theory of the happiness conceptual when he concludes: happiness is a diverse, het-
referent and Aparicio Cabreras (2009) proposal erogeneous, faint and multiple representation of
inspired by Schopenhauer of a formal model emotions, sensations, feelings, attitudes, values,
to investigate the relationship between consump- motivations and bio-psycho-socio-cultural
tion and unhappiness can be highlighted. The experiences that are interweaved, tying in with
instrument created and applied by Rojas that the individual, the bond with others and with the
was based on philosophical essays, allows perception of the world or the individuals own
identifying and classifying people according to life (p. 325).
the predominant referent of happiness, which Methodologically speaking, the predominant
may explain the differences found between dif- type of research is through an associative paradigm
ferent countries. In the same way Rojas studies where the variable happiness goes with others as
located within the area denominated economics an explanatory variable of other constructs, espe-
of well-being or economy of happiness- contrib- cially of SW. It is less frequent to nd studies with
ute to the relationship of income and happiness in happiness as dependant variable. Hence, overall, it
Mexico and other countries, a relationship that, is possible to claim that we have different ways to
according to the authors judgment, has always measure happiness, but very little is known about
been considered strong in economics. However, it, since its denition as a concept still remains
the empirical ndings conrm this only in a (mainly) in the dark, as was indicated by one
rather weak way. of the authors when referring to the subject. The
The use of the satisfaction with life scale instruments used are surveys, questionnaires, psy-
(SWLS) by Diener et al. (1985) seems to be chological tests or scales in Likert or semantic
predominant in studies of the of happiness in differential style, or using yes, no or I dont
economics and as a method, the increasing use know. The predominant Likert-style instruments
of extended secondary information with large EFS (and SWLS)- consist of no more than ve to
seven items, or among the ones created in Latin The analysis of this sample of Latin American
America, eight items (Rojas), in such a way that studies about happiness allows emphasizing the
low cost applications are able to be conducted. In inappropriate use of the concept of happiness
the eld of economics, where international which is also relatively frequent and happens in
databases are used, satisfaction and happiness are studies from Latin America too. It would be
generally evaluated through only one item, implic- highly desirable that research in this area
itly assuming that the measure (direct question to obtained more clarity and thus, made communi-
happiness) is also the concept, or that no eventual cation easier. A way to obtain this is: (1) dening
construct or underlying disposition exits or are of and distinguishing the concepts in use,
interest. Therefore, what the answerer uses to conrming, denying or creating them, depending
answer remains obscure. In Psychology, the direct on the case (Bunge 1992), then, (2) increasing the
question is also used, although as part of a group of exactitude or consistency between concept and
other constitutive items of larger instruments, measurements or between conceptual denitions
whose underlying items refer to a greater complex- and operational denitions, and, nally,
ity. This is what happens with some Latin Ameri- (3) avoiding titles that include terms that are not
can instruments such as the EFL with 27 items- found or are not clearly distinguished in the body
and with some Anglo-Saxon ones, MUNSH with of the article.
24, or OHI with 29 items. In general, within In conclusion, and referring to everything
psychometrical studies, there is an attempt to con- explained above, it is clear that happiness as a
trol variables such as age, sex, and social- research eld, offers a wide opportunity of scien-
economical level. Moreover, in some of those tic development, both conceptual or theoretical
studies, other variables of psychological interest and empirical. It also offers the opportunity for
are included in order to control convergent collaborative dialogue among researchers in this
(or divergent) validity, such as personality, theme, all of them coming from different
extroversion-introversion, depression or depres- disciplines, and very especially among
sive symptoms, positive and negative affections, economists and psychologists focused on happi-
state-mood anxiety, expectations or optimism ness and well-being.
among the most frequent. The predominance of
the psychometrical approach reinforces an emic
conception, which may not be an advisable sce- Appendix
nario in the rst stages of development of a new
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Positiva dos Afetos: Bienestar.
Part II
Human Relations and Happiness
in Latin America
The Importance of Relational Goods
for Happiness: Evidence from Manizales, 6
Colombia
Liliana Velasquez
6.1 Introduction relational goods have on well-being experienced

by heads of households or their spouses or partners
The Center for Regional Coffee and Enterprise in the city.
Studies, CRECE, with the nancial support of the The present chapter is divided into six sections,
National Administrative Department of Science, including this introduction. The second presents a
Technology, and Innovation, Colciencias, summary of the theoretical and empirical back-
conducted in 2009 the Quality of Life Survey in ground for the importance of relational goods for
the urban area of Manizales, a small city located in human well-being. The third section contains
the Andes mountain chain of Colombia. The Sur- some key features of subjective well-being in
vey was applied to a sample of over 6,000 urban Manizales, based on the perceptions of hap-
households of all social strata. It comprised piness and life satisfaction among Surveys
questions on perceptions of life conditions, subjec- respondents and people interviewed. The fourth
tive well-being, satisfaction with individual and section describes the availability of some rela-
context domains, as well as socio-demographic tional goods in Manizales, specically relations
characteristics of family members. Besides the within the immediate family, social relations,
Survey, a qualitative study, based on in-depth social support, interaction at work, relational lei-
interviews, was carried out to achieve a better sure, social and political participation. The fth
understanding of factors that underlie well-being section includes an analysis of the association
experienced by the local population. Both the sur- between relational goods and subjective well-
vey questionnaire and the interviews were applied being in urban Manizales, and, specically, the
to heads of households or their spouses or partners. impact of relational goods on subjective well-
Some studies based on the Survey and the qual- being. Finally, the sixth section contains the
itative work show the importance of family, social main conclusions from previous analyses as well
relationships and other relational goods in subjec- as recommendations related to public policy.
tive well-being in Manizales (Matijasevic
et al. 2010; Velasquez 2010, 2011). This chapter
attempts to provide deeper theoretical and empiri- 6.2 Theoretical and Empirical
cal insights into the impact that several types of Background
According to Bruni (2008), the concept of rela-

L. Velasquez (*)
CRECE, Manizales, Colombia
tional goods was introduced almost simulta-
e-mail: lvelasquez@crece.org.co neously by four authors: Martha Nussbaum and

92 L. Velasquez
Pierpaolo Donati, in 1986, Benedetto Gui, in 1987, participation or commitment, is also required
and Carole Uhlaner, in 1989. The rst is a North for the good life: Full participation in a polis
American philosopher, the second is an Italian that functions properly is a necessary condition
philosopher and sociologist, the third is and Italian in order to develop and use the rest of the
economist, and the last one is a North American excellences of the individual (pp. 437438).
mathematician and engineer. Relational goods have a fragile or vulnerable
Whereas the rst three authors have carried nature, because they are the least self-sufcient
out a greater theoretical and conceptual develop- exterior good (Nussbaum 1995). This nature
ment of the relational goods, Uhlaners work on is derived from being made of relationships,
the topic was limited to only one article that, which implies that they require particular
nevertheless, has had very important transcen- attitudes or behaviors from other people
dence in the area. (p. 432) and can be enjoyed only in reciproc-
As for Nussbaum, she bases her discussion on ity (p. 444). In Nussbaums interpretation
Aristotles ideas related to external goods and on Aristotles relational goods there exists
eudaimonia, which means human ourishing. a total connection between the interpersonal
Although she does not provide a denition, she relationship and the good, which is to say,
understands relational goods as the condition that the good actually is the relationship (Bruni
allows a human being to cultivate his social and 2008, p. 8).
political dimension (Garca 2004, p. 258). As for Donati, he used the concept to refer to
Nussbaum describes the importance of rela- goods that are neither public (they are consumed
tional goods for the good or virtuous life as individually) nor private (they can be shared)
dened by Aristotle, revisiting texts from some because their production and consumption
of his works, in particular from his Nicomachean require other people (Donati 2007). In fact,
Ethics. In her discussion, relational goods are these goods can be produced and enjoyed only
part of External or Exterior Goods those that with those who participate in the relationship, in
are outside the body and the soul of which a social-private sphere (Ibid). Differing from
include: wealth, fame, or power. These goods Nussbaum, for Donati relational goods are
are constituted through interpersonal products or consequences of existing
relationships and are necessary for personal ful- relationships (Bruni 2008, p. 125). It must be
llment, as man is a political and social creature, brought to attention that this author is the founder
naturally inclined to live with others (Nussbaum of the so-called relational sociology which
1995). starts from the basis that society is made-up of
According to Nussbaum, friendship, love and social relations created by human beings
political commitment are the three main rela- (Donati 2011, p. 2).
tional goods that Aristotle had in mind. The rst Gui and Uhlaner, on the other hand, are
two are included in the Greek term philia, which recognized as the rst scholars proposing the
Nussbaum prefers not to translate in order to economic analysis of relational goods. For
conserve its original meaning. Philia is a broader them, relational goods are a kind of local public
concept than friendship. It includes family, mari- goods. Their public nature is based on the fact
tal, and erotic relationships. In that sense, philia that they need other people to be enjoyed
refers to affective ties that are stronger and more (Becchetti et al. 2008). Same as with Donati,
intimate than those generated among friends for Gui and Uhlaner relational goods are the
(Nussbaum 1995). For Aristotle, philia is the outcomes of a relationship, not the relationship
most necessary and important exterior good for itself (Becchetti et al. 2009, p. 5). In that sense,
human life. Through it, people are capable of the relational goods are distinct from the rela-
reaching all of their goals, because they are able tionship (Bruni 2008, p. 8).
to nd the motivation they require, which is Gui approaches the concept of relational
difcultly found in solitude. As for political goods in studying the structures of a
6 The Importance of Relational Goods for Happiness: Evidence from Manizales, Colombia 93
communitarian economy (Becchetti et al. 2008). (iv) Motivations: Relational goods require the
He denes them as intangible entities that are existence of genuine motivations that con-
inextricably associated with personalised ceive of the relationship as an end in itself,
interactions and have a bearing on their and not as a means to achieve other
unfolding (Gui 2003, p. 2). Or, alternatively, objectives.
as affective outputs generated by a productive (v) Emerging fact: Relational goods emerge
process called encounter (p. 6). within a relationship, which intends to
Finally, Uhlaner (1989) used the concept to emphasize the otherness of the relational
comprise a set of explanatory variables to predict good. That is an additional component
political participation under the rational choice derived from relationships, which some-
theory. According to her, relational goods are an times transcends an agents original
aspect of human sociability. Those goods arise intentions.
as a function of a relationship with others and, (vi) Gratuitousness: This property implies that
because of that, they cannot be acquired by an the relationship should not be used for
isolated individual (p. 254). Moreover, she purposes different from the intrinsic
argues that relational goods can only be enjoyed motivations that fostered the relationship.
if shared with some others (Ibid). That makes (vii) Good: This last property means that rela-
them different from private and standard public tional goods are not commodities because,
goods: while the former are enjoyed alone, the even though they have value, they do not
latter can be enjoyed by any number of people have a market price.
(Ibid). She classies them under the category of
local public goods. While, as noted, Aristotles relational goods,
In addition to those considered pioneers in the as interpreted by Nussbaum, are friendship, love
use of the idea of relational goods, other authors and political commitment, the other examples
have conceptualized on the term. Among the respond to the predominant approach according
most valuable ones is Brunis contribution to which relational goods are products of inter-
(2008). For him, relational goods are a third personal relationships, and not the relationships
class of goods and not an intermediate category themselves. Palomar and Munoz (2011), for
between public and private goods, where the example, include social networks and social
difference fundamentally lies in certain support among relational goods. Becchetti
interferences in consumption. Additionally, et al. (2008, p. 5), on the other hand, mention
the author presents a summary of essential companionship, emotional support, social
properties of relational goods (Ibid): approval, solidarity, a sense of belonging and of
experiencing ones history, the desire to be loved
(i) Identity: It is a key condition for relational or recognized by others, which are produced by
goods because they require the interaction social relationships or events.
of well-known people, with known iden- Uhlaner (1989), citing various authors,
tity, not anonymous. includes some of the previous relational goods,
(ii) Reciprocity: As pointed by Nussbaum as well as the desire to be recognized or
(1995), to the extent that relational goods accepted by others, the desire to maintain an
are made of relationships, they can only identity, others aspects of sociability, and some
be enjoyed with reciprocity, or in a shared instances of fulllment of a duty or moral norm
manner. (p. 255). She also includes friendship and its
(iii) Simultaneity: The production and con- benets, which is to say, as much an interper-
sumption of relational goods are done sonal relationship like its products or positive
simultaneously, which sets them apart consequences.
from regular market goods, which are pro- Although some authors have equated the con-
duced and consumed separately. cept of relational goods to the notion of social
94 L. Velasquez
capital, and others identify the former as a rela- people. Diener and Oishi (2005) have been able
tional component of the latter, there is a funda- to establish that social relationships are more
mental difference between them. That difference important for subjective well-being than material
is associated with the strictly instrumental value prosperity. Palomar and Munoz (2011) empha-
that interpersonal relationships have, from the size the importance of social support in the well-
perspective of social capital, as a means to better being experienced by individuals. Finally, Bruni
personal income, which is opposed to the rela- and Stanca (2008) found that active participation
tional goods approach, under which relationships in voluntary organizations has a positive impact
have intrinsic value because they themselves can on subjective well-being as well as time spent in
generate well-being (Rojas 2011). As social cap- relational activities, in particular with parents
ital eases the achievement of different targets, it and relatives, and to a lesser extent, with friends
is purely instrumental. The opposite occurs with and people from service organizations.
relational goods, which are needed for them- The study of relational goods and their impor-
selves and not for other ends, meaning that tance on subjective well-being raties the value
they have intrinsic motivations (Prouteau and that others have in the life of an individual. As
Wolff 2004, p. 434). indicated by Becchetti and Santoro (2007), citing
Even if Nussbaums text on Aristotles rela- Nussbaum, happiness is not entirely in our
tional goods makes repeated mention of their hands, as it depends on the quality of our rela-
instrumental value, that value is given by more tionship and therefore on the behaviour of
noble objectives than generating income. In others (p. 240). In a similar direction,
effect, for Aristotle, philia has instrumental Matijasevic et al. (2010, p. 119) argue that
value because it is a powerful tool in achieving because of the social nature of the human
what is desired. One can turn to the loved one in being, who is constructed as a subject in
case of adversity, in search for care in old age, or relationships with others, he needs other people
to embark on any project (Nussbaum 1995, to be happy.
p. 453). In addition, public activity and the
appropriate political environment are instrumen-
tally necessary for the development and mainte- 6.3 Subjective Well-Being
nance of a good character (p. 437). in Manizales
Various authors have examined the impor-
tance of relational goods in subjective well- The Manizales Quality of Life Survey
being. As Ryan and Deci (2001) state, there is approached subjective well-being from different
multiple evidence of the link between related- perspectives, among them, by means of asking
ness and subjective well-being. They mention questions on the happiness and the general satis-
some studies that have found that relatedness is faction with life experienced by individuals. Dif-
one of the main factors inuencing happiness, fering from other types of subjective well-being
while others point out the negative relation questions (for example, the ones that ask about
between loneliness and life satisfaction. Among the perception of living conditions of the home,
specic aspects of relatedness that positively the sufciency of household income versus
affect subjective well-being, they allude to afli- expenses, the self-perception of poverty, etc.),
ation, relationship-enhancing traits, attachment, happiness and general satisfaction with life
and intimacy. On the other hand, Bruni and Porta involve a wide, but undened, number of
(2007) found greater levels of happiness in those dimensions, which depend on subjective
who participate in civil life, have friends, and a judgment.
partner. Rojas (2010) argues that relational goods The survey results associated with those two
like love, emotional support, friendship, and topics show high levels of happiness and life
good relations with neighbors and colleagues satisfaction in the Manizaless urban population,
importantly affect well-being experienced by which is in line with other studies that have been
undertaken in Colombia: 63 % of those surveyed It is important to note that the Quality of Life
consider themselves fairly or very happy, and Survey, on which most of the analyses are based,
68 % say they are fairly or very satised with was not designed for the study of relational
their lives. These ndings are similar to those goods. This is the reason why certain topics
obtained in 2008 by the Latinobarometer for were not asked (for example, social relationships
Latin America, according to which 66 % of the at work) and others were not addressed in a
population of the region considered themselves manner that made easier to relate them with
happy and 71 % were satised with their lives. subjective well-being (as is the case of relational
Both the quantitative and qualitative work has leisure). Because of that, in some cases
addressed some of the factors that affect the relationships of those surveyed were examined,
subjective well-being of Manizaless population. while, in others, the products or consequences of
The rst found that among those factors are those relationships were analyzed (for example,
household income, sex and age of the person social support received or satisfaction produced
surveyed, as well as satisfaction with several by social relations). Following some of the
life domains such as economic situation, hous- authors reviewed in the second section
ing, work, health, family, sex life, social (in particular, Donati), that implies combining
relationships, free time, and personal the analysis of relational goods with that of the
achievements (Velasquez 2010). The second sources that generate them (relationships). In
work found that the experience of well-being order to overcome this conict, both the
is strengthened through access to different types relationships and their products are considered
of material and affective resources that are con- relational goods, which means taking a closer
sidered valuable from the perspective of the sub- position to Nussbaum.
ject (Matijasevic et al. 2010, pp. 117118). In Relational goods examined below include
the specic case of the inhabitants of Manizales, relationships within the immediate family, other
the most important aspects in the assessment of social relationships, social support, interaction at
personal well-being are family, work, health, and work, relational leisure, and social and political
education (Ibid). As later shown, the rst has an participation.
essentially relational nature, while the second has
material and relational components. As for health
and education, both are situated in the sphere of 6.4.1 Relations Within the Immediate
capabilities. Family
The family continues to hold a central role in

6.4 Relational Goods in Manizales Manizaless society, in spite of some changes
over the last decades. Although some of them
This section describes the characteristics and reveal the cession of functions to other
magnitude of some relational goods in institutions, the Colombian family still reserves
Manizales, according to the perceptions of two fundamental roles: the primary socialization
heads of households or their partners regarding of the new members of the society and emotional
different aspects of their families and social support to individuals (Echeverri 2004).
relationships, as well as their social and political Among the main changes experienced by
participation. Through these analyses, it can be family in the city and the country over the last
determined how important are relational goods in years are the following: (i) the loss of the impor-
a small city of an under-developed country, and tance of extended family; (ii) the loss of the
whether this importance is greater than in pros- importance of marriage and the increase of
perous societies where production and consump- unmarried couples living together; (iii) the
tion of relational goods are very reduced (Bruni reduction in the number of children; (iv) an
2010). increase in households headed by women;
96 L. Velasquez
(v) the massive admission of women in education Finally, satisfaction people have with their
and work; (vi) the loss of male authoritarianism families is very high: 42 % of those surveyed
(Echeverri 2004). feel very satised, 46 % fairly satised, 9 %
In spite of the changes in the family structure, moderately satised, and only 3 % are somewhat
according to the Quality of Life Survey, nuclear satised or unsatised with their families
families predominate in Manizales (56 %), (Table 6.1). Those levels of satisfaction increases
followed by extended families (34 %). The as income rises: 83 % of the respondents in the
mean size of homes is 3.6 people and the number rst quintile are fairly or very satised with their
of children per home is only 1.3, which is due to families, and the proportion increases gradually
large proportions of homes without children reaching 92 % in the last quintile.
(25 %), households with only one child (34 %),
or two (29 %).
The Survey also included some questions that 6.4.2 Other Social Relationships
referred to the relations between the people sur-
veyed and their immediate family, which Besides relationships with immediate family
constitutes the primary source in developing rela- members and other relatives, people develop
tional capacities. Among those questions were ties with other individuals through friendship or
the quality of relationships within the family, other social relationships that imply a lesser
their show of affection, and the satisfaction with degree of closeness and affection.
their families. Two questions included in the Manizales
The people surveyed have a very good per- Quality of Life Survey allow one to examine
ception of their relationships within their house- other social relationships not related to the fam-
hold. Most of them (60 %) said they have good ily. Those are the satisfaction people have with
relationships, a third of the surveyed considered their social relationships and their capacity to
them excellent, only 6 % as poor, and less than join with others.
1 % said they are bad or very bad (Table 6.1). As for the rst question, 2 % of heads of
Those assessments improve as the income quin- households stated feeling unsatised with their
tile increases: while 21 % of the people surveyed social relationships, 4 % are somewhat satised,
in the rst quintile afrmed that their 14 % moderately satised, 52 % fairly satised,
relationships with their household members are and 28 % very satised. As well as with the other
excellent, the percentage increases to 47 % in the relational goods examined, the satisfaction of the
last quintile. people surveyed with their social relationships
The demonstration of affection with immedi- increases with income level: the percentage of
ate relatives is very common in Manizales: 54 % those who rate their social relationships as fairly
of those surveyed said that displays of affection or very satisfactory rises from 71 % in the rst
are frequent, 33 % declared that they are very quintile to 85 % in the last, and has an increasing
frequent, and only 13 % afrmed that they are trend between them (Table 6.2).
reduced (inexistent, scarce, or somewhat scarce) Regarding their capacity to form relationships
(Table 6.1). This means that Manizaless urban with other people, the majority of those surveyed
population and, in particular, the heads of considered they hold this ability: 51 % feel capa-
households or their partners are very affectionate ble of forming relationships with others, and
with their immediate relatives. The survey also 36 % believed they are very capable (Table 6.2).
reveals that these signs of affection increase with The numbers of heads of households who state
income: the percentage of those surveyed who they do not have the ability to form relationships
said that displays of affection are frequent goes with others or who feel they have a moderate
from 23 % in the rst quintile to 47 % in the last, ability are very reduced (4 % and 10 %, respec-
and there is an upward trend in between. tively). Access to this relational good shares with
6
Table 6.1 Relations within the immediate family by income quintile (percentages)
Quality of relationships within the family Show of affection Satisfaction with their families
Not satised or
somewhat Moderately Fairly or very
Quintiles Poor, bad, very bad Good Excellent Non-existent or scarce Frequent Very frequent satised satised satised
Quintile 1 12.3 66.2 21.5 19.0 57.8 23.2 4.6 12.6 82.9
Quintile 2 8.4 64.5 27.1 14.6 56.8 28.7 3.8 8.8 87.5
Quintile 3 5.0 61.5 33.5 11.5 57.3 31.1 3.1 8.5 88.4
Quintile 4 3.7 58.1 38.2 10.7 52.9 36.4 2.0 7.0 90.9
Quintile 5 2.7 50.1 47.3 8.5 44.7 46.8 1.3 6.9 91.9
Total 6.6 60.4 33.1 13.0 54.2 32.8 2.9 8.8 88.3
Source: Own calculations based on the QLS
The Importance of Relational Goods for Happiness: Evidence from Manizales, Colombia
97
98 L. Velasquez
Table 6.2 Other social relationships by income quintile (percentages)

Satisfaction with social relationships Capacity to join with others
Not satised or Fairly or Not capable or
somewhat Moderately very somewhat Moderately Very
Quintiles satised satised satised capable capable Capable capable
Quintile 1 8.9 20.2 70.9 4.6 13.9 54.1 27.4
Quintile 2 5.9 15.9 78.2 5.0 9.4 53.4 32.2
Quintile 3 5.4 12.2 82.5 4.2 9.5 53.9 32.5
Quintile 4 4.0 12.2 83.8 2.7 8.7 48.9 39.7
Quintile 5 3.1 11.7 85.2 2.1 6.5 42.4 49.1
Total 5.5 14.4 80.1 3.7 9.6 50.5 36.2
others its increasing trend with income level: availability of this relational good is also greater
while slightly more than a quarter of those sur- in households with higher income: the rate of
veyed from the rst quintile stated they have an respondents who stated they receive help from
important ability for forming relationships with their family members always or most of the time
others, the rate grows to almost half of those is 73 % in the rst quintile and rises gradually up
surveyed in the last quintile. to 86 % in the last quintile.
On the other hand, 61 % of the respondents
said that, besides their family, they do not have
someone to turn to if they need to cover family
6.4.3 Social Support
expenses for a week (Table 6.3). In contrast,
30 % stated they could count on one or two
As indicated by Palomar and Munoz (2011,
people outside their family to cover those
p. 260), citing various authors, social support
expenses, and 9 % said they have three or four
consists of the potential help with which a person
people for such support. The possibility of
counts on, which comes, rst of all, from the
counting on a person outside their family, in
family, and secondly from friends, the commu-
case of need, is greater among those surveyed
nity, and other close groups such as neighbors
who have higher income.
and coworkers.
The Manizales Quality of Life Survey
included two questions that explicitly refer to
social support. The rst one inquires on the pos- 6.4.4 Interaction at Work
sibility of receiving support from their families in
case of a need, whereas the second asks whether As Donati (2002) states, there is a humanistic
they receive support from people outside of their conception of work which sees the worker as an
families. individual-in-relation to signicant others
According to the survey, social support (p. 345). That conception sees the interaction at
received by people from Manizales comes almost work as a total social fact in which people can
exclusively from their relatives. When asked if fulll basic human rights-duties, and the work is
they receive help from them in case of a problem, seen as a common good or a relational good
close to 80 % of those surveyed stated that they (Ibid).
do, always or most of the time (Table 6.3). As for Although the Manizales Quality of Life Sur-
the rest, 11 % of heads of households or their vey did not include questions related to social
spouses indicated receiving help from their relationships developed in the workplace, it
families only sometimes, while 10 % stated asked about participation in the labor market. In
they never receive help from relatives. The the case of people who work (as employees or
Table 6.3 Social support by income quintile (percentages)

Support from outside their
Support from their families families
1 or 3 or more
Quintiles Never or hardly ever Some times Always or most of the times None 2 people people
Quintile 1 12.7 14.4 72.9 68.1 26.3 5.6
Quintile 2 10.2 13.8 76.0 63.9 28.8 7.3
Quintile 3 10.7 10.2 79.1 62.9 29.7 7.5
Quintile 4 6.9 10.6 82.5 57.5 31.5 11.0
Quintile 5 7.4 6.3 86.3 53.3 33.0 13.7
Total 9.6 11.1 79.3 61.2 29.8 9.0
received by households with economically active

Table 6.4 Work and interaction at work by income
quintile (percentages) heads or partners, it also reveals the higher prob-
ability of being employed when people are more
Quintiles Work Work with others
qualied or come from higher income homes.
Quintile 1 27.8 28.0
Quintile 2 32.0 46.3
That means that causality runs in both directions.
Quintile 3 37.7 56.6 On the other hand, among those surveyed who
Quintile 4 42.7 64.8 work, almost a third do it for companies
Quintile 5 54.8 74.3 constituted by various people in the rst quintile,
Total 39.0 57.6 and this rate increases to 74 % in the last quintile.
Source: Own calculations based on the QLS According to those data, while only 8 % of the
people surveyed in the rst quintile are exposed
self-employed), it also contained questions to social interaction in the workplace, the per-
regarding the number of individuals that form centage rises to 41 % in the last quintile.
the company or business where they work. With
respect to the rst issue, it must be pointed out
that the majority of those surveyed do not work 6.4.5 Relational Leisure
(61 %). Housework is their main activity, which
is due to the high proportion of housewives in the The concept of social or relational leisure refers
sample (44 %). As for those surveyed who work, to the execution of activities in leisure time,
the largest group (62 %) work for companies or which implies sharing with other people. As
businesses formed by more than two people, and Martnez et al. state (2004, p. 18), relational
the rest (42 %) work alone in private businesses. leisure time is very gratifying, but it also implies
That means that less than one fourth of those costs. Those costs arise from the effort of
surveyed is exposed to developing social approaching, understanding, and accepting the
relationships in the workplace. other, as well as knowing the role played by
The analysis of the above information per every participant, and observing the norms of
quintile shows that access to this relational the group. As for the benets of shared leisure
good is more frequent among higher-earning time, they include acquisition of social abilities
households. On one hand, the percentage of and promotion of social support.
respondents who work is less than 30 % in the Among activities included in relational leisure
rst quintile, and gradually grows to 55 % in the are: (i) going to concerts; (ii) outings with
last quintile (Table 6.4). Although that relation- friends; (iii) trips; (iv) playing sports; (v) going
ship could be explained by the higher income out to bars, clubs, or parties; (vi) going to the
100 L. Velasquez
Table 6.5 Activities performed in free time Table 6.6 Social participation by income quintile
(percentages)
Activities Percentage
Watch TV 91.0 Participate in Belong to a
Spend time with family 89.2 Quintiles community activities group
Listen music 75.6 Quintile 1 3.4 15.8
Listen radio 64.1 Quintile 2 4.8 15.7
Spend time with friends 59.2 Quintile 3 6.3 17.5
Read 55.1 Quintile 4 5.3 21.9
Sleep 51.8 Quintile 5 8.7 25.2
Play a sport 33.7 Total 5.7 19.2
Surf in internet 23.2 Source: Own calculations based on the QLS
Participate in a group 19.0
Play (at a game room, on a computer) 10.2
Participate in neighborhood activities 9.2
Source: Own calculations based on the QLS 6.4.6 Social Participation
Some studies have shown that inhabitants of

theater or movie theater; (vii) participation in Manizales have very low levels of participation
associations or NGOs (Martnez et al. 2004). in community activities. As noted by Matijasevic
The Manizales Quality of Life Survey et al. (2010), although they show themselves as
included a multiple-choice question that being interested in others welfare, the
inquiries about activities people engage in free inhabitants of the city are reticent to work in a
time. Among the options presented, the follow- coordinated way in search for changes. That
ing can be considered relational leisure: playing could reect their growing skepticism in
sports or exercising, participating in neighbor- instances of community participation.
hood activities, forming part of a group, spending In effect, relational goods linked with social
time with family and friends. On the contrary, the participation are not very common in
rest of activities included are not relational, given Manizaless urban population. On one hand,
that they are undertaken individually, or, even only 6 % of those surveyed indicated having
though they may be undertaken in groups, they worked with others from their neighborhood or
do not imply an effective relation among people: community in the past year (Table 6.6). Differing
reading, listening to music, playing at a game from the majority of the relational goods exam-
room or on a computer, surng the internet, ined, engagement in those activities does not
watching television, listening to the radio, appear to be related to household income.
sleeping. On the other hand, less than one fth of the
Responses to this question show that the most people surveyed afrmed that someone in their
common activity undertaken by those surveyed on home belongs to a group or association, formally
their free time is watching television (91 %), which or informally (Table 6.6). In this case, there is a
is not relational, followed by spending time with clear relationship between participation in com-
family (89 %), which is relational. As for the other munity spaces and level of income: 16 % of
activities included in relational leisure, 59 % households in the lowest quintiles have at least
spends time with friends, 34 % plays a sport, one member who participates in those instances,
19 % participates in a group, and only 9 % gets and the percentage rises to 25 % in the last
involved in neighborhood activities (Table 6.5). quintile.
Participation in most of these activities is not The majority of people belongs to religious
associated with income. Nevertheless, occurrence organizations or groups (11 % of households).
of two of them (spending time with friends and Secondly, there are recreational spaces (4 %),
playing sports) grows as income increases. volunteership (3 %), and academic, professional,
Table 6.7 Political Participation by income quintile 6.5 Relational Goods

(percentages)
and Subjective Well-Being
Quintiles Voted in Manizales
Quintile 1 64.1
Quintile 2 64.0 To better understand the importance of relational
Quintile 3 66.0
goods for the subjective well-being of
Quintile 4 64.0
Manizaless urban population, two types of anal-
Quintile 5 72.6
Total 66.1
ysis that use perceptions of happiness2 as a mea-
surement of subjective well-being are presented
in this section. Those analyses are based on two
types of data processings: (i) comparisons
or political organizations (1 % in the last three
between levels of happiness and answers to
cases). The rst space is not only the one that
questions regarding access to relational goods,
congregates most of the participants, but also the
(ii) modeling the determinants of happiness,
most valued because of its contributions to qual-
including consumption of relational goods and
ity of life, as declared by the people surveyed.
controls for some characteristics of households
and household members.
Relational goods included in the rst data
6.4.7 Political Participation processing are the same described in the previous
section: (i) relationships with immediate family,
Political participation or commitment is, as men- (ii) other social relationships, (iii) social support,
tioned, one of the three relational goods, as (iv) workplace interactions, (v) relational leisure,
interpreted by Nussbaum (1995), necessary for (vi) participation in community spaces or
Aristotles good life. Their relational character activities, and (vii) political participation.
implies active participation in civic or political
scenarios.
As indicated in the previous section, the seg- 6.5.1 Relations Within the Immediate
ment of households in Manizales that have at Family
least one member involved in political spaces is
minimal (just 1 %). This level contrasts with the The results of the Manizales Quality of Life
one obtained by other form of political participa- Survey evidence a positive association between
tion, less relational, which is the exercising of subjective well-being experienced by heads of
the right to vote.1 The results of the survey reveal households or their spouses and relationships
that two thirds of heads of households or their with immediate family.
spouses exercised this duty and right in the last First, the comparison between levels of hap-
mayoral elections. Although the fth quintile has piness reported by those surveyed and the quality
the largest percentage of voters (73 %), similar of family relationships reveals a strong associa-
results were obtained in the rest of income groups tion between the two: 30 % of heads of house-
(between 64 % and 66 %) (Table 6.7). Therefore, hold and spouses who say that the relations
it is not possible to observe a tendency between between the members of their household are reg-
this relational good and level of income. ular, bad or very bad, state that they are fairly or
very happy. The percentage rises to 58 % among
2
The formulation of the question was as such: Consider-
1
Although electoral participation does not imply direct ing everything in your life, how happy are you? There
interaction with other people, it does represent a civic were ve choices available: (1) Not happy; (2) Somewhat
commitment with the city and its inhabitants, and thusly happy; (3) Moderately happy; (4) Fairly happy; (5) Very
can be considered relational. happy.
102 L. Velasquez
those who reported good relationships between everything is ne; a better country is possible, as
members of their household and increases to well as a better environment, a better city, and
almost 76 % among those who rate the everything; family is crucial (Matijasevic
relationships as excellent (Table 6.8). et al. 2010, p. 118). Family is our foundation,
Second, the displays of affection between together with work and health. If you have those
family members are also strongly associated three things, it looks like everything works ne.
with perceived happiness levels. The percentages For instance, if you have a good job but you are
of those surveyed who feel fairly or very happy alone in life, you do not have anyone to love,
signicantly increases when moving from anyone to care for, then life is different. How-
households where these demonstrations are few ever, if you have a job, and you have your chil-
or non-existent (39 %), to households where they dren, you have someone to share with. Then it
are frequent (60 %) or very frequent (78 %) looks like everything goes hand in hand (Ibid).
(Table 6.8).
Finally, there is a clear association between
happiness experienced by those surveyed and 6.5.2 Other Social Relationships
satisfaction with their families. The percentages
of heads of households or their spouses who are According to the survey results, there is a strong
fairly or very happy grow as do the levels of association between levels of happiness and
satisfaction with their families (Table 6.8): social relationships developed by heads of
among respondents who feel dissatised or little households or their partners in Manizales.
satised with their family, 31 % consider them- First, happiness and satisfaction experienced
selves fairly or very happy; the percentage rises by heads of household or their partners with their
to 37 % among those who are moderately social relations have a close association. Among
satised with their family, 59 % for those who those surveyed who are dissatised with these
said they are fairly satised, and nally reaches relationships, 34 % consider themselves fairly
76 % of people surveyed who are very satised or very happy. The percentage rises to 41 %
with their family. among those who are moderately satised with
The ndings above show the importance of their social relations, goes to 64 % among those
family in the well-being of Manizaless urban who are fairly satised and up to 78 % in the
population. The results of the qualitative group of people surveyed who say they are very
techniques, in turn, reveal that family is the satised with their social relationships
most important factor in assessing well-being (Table 6.9).
and, therefore, the most signicant relational Secondly, the analysis also shows an associa-
good for the local population. As noted by tion between the ease with which those surveyed
Matijasevic et al. (2010, p. 118): generate relationships with others and their sub-
Narratives about family reveal several important jective well-being: a greater ability to integrate
issues. Firstly, the affective, economic, and emo- with others, the greater the happiness. In effect,
tional value family has for interviewees. Secondly, the percentage of those surveyed who reported
the importance of the couple and the value given to higher levels of happiness increases from 45 %
the possibility of having a stable and harmonious
relationship. Thirdly, the value given to children among those who said they do not have that
and to the mothers and fathers role. Lastly, the capacity to 49 % in people who claim to have it
importance given to the family of origin. moderately. The percentage grows to 59 %
Some of the interviewed stated that family is among those who feel able, and nally reaches
74 % in individuals who state being very able to
the reason for their lives while others argue that it
is a key component. Some of the testimonies integrate themselves with others (Table 6.9).
The above stated results are consistent with
collected through the qualitative study reect
ndings from other studies that report that
these positions: If there are strong family ties,
individuals with active social relationships tend
6
Table 6.8 Relations within the immediate family and happiness (percentages)
Quality of relationships within the
family Show of affection Satisfaction with their families
Poor, bad, Non-existent Very Not satised or Moderately Fairly Very
Levels of happiness very bad Good Excellent or scarce Frequent frequent somewhat satised satised satised satised
Not happy or 22.9 7.0 5.4 19.2 5.9 3.6 39.1 17.2 6.5 4.0
somewhat happy
Moderately happy 47.9 35.0 19.1 41.5 33.9 18.1 29.9 46.2 35.0 20.2
Fairly or very happy 29.2 58.0 75.5 39.4 60.2 78.3 30.9 36.6 58.5 75.8
The Importance of Relational Goods for Happiness: Evidence from Manizales, Colombia
103
104
Table 6.9 Other social relationships and happiness (percentages)

Satisfaction with social relationships Capacity to join with others
Not satised or somewhat Moderately Fairly Very Not capable or somewhat Moderately Very
Levels of happiness satised satised satised satised capable capable Capable capable
Not happy or 26.3 12.8 5.7 4.0 17.7 13.5 7.5 4.5
somewhat happy
Moderately happy 39.8 45.8 30.6 17.6 37.1 37.4 33.4 21.5
Fairly or very happy 33.9 41.4 63.7 78.4 45.2 49.1 59.1 74.0
L. Velasquez
to be happier (Ateca et al. 2011), as well as The association between social support and
people who have supportive and positive social subjective well-being has been veried in several
relationships (Diener and Seligman 2004). Simi- studies, including the work of Palomar and
larly, Palomar and Munoz (2011) cite an investi- Munoz (2011), and that of Ateca et al. (2011).
gation that found that satisfaction with
sociability and friends is the rst (out of nine)
determining factor of subjective well-being. 6.5.4 Interaction at Work
Several studies have recognized the importance

6.5.3 Social Support of social relations developed in the workplace for
the individual assessment of well-being. These
Regarding the relationship between subjective studies reveal that, in addition to being a means
well-being and social support, the results of the of income generation, work is a space for social
survey show that is strong, whether support interaction and a source of personal motivation
comes from family or from people outside the (Matijasevic et al. 2010). Some of the aspects
family. that produce this motivation are attention and
In the rst case, the proportion of those sur- recognition, which result from the interaction
veyed who reported the highest levels of happi- with bosses or colleagues. While the rst refers
ness increases with the frequency of family to socioemotional resources given by the
support: among heads of household who say managers to their employees (Dur 2008), the
that, if necessary, they receive little or no support second is understood, in the workplace, as atten-
from their families, 48 % are considered fairly or tion and respect offered by colleagues (Gui and
very happy. That level is 54 % among those who Stanca 2010).
count with support most of the time and 69 % in Although, as noted in the fourth section, the
those who claim to always count with support Manizales Quality of Life Survey did not ask
(Table 6.10). about social relationships that are developed at
As for the social support that comes from the workplace, and, because of so, it is not possi-
persons outside the family, the results show that ble to determine their relationship with subjec-
happiness experienced by those surveyed tive well-being, comparisons between some
increases with the numbers of people they can work characteristics of heads of households or
turn to when they need nancial resources. In their spouses and perceived happiness allow for
effect, among those who said they have no one an approximation of the issue.
with whom they can count on, 60 % feel fairly or Firstly, happiness levels are higher among
very happy, a percentage that grows to 65 % those surveyed who work, compared to those
when they have one or two people for that kind who are economically inactive (housewives,
of support, and 78 % in cases where the number students, disabled people, pensioners) and, even
is three or more people (Table 6.10). more, compared to those who are unemployed.
The percentages of heads of households or their
Table 6.10 Social support and happiness (percentages)

Support from their families Support from outside their families
Never, hardly ever, Most of the 1 or 3 or more
Levels of happiness some times times Always None 2 people people
Not happy or 14.6 7.9 4.9 8.1 6.8 4.2
somewhat happy
Moderately happy 36.9 37.7 25.7 31.8 28.6 18.3
Fairly or very happy 48.5 54.4 69.4 60.1 64.6 77.5
106 L. Velasquez
Table 6.11 Work, interaction at work and happiness (percentages)

Economically Work with
Levels of happiness Employed inactive Unemployed Work alone others
Not happy or somewhat happy 6.5 7.8 10.8 9.4 4.3
Moderately happy 26.6 31.2 38.0 31.0 23.4
Fairly or very happy 67.0 61.0 51.1 59.6 72.3
spouses who feel fairly or very happy are 67 % organizations. Becchetti et al. (2010) also found
among workers, 61 % among inactive popula- a positive effect of social leisure on life
tion, and 51 % in those unemployed (Table 6.11). satisfaction.
Secondly, the perception of happiness is Although the Manizales Quality of Life Sur-
higher among those who work in companies or vey asked about activities performed during lei-
businesses that are formed by several people. In sure time, it did so through a multiple-choice
effect, the proportion of people surveyed who question, which included 12 possible answers,
feel fairly or very happy is 60 % among those some relational and some not. The results show
who work alone and grows to between 67 % and that the vast majority of those surveyed perform
78 %, depending on the number of people with relational activities during this time, but also
whom they work (Table 6.11). This suggests that non-relational activities (94 % and 99 %, respec-
interactions at work positively affect the subjectively). For that reason, it was not possible to
tive well-being of Manizaless population. determine differences in happiness levels experi-
As noted by one of the people interviewed in enced by ones or the others. And, although
the qualitative study, when you do not have a comparisons were made for single activities,
job, things get complicated both in your relation- results did not vary signicantly between rela-
ship with your partner and in your social tional and non-relational leisure.
relationships (Matijasevic et al. 2010, p. 120).
This means that, in addition to being a source of
social interaction, work affects family 6.5.6 Social Participation
relationships as well as social relationships
developed outside of the workplace, so their Despite low levels of participation in community
impact on subjective well-being can occur on activities and spaces among urban population in
several fronts. Manizales, the comparison of these responses
with the level of happiness reveals a positive
association between the two categories of social
6.5.5 Relational Leisure participation and subjective well-being.
In the case of volunteer work with other peo-
Bruni and Stanca (2008) did one of the most ple from their neighborhood to do something for
recognized works on measuring the impact of the benet of the community, 71 % of those who
relational leisure or relational time on peoples participated consider themselves fairly or very
subjective well-being. As was indicated in the happy, a rate that exceeds by almost 10 percent-
section on the theoretical framework, their age points the level for those who did not partici-
research, based on data from the World Values pate (Table 6.12).
Survey, found a positive effect of time spent in As for those who belong to a formal or infor-
relational activities on life satisfaction. In partic- mal association or group, their happiness levels
ular, they observed that time devoted to parents are higher compared to those who are not
and relatives has the largest effect, followed by involved in these spaces: the percentage of
time spent with friends and people from service those surveyed who consider themselves fairly
Table 6.12 Social participation and happiness (percentages)

Participate in community
activities Belong to a group or association
Levels of happiness Participate Do not participate Belong to a group Do not belong to a group
Not happy or somewhat happy 5.3 7.5 5.2 7.9
Moderately happy 23.4 30.0 26.2 30.5
Fairly or very happy 71.3 62.5 68.6 61.7
or very happy is 69 % in the rst group and 62 % a more formal way, the importance of relational
in the second (Table 6.12). goods for subjective well-being of Manizaless
Results from the qualitative work also reveal urban population.
the importance of community participation in the
well-being experienced by the people in
Manizales. As one of the interviewees stated, I 6.5.8 Impact of Relational Goods
think that you came to the world to serve, not to on Happiness
have everything at your feet, and none of that.
Otherwise, what can you take with you when you To analyze the impact of relational goods on the
die? That is what I want: to somehow contribute subjective well-being of the inhabitants of
to the welfare of other human beings, not neces- Manizaless urban area, an ordered logit model
sarily of a relative, but, even better, a person you was built, where the dependent variable is happi-
do not know (Matijasevic et al. 2010, p. 143). ness,3 which is a function of individual and
The previous results coincide with the household characteristics, as well as the avail-
ndings in Bruni and Stancas work (2008) ability of, access to, or satisfaction with some of
which show that participation in voluntary the previously examined relational goods. After
organizations is associated with higher life estimation, marginal effects for the highest level
satisfaction. of happiness, represented by the very happy
option, were calculated.
The relational goods included in the model
6.5.7 Political Participation are:
The last relational good included in this rst The family environment: (i) quality of the
analysis refers to political participation examined relationships between household members,
through the exercise of the right of suffrage in the (ii) displays of affection in the home, (iii)
last election for mayor. In this respect, it was satisfaction with the family
found that happiness levels are slightly higher Social support: (i) the possibility of receiving
among people surveyed who said they exercised help from the family if someone in the home
this right and duty compared to those who did not has a problem, (ii) number of people outside
vote: the percentages of people surveyed who the family that could cover household
said they are fairly or very happy are 65 % and expenses in case of a need
59 %, respectively (Table 6.13). Other social relations: (i) satisfaction with
These results are consistent with the impor- social relationships, (ii) ability to start
tance of commitment and political participation relationships with other people
in human life. As Nussbaum points out (1995, Workplace interactions: (i) work in companies
p. 440), turning to Aristotle, political action is or businesses formed by several people
an end in itself and a constituent of human
eudaimonia. 3
Due to the low frequency of the not happy option, that
Below is the second analysis, which is based category was grouped with something happy and mod-
on the results from the model built to examine, in erately happy.
108 L. Velasquez
Table 6.13 Political participation and happiness specically, participation in community spaces;
(percentages) (v) participation or political commitment, exam-
Levels of happiness Voted Did not vote ined through the electoral exercise.4
Not happy or somewhat happy 6.6 8.6 The relational goods included in the model
Moderately happy 28.4 32.1 that were not signicant in explaining high levels
Fairly or very happy 65.0 59.3 of happiness are the quality of relationships
Source: Own calculations based on the QLS between household members, participation in
community activities, and social interactions at
work examined through exposure to other
Social participation: (i) work with people persons in the workplace.
from the neighborhood in activities that Although the information does not allow to
benet the community, (ii) belonging to a undertake a causal analysis between relational
community group or association goods and subjective well-being,5 it can be
Political participation: (i) exercise the right to assumed that the relationship goes on both
vote in electoral processes directions: consumption of relational goods
increases subjective well-being, while a greater
To facilitate the analysis, most of the variables level of subjective well-being can motivate an
used to measure availability of, access to, or increase in social interaction (Palomar and
satisfaction with relational goods were Munoz 2011; Becchetti et al. 2006).
transformed into dummies. The description of Regarding the control variables included in
the variables is presented in Table 6.15, in the the model, ndings from earlier studies were
Appendix. validated (Velasquez 2010). In particular, results
The model also included individual and conrm that per capita income, male gender, and
household characteristics, such as gender, age, educational level positively affect happiness,
education, marital status, work activity, and while unemployment and health problems have
health problems of the persons surveyed, as a negative impact on subjective well-being
well as per capita income and the number of (Table 6.14). With respect to the association
household members under 18 years of age. between age and happiness, it has the expected
The Table 6.14 presents the results of the U-shaped pattern, which means that as age
model. The second column contains the mean increases, happiness decreases in younger peo-
values of each variable, while the last shows the ple, but the trend is reversed (i.e., happiness
marginal effect of each explanatory variable on increases with age) after a certain level.
the probability of being very happy (Table 6.14). In terms of marital status of those surveyed,
Results from the model conrm the importance results show that married people are more likely
of relational goods in the subjective well-being of to be very happy, as compared to single,
Manizaless population. When controlling for indi- separated, widowed or unmarried people living
vidual and household characteristics, relational together. This nding, which has been also
goods that impact positively on the probability of veried in international studies (Lora 2008;
being very happy are: (i) two out of three relational Florenzano and Dussaillant 2011), conrms the
goods linked to the family, in particular, displays of importance of the family in subjective well-being
affection between household members and the sat- of Manizaless inhabitants.
isfaction of those surveyed with their family;
(ii) the two relational goods associated with social
support from both the family and people outside the
household; (iii) other social relations, which
include satisfaction with social relationships and 4
Statistically signicant only at 10 %.
the ability to relate to others; (iv) one of the rela- 5
The Manizales Quality of Life Survey has only cross-
tional goods associated with social participation, sectional data.
Table 6.14 Impact of relational goods on subjective well-being
Relational goods and individual characteristics Mean of each variable Marginal effects
I. Relational goods
Quality of household relationships 0.856 0.027
[0.005] [0.017]
Displays of affection within the home 0.797 0.076***
[0.006] [0.014]
Satisfaction with family 0.883 0.086***
[0.004] [0.015]
Family support 0.656 0.070***
[0.007] [0.010]
Support by non-family members 0.389 0.042***
[0.007] [0.010]
Satisfaction with social relationships 0.801 0.126***
[0.006] [0.011]
Capacity to create relationships with others 0.867 0.044***
[0.005] [0.013]
Work with others 0.225 0.007
[0.006] [0.017]
Participation in community activities 0.057 0.002
[0.003] [0.019]
Participation in community spaces 0.193 0.035**
[0.005] [0.014]
Voting in the last election 0.661 0.018*
[0.007] [0.010]
II. Individual characteristics
Log of per capita income 12.601 0.039***
[0.013] [0.007]
Sex of respondent 0.259 0.030**
[0.006] [0.013]
Age of respondent 48.751 0.008***
[0.21] [0.002]
Age squared of respondent 2,610.574 0.000***
[21.187] [0.000]
Years of education of respondent 8.724 0.008***
[0.064] [0.001]
Married respondent 0.428 0.032*
[0.007] [0.017]
Unmarried respondent living together 0.196 0.015
[0.006] [0.019]
Widowed respondent 0.119 0.01
[0.004] [0.022]
Separated respondent 0.134 0.024
[0.005] [0.019]
Unemployed respondent 0.036 0.079***
[0.003] [0.023]
Economically inactive respondent 0.574 0.012
[0.007] [0.015]
Respondent with a health problem 0.179 0.072***
[0.005] [0.012]
Number of minors in the home (<18) 0.917 0.007
[0.015] [0.006]
*
Signicant at 10%; ** signicant at 5%; *** signicant at 1%
110 L. Velasquez
6.6 Conclusions and Policy Analyses also revealed that the most important
Implications relational good for the well-being of those surveyed
is family. For many people, family constitutes the
Relational goods play a central role in peoples meaning of their lives, the end that justies their
daily life, and, as evidenced in the case of efforts and the motivation to look for better
Manizaless urban population, also in their sub- opportunities (Matijasevic et al. 2010, p. 120).
jective well-being. Thus, family has an affective and emotional value
Analyses from the Manizales Quality of Life to those interviewed. To this must be added that
Survey reveal that, in terms of access, the most family is the only source of social support for most
important relational goods for the local population of the surveyed population, which means that it
are family relationships, social support from also has a value that is, in a sense, instrumental.
relatives, social relationships, and political partici- The fact that family is the main source of social
pation in the form of voting. By contrast, the less support as well as the primary instance or agent of
frequent relational goods are support received from socialization, corresponds to the mediator and pro-
people outside the family, participation in commu- tective role played by families with respect to their
nity spaces and activities, and interaction at work. members (Ayuso 2003).
The results also showed that households with higher As for the implications for public policy derived
incomes tend to have better access to relational from the results of this study, it should be noted that
goods as compared to lower income households. interpersonal relationships are an area in which
Regarding the importance of relational goods in government interference is not viable (Lora 2011).
individuals subjective well-being, the results On one hand, governments do not have the duty to
reveal that it is high. According to simple data pro- shape personal interactions (Gui 2003). On the
cessings, happiness levels experienced by heads of other, the state cannot directly produce relational
household or their spouses are higher when there is goods (Becchetti et al. 2008). Still, some of the
a greater perceived availability of, access to, or above and other authors agree that, indirectly,
satisfaction with relational goods. This result was there can and should be government interven-
obtained for all goods included in the analysis.6 tion in the promotion of relational goods, either
With respect to the model, estimations show encouraging interpersonal relationships or seeking
an increase in subjective well-being as a result of to strengthen existing relations (Palomar and
a higher availability of, access to, or satisfaction Munoz 2011).
with relational goods. In particular, the probabil- Some government actions that could be taken
ity that an inhabitant of Manizaless urban area is to promote relational goods are: (i) design of
very happy increases as a result of: (i) more fre- social services that encourage the creation of
quent displays of affection between members of co-operative relationships among families (day
the household, (ii) a higher level of satisfaction care for children), strengthen local connections
with family and social relationships, (iii) greater (commercial sites close to residential areas), or
availability of social support from family and favor personal interaction (pedestrian areas and
non-family persons, (iv) greater ability to create other meeting places) (Gui 2003); (ii) regulation
relationships with others, (v) higher participation of working and shopping hours, supporting the
in community spaces, and (vi) greater political arts and sports, and promotion of urban planning
commitment. To these results must be added the that reduces commuting time (Becchetti
positive effect of being married, which conrms et al. 2008); (iii) labor policies aimed at
the importance of marriage and, related to it, of strengthening family life (more exible working
family on the experienced well-being of the hours, more paternity and maternity leave, more
citys population. help in childcare), and allowing for older people
to continue participating in the labor market
(Esteve 2009), (iv) promotion of long-lasting
6
In the case of relational leisure, it was not possible to bonds between couples (Florenzano and
verify the association because of the question formulation. Dussaillant 2011).
Appendix
Table 6.15 Description of variables

Variable Type Cases where dummy takes value 1
I. Relational goods
Quality of household relationships Dummy Good or excellent relationships
Displays of affection within the home Dummy Frequent or very frequent displays of affection
Satisfaction with family Dummy Fairly or very satised with family
Family support Dummy Always receive support from family members
Support by non-family members Dummy Receive support from more than one people outside the
home
Satisfaction with social relationships Dummy Fairly or very satised with social relationships
Capacity to create relationships with Dummy Capable or very capable to create relationships with others
others
Work with others Dummy Work in a business formed by more than two people
Participation in community activities Dummy Participate in neighborhood or community activities
Participation in community spaces Dummy Belong to a group or association
Voting in the last election Dummy Voted in the last mayoral election
II. Individual characteristics
Log of per capita income Continuous
Sex of respondent Dummy Respondent is a male
Age of respondent Discrete
Age squared of respondent Discrete
Years of education of respondent Discrete
Married respondent Dummy Respondent is married
Unmarried respondent living together Dummy Respondent is unmarried, living together
Widowed respondent Dummy Respondent is widowed
Separated respondent Dummy Respondent is separated
Unemployed respondent Dummy Respondent is unemployed
Economically inactive respondent Dummy Respondent is economically inactive
Respondent with a health problem Dummy Respondent has a physical or mental health problem
Number of minors in the home (<18) Discrete
Becchetti, L., Giachin, E., & Pelloni, A. (2009). On the

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Like the Zompopito:
Social Relationships in Happiness 7
Among Rural and Indigenous
Women in Nicaragua
Jessica Martnez Cruz and Haydee Castillo Flores
. . . but as I was saying, sometimes we dont feel as poor, because what happens to us is. . .
like those tiny ants that go on making their journey with the others, all of them together. . .
look at them carrying their stuff. . . until all of them arrive no one stops. And us, women
sometimes are just like that.
(Nora Lopez, 2013)
7.1 Introduction go beyond an individual aspiration and is embed-

ded in a variety of events that people experience
This chapter is based on a study documenting throughout their lives.
conceptions of poverty and happiness of thirty Within the framework of the ILLS (Las
rural and indigenous women from northern Segovias Leadership Institute,2 the main driver of
Nicaragua through their life histories.1 From the this study) it was important to position and include
life experiences that women narrated, it is clear in the theory and practice of the countrys public
that their ideas of poverty and happiness are policy, not only the economic dimension, but also
strongly related with a desire for more harmoni- other crucial aspects in understanding the com-
ous, participatory and equal social relationships plexity of poverty and human wellbeing in the
in all spheres of their reality. The womens theoretical debate. This includes systematically
denitions, collective dimension immersed in analyzing peoples vision as the center of social
their daily and communitarian life, account for policymaking. Women who participated in the
a collective dimension of human wellbeing that study are part of the ILLS grassroots scope of
work. A fundamental task of this study consisted
of positioning women through their own voice and
vision and not as passive recipients of public pol-
1
Martnez Cruz, Jessica (2014), Pobreza y felicidad en icy, as well as questioning the interpretive power
Nicaragua: Historias de vida de mujeres rurales that has prevailed over the lives of people living in
e indgenas de Nueva Segovias. National Roundtable poverty.
on gender and human development, Managua, Nicaragua.
1st ed. Managua: UCA, 180 p. ISBN 978-99924-36-38-7
On June 29 at her home, 1 of the 30 women who 2

Also under ILLS participation in the National Bureau of
participated in this study shared this thought when she Gender and Human Development and the National
was about to nish explaining the moments of greatest Roundtable on the Good Living in a Multi-ethnic state,
poverty in her life. in preparation for the International Conference on Human
Development and Capability Approach (HDCA for its
J. Martnez Cruz (*) H. Castillo Flores acronym in English 2013) promoted by the Central Amer-
Universidad Centroamericana UCA, Managua, Nicaragua ican University (UCA) and the United Nations program
e-mail: katajes@gmail.com for Development (UNDP) in Nicaragua.

114 J. Martnez Cruz and H. Castillo Flores
The methodology used is particularistic and The article is structured in three parts. The
participatory in nature (Chambers 2007), a con- rst section explains the methodological
textualized study, where women have been approach to collecting and listening life histories.
involved in the analysis of their own reality. It In the second section some examples are used to
is also the result of years of work of analysis of illustrate the importance and quality of social
gender relations with women and youth from a relationships in the family and institutional
feminist perspective, and experience in action- environments from womens view and vision of
research, which is critical to cultural studies and happiness. Finally, we present a brief conclusion
embraces the theoretical and methodological which emphasizes the importance of equality and
contributions of action-research, feminist eth- participation in social relationships as the main
nography, reexive practice, and decolonial learning from these womens voices.
propositions (Freire 2005; Lather 2007; Santos
et al. 2007; Smart 2009; Tuhiwai 2012).
We combined narrative inquiry and observa- 7.2 Methodological Approach
tion . A eldwork journal was used to record not to Life Histories
only our impressions and reections, but every-
thing that women would not express while being This section presents our approach to womens
recorded but wanted to share. Although we life stories. The inquiry aimed to identify the
used different sources, both primary and second- womens knowledges of their own reality seen
ary (documents, newspapers and information through their personal story, and highlight, where
provided by key renowned local actors and the greatest power inequality lies, thus, to locate
historians) research was mainly based on the where the greatest and most urgent need for
voices of women, as a valid source of knowledge emancipation lies. It was also focused in an
(Kassem 2011). ongoing search for stories, moments or sites of
Strategies used to engage participants3 were: resistance in womens narratives. For this pur-
(a) by invitation from the ILLS, (b) a snowball pose a feminist narrative research was proposed,
technique, women referred other women and from a decolonial stance and action-
(c) identifying key women in the places where research framework.
the study was conducted. Criteria for the partici- Research from womens points of view makes
pation of women were: (a) over 16 years old, possible to get closer to their knowledge forms
(b) come from counties where the ILLS has and analysis of their own social and political
worked4: Santa Mara, Macuelizo, Mozonte, reality. It also gives another perspective of the
Ciudad Antigua y Dipilto, (c) indigenous to history and situation of the communities in which
Mozonte, (d) have a leadership role and their experiences take place (Harding 1991;
(e) involved in programs related to ghting pov- Slater 2000; Kassem 2011). It thus explored
erty and rights restoration by Nicaraguan womens lives as historical subjects and social
government. agents, overcoming cultural essentialism and
social sciences trend to portray them only as
victims, dispossessed and a-historical (Harding
3
1991; Rivera 2004 ; Slater 2000; Butalia 2000;
The opening of the participants to tell their stories, to
Kassem 2011).
investigate collectively their ideas of poverty and happi-
ness, and allow these ideas to be told is gratefully Central to this project was the comprehension
acknowledged. of the relational and contextual nature of the
4
Nueva Segovia is one of the four departments in the research process (Speedy 2008). This involved
country classied as high poverty from the Unsatised giving great importance to reexivity, creating
Basic Needs method; however, at the municipal level, in
tension explicitly to raise awareness of the biases
four of the ve municipalities that margin deepens and
those municipalities are part of the 45 in the country inherent in researchers and assumptions about
ranked with severe poverty (INIDE 2005). the reality to be analyzed. In practice, we
7 Like the Zompopito: Social Relationships in Happiness. . . 115
Aspect of the narrative scene or scenario related with the meaning that
Meaning the person attaches or attributes to the events over time. This could
include intentions, values, beliefs, hopes, dreams, commitments and
practical ethical aspects.
Past Present Future
This aspect has to do with the events and actions taken.

This could include details of what happened in the world,
and the current and past practices and future projections of Action
the person.
Fig. 7.1 Traversing narrative landscapes of meaning and action (Source: Speedy (2008, p. 82 adapted from White
2007))
attempted to give space for voices, lives and women who had been interviewed were given
experiences of the participants, tell their life transcripts of their stories and conceptions of
stories as a substantial record of the social, gen- poverty and happiness they had shared were
der and generational reality among others, to be discussed. This process continues after the
explained (Alan 1997; Nadin and Cassell 2006; research, and seeks to inuence conceptions and
Smart 2009). practices of researchers, professionals in teach-
It was also decided to recognize that the ing institutions, research and development
knowledge of the underprivileged and other dis- organizations that participated in the process.
advantaged social groups has been subalternized
and the current model of global power has
implications for peoples lives (Quijano
7.2.2 The Conversation
2001) and how they are perceived in our studies
, as well as in public policy.
The act of conversation was the key methodologi-
cal tool. From the feminist conversational project,
practitioners of reective methods and therapists
7.2.1 Collaborative Work: Continuous who use narrative, a reexive methodology
Contrast of Visions requires continuous revision as part of the research
process and the live production of stories through
Framed in the theory and praxis of action- conversation and the context in which such
research, the collaborative and dialogic work conversations take place. The proposal is that
together with an interdisciplinary and diverse through reexive practice the researcher becomes
composition of the advisory committee a narrator in a larger project of social change,
(which was formed from the start) were key to where the interview itself is part of an emancipa-
the development of the process.5 The committee tory process rather than a conventional stance
participated in the rst group session where where the researcher only listens and later
describes a highly structured narration of the per-
sonal and social reality that she has been told about
5
A committee was formed to provide feedback through- (Speedy 2008). Thus, the metaphor of narrative
out the process; such was formed by the ILLS, the Central
American University (UCA) and the United Nations Pro- landscape was used to guide the interview process
gram for Development (UNDP). and analysis of oral data (see Fig. 7.1).
The interviews were unstructured. We began and to reconstruct each story to share the
by explaining the purpose of the research and our narratives of the women, echoing the thoughts
interest in their considerations about poverty and of Patti Lather (2007):
happiness based on their life histories. There were I trouble the ethics of reducing the fear, pain, joy
multiple reactions from women and therefore and urgency of peoples lives to analytic
from the researcher, these reactions shaped the categories. Exploring the textual possibilities for
conversation that unfolded. Questions were telling stories that situate researchers not so much
as experts saying what things mean in terms of
asked based on that conversation, whether they data, the researcher is situated as witness giving
were related to the topics or not. At this point, if testimony to the lives of others. (p. 41)
the participant had not yet mentioned it, she was
However, it should be noted that reexivity is
asked about the moment in which she experienced
not the answer to all the concerns that arise when
poverty or happiness and what that meant to them.
trying to theorize beyond that which is experi-
enced by the person inquiring and analyzing the
lives of others. Neither it is to have an emancipa-
7.2.3 Analysis and Presentation tory project for that which has not been somati-
of Results cally experienced by the researcher (Lavie 2011;
Tuhiwai 2012). Thus, although this article is
To analyze the life histories, we used the narrative
based on the life histories of the women
landscape adapted by Speedy (2008) and some
involved, it is our interpretations that are
recommendations by Sautu (2004) in order to
reected here.7
identify the major inections in the lives of
women , to reconstruct the circumstances in
which the experiences of poverty and happiness
7.3 What the Histories Tell Us
took place, to understand how they lived through
About Happiness
those experiences as women. Also the way they
perceived themselves under those circumstances
7.3.1 Happiness and Poverty
and the meaning they attributed to them. Analyti-
cal threads emerged from the narrations, based on
What do narratives tell us about the relationship
a detailed examination of what women described
between poverty and happiness? How are these
throughout their narratives. Besides, inections
narratives inuenced by everyday experiences of
or markers of the stories, corporeal inections
social relationships in equality or inequality?
were seen and heard. By corporeal inections
What does this mean in terms of research and
we mean voice intonations and forms of bodily
public policy? Poverty and happiness are quite
expressions that also told the story. Thus, our
complex and to the women who participated,
eldwork journals played a key role when
these two ideas are related. The ve identied
analyzing and writing the narratives.6
dimensions8 are common to poverty and happi-
ness, so that leads us to understand that both
concepts as closely related terms, although not
7.2.4 Necessary Notes on Positionality in an absolute sense or necessarily comparable.
For example, for some women its possible to be
The methodological perspective led us (from the
start) to give up predened categories of analysis, 7
Several methodological considerations that have been
discussed here continue to be discussed in depth by the
6
All interviews were transcribed. Despite the revisions, it feminist collective Aula Propia, which one of the authors
is necessary to note that transcription also mediates is part of.
8
narratives (Lapadat and Lindsay 1999), to such an extent Separated for analytical distinction purposes: physical
that a misplaced comma can change meanings. The use of personal dimension, psychological-emotional, material,
eld journals was then essential. social: collective-participatory and spiritual.
happy and poor, but as long as poverty refers to is happiness because if say something to someone I
material goods, when there is spiritual poverty, feel calm; I think to myself, this person heard
me. And if I listen to someone I feel happy because
happiness can hardly be achieved. For others, they trust me, or they ask me What do you think I
happiness cant exist if theres material poverty, should do? Then I feel happy because they have
although they may be unhappy or miserable hav- come to me and they trust me.
ing everything materially. A person with a problem came here once, you
know, this and that and I have this problem. I had
Although the stories point to several self no training for that and I couldnt solve the prob-
contained dimensions in the personal and bodily lem but I knew we had judicial facilitators at Los
I where they are narrated from,9 we stop here Caminos. I can take her to the judicial facilitator;
to present only the results that refer to the social she can solve the problem because she does have
training for this. In that moment I feel happy you
dimension, particularly social relations as an know, I didnt solve the problem because it wasnt
essential aspect of any attempt to understand in my hands to do so but I told her where she could
the experience of happiness or human wellbeing solve it. To me thats happiness, you know, to be of
from a specic and situated context (See service (Taken from story #13).11
Table 7.1). Other authors have already revealed this dimen-
Lucias story better illustrates this assertion. sion as delayed in poverty analysis. Studies in
She is an indigenous woman, 62 years old, who Latin America show the importance people give
after Hurricane Mitch10 in 1998 moved with her to relational aspects of their wellbeing experience
family to live in a settlement near the capital of such as family ties, friendship, greater enjoyment
the municipality. The conditions, under which of free time, communal and spiritual life, and
her community was left following the hurricane, others (Rojas 2011; Rojas 2014). Our study further
encouraged her to convince her husband to move highlights, the collaborative, participatory and col-
to new neighborhood of displaced people. She lective components that social relations should
tells us that at the time she barely spoke. She was have in order to be part of the experiences of
47 when, almost accidentally, she joined the self- womens happiness, not only as qualiers of
construction committee in her new community; a relationships, but as attributes of everyday rela-
process fostered by a NGO. Today, she is a tional practices that make this concept of happi-
renowned leader in her community. Throughout ness an idea linked to equality and social
her narrative, Lucia attributes great value to the participation in different spheres. We will explore
power of learning, speaking, being heard, sharing in more depth two relationship areas delineated by
and supporting other people. the women in their conceptions of wellbeing. The
Well, rst of all I think happiness is to be at peace rst one, related to daily interactions and
with myself, my family and my community, to relationships within the family; and the second,
share with my family and my community, to to institutional relations at the community level,
share not necessarily money but experience. I
feel happy when I hear people or Im heard. That especially regarding state performance.
9
There is a coincidence of these results with those pro-
posed by the systemic theory used in psycho-social recov-
7.3.2 The Context and the Main
ery processes in Nicaragua, especially after Hurricane Macrosocial Events that Shape
Mitch fostered by organizations such as CAV or Palante, the Histories
the rst of these is mentioned by one of the participants.
10
Damage caused by Mitch in the country were calcu- Identied meanings are shaped by the personal
lated by the Economic Commission for Latin America
and the Caribbean, ECLAC (1999) in 988 million, 45 % stories of each respondent. Due to the shared
of the GDP, in the manufacturing sector it represented experience of macrosocial events that shape and
37 per percent, being agriculture the most affected, human
and environmental damage were also soaring. This hurri-
11
cane is considered one of the strongest storms of the last Due to methodology womens quotes are exactly as
100 years in Central America. they said, no editing.
Table 7.1 Main Inflexions in the trajectories of participant women

Participantsa
Story Age in
no. years Current occupation Inexions of poverty (P) and happiness (H)b
No. 1 17 Housewife P: Her fathers departure to the US, she hasnt seen him since
H: Being with her daughter and being responsible to her and
her husband. The memories of playing with her family as a girl
and at school
No. 2 43 Rumbera (hair stylist, makes P: Rape at 17 when she was a refugee in Honduras during the
cellphone rells, etc.) war of the 1980s, I felt sick
H: When her mom was still alive
No. 3 24 Entrepreneur (makes P: Dropped out of college
photocopies and sells used H: Scholarship (local NGOs) to study for secretary and a
clothes) certied course in management that she got after
No. 4 44 Teacher P: Financial limitations during childhood, the war and a great
number of siblings/powerless on a rape attempt at 16 year old
H: Several moments related to access to nancial resources
during childhood, family, religious and work relationships
No. 5 34 Peasant P: Refuge in Honduras during her childhood/the start of
conjugal life at 18
H: Overcoming poverty/clearing her mind when singing in
church
No. 6 50 Farmer/businesswoman P: Moments waiting for the harvests/lack of money to work
H: Childhood play, closeness to animals and work in the elds
No. 7 24 Business manager P: Paternal neglect/social stigma and rape attempt
H: College graduation/enjoy with friends
No. 8 76 Seamstress P: Dropping school at age 12/not having money of her own
H: Conquer the one she loves at age 21/several moments of
personal achievement
No. 9 32 Rumbera (lady-in-waiting/ P: Frustration/dejection due to current lack of employment
domestic employee) H: University graduation
No. 10 54 Businesswoman (dinner, P: Childhood, adolescence, youth and adult marital life/child
co-op, among other) exploitation, harassment and domestic violence
H: Organizational work/go out to the street/own a business
No. 11 17 Student P: Sadness due to parents divorce/parental neglect
H: Achieving goals/promotion from sixth grade/high school
No. 12 48 Housewife and community P: Childhood/pregnancies/time waiting for harvest/exclusion
agent from governmental programs or processes
H: Labor and raising her children/participate
No. 13 62 Indigenous community P: Childhood/pregnancies
leader/planting vegetables/ H: Adolescence/child birth/her childrens accomplishments/
cook training and organization moments
No. 14 38 Psychologist/indigenous P: Mothers death/paternal neglect/lack of opportunities/
teacher present
H: Since her childhood because she has progressed
No. 15 57 Indigenous health brigader P: Labor without help/current unemployment
H: Her childrens access to education/participation in training
processes and in social and political demands/recognition to
her work in the community
No. 16 22 Student/indigenous youth P: Sadness, rejection, not having enough to carry out her plans/
network paternal neglect
H: The temporary return of her mom before she left again for
Spain
(continued)
Table 7.1 (continued)
Participantsa
Story Age in
no. years Current occupation Inexions of poverty (P) and happiness (H)b
No. 17 44 Indigenous co-operativist P: War during adolescence, losses and ghting of her parents/
current unemployment
H: 2008 break up, personal, organizational and family
fullling life
No. 18 69 Elders council P: War/rural unemployment/current unemployment due to
plague in the coffee plants
H: She found God/harmony with her children
No. 19 18 Student/domestic employee P: Dropping out of school/not having money to study
H: Finishing school/top of her class
No. 20 32 Librarian P: Teenage pregnancy at 16/lack of support from her parents
H: She hasnt been happy/brief moments of achievement
No. 21 43 Teacher/unemployed P: Unemployment/exclusion for political reasons
H: Having a job/living calm and healthy
No. 22 44 Farmer P: Domestic violence when her daughters were infants
H: Living calmly without violence/productive work, access to
government programs
No. 23 46 Teacher/technician P: Unemployment/lack of support
H: Income/being self sufcient
No. 24 41 Peasant/small cattle rancher P: She hasnt experienced it/seeing the suffering during the war
of the 1980s
H: She has always been happy living in peace and harmony
No. 25 54 Cook P: Poverty during childhood, adolescence and youth/an assault
on her son in Costa Rica
H: Fixing her home in the future/being psychologically well
and healthy
No. 26 66 Farmer P: The beginning of conjugal life with eight children and
depending only on her husbands salary
H: Achievements at home, at her farm and most recently her
rst coffee harvest
No. 27 61 Grocer/farmer P: War during the 1980s/hurricane Mitch
H: Inner peace since several years ago
No. 28 43 Farmer/businesswoman P: The beginning of conjugal life at age 21/Hurricane Mitch/
her daughters illness
H: Each time she meets with her family
No. 29 58 Organized in favor of P: Her sons death two years ago/other human and material
womens rights losses during the war
H: Her childrens education/several moments of her
participation in organizational activities
No. 30 48 Co-operative director/farmer P: Financial crisis and the loss of her mom, main economic
support/loss of her home due to hurricane Mitchc
H: Playing in the elds as a girl/the birth of her expected
daughter
a
Six participants are indigenous
b
In the rst two stories, the main inexion related to poverty aspects was not identied as greater poverty but of greater
sadness
c
Considers that she has not lived material poverty because she has always had food, instead she talks about economic
and emotional crises
build life stories, these meanings also have a shelters and civil and military abuses are pain-
collective nature. The life histories of the ful for those who experienced them. It is no
women participating in this study refer to three coincidence then that peace and harmony, not
recent important stages in the political and eco- only social but internal, are substantive values
nomic history of the country. The rst stage is the of happiness for most of them. Very few of
insurrection, revolution12 and war of the 1980s.13 these women have taken part in social recon-
The second stage is the structural adjustment ciliation and/or personal recovery processes.
measures that began in 1988 and then continued Those who have, recognise that womens
as part of the neoliberal policies of the moment organisations have played a major role in
and the consequent mass exodus of Nicaraguans facilitating such processes.
in the 1990s. Finally the current global economic (c) Those who lived through Hurricane
crisis has affected Nicaraguan migration receiv- Mitch, also remember this event as one
ing countries like the U.S. and Spain.14 Within of the most vulnerable times in their lives.
these steps that included various governments,15 This experience makes at least one of them
the major events that stand out are: recall how they were excluded from the aid
that arrived.
(a) Older women in particular emphasize greater (d) In the stories about past events women have
educational access in a very positive way, experienced discrimination based on gender,
taking us back to a time even before the rural belonging, by ethnicity, social class, or
revolution, to the days of the Somoza regime. political afliation. They all account for the
(b) All the women interviewed come from an multiple systems of oppression that operate
area where the war was intense during the in their lives; many of them face this type of
1980s. The memories of war, displacement, discrimination in their present daily life. This
generates not only exclusions from benets
such as government programs but also
12
In the history of Damaris # 25, there is a critical evalu- contradictions and internal tensions about
ation of Agrarian Reform, considered one of the main their behaviors as women, their political
goals and achievements of the revolution, this is the rst choices and relationships with community
time that Damaris said that the government failed her
poor landless peasant family, she further indicates that leaders. Paradoxically, discrimination on
the situation got worse for them because there was no grounds of ethnicity and rural origins seems
work and the people who received benets sold the to rather reinforce their ethnic and rural
land. The Agrarian Reform Law of 1981 stipulated that identities.
land would be guaranteed to poor peasants and agricul-
tural seasonal proletarians who then were 53.9 % of the (e) At different times in the lives of a good
rural population (see http://www.elobservadoreconomico. portion of the women interviewed, from
com/articulo/829). The achievements of this effort are childhood to adulthood, experiences of psy-
still questioned by some authors (Saravia Saravia and chological, physical and sexual violence
Matus Matus 2009).
13 are a constant, not only from spouses but
Nicaragua was not the only country in the region with
an armed conict, El Salvador and Guatemala also expe- from mothers, fathers and caregivers. There
rienced wars of great magnitude, refugees from both is a very sharp hierarchical adult-children
countries lived in Nicaragua in 1980s. According to an relationship. The result is that many of their
article in Refugee Magazine (Envo 1984) these refugees accounts of recovery or pending bereave-
were living in better conditions than Nicaraguan refugees
in Honduras and Costa Rica. ment processes remind them what they
14
Migration to Costa Rica seems to have other dynamics have received and who have helped them
but the rule is not without greater control of borders and in these processes.
migrants. See Migration Act 8764 is cited in text but not (f) Migration appears to many as an alterna-
given in the reference list. Please provide details in the list
tive, or perhaps as a compulsory destination
or delete the citation from the text. Act 8764, which came
into force in 2010. in order to improve revenue, fullling some
15
We are talking about ve governments since 1979 dreams or escaping something (buy land for
to date.
cows that generate family conict, help the Fernanda is a professional woman associated
family, eeing the stigma caused by sexual with a coffee co-operative living on the same
harassment in their community, etc.). farm where she was born. She currently works
(g) Parental neglect is identied as a cause of as a technician in the co-operative. She is now
greater poverty and unhappiness in several 49 years old and lives with her daughter, her
of the stories, as well as machista male brothers are her neighbors on the same property.
violence. However, in stories where Her daughters father has never been present, nor
relationships between genders inside and has her father. When Fernanda was asked if she
outside of the family were strongly positive, remembered moments of happiness, she took a
there is also a great inuence on wellbeing. while to answer but then she smiled and said it
was in her childhood when her grandparents
These are the clear macrosocial processes in were alive, with a carefree and rather free life,
the narratives of women. Women are embedded and the birth of her daughter, already with
in social structures, such as ethnicity, gender concerns of supporting her but happy because
identities or social class and they tell their stories she was a wanted child and she had already
from those structures. Their trajectories speak completed her studies. The support and protec-
about historical events that took place during tion she received are central elements in her
their life or during the period in which some of narrative about happiness. Therefore, when her
their stories happened (Bechi in Sautu 2004), mother, the sole economic and emotional support
inuencing the way they see happiness today. in her adult life, died, Fernanda clearly identies
this as one of her greatest moments of emotional
and material crisis.
7.3.3 Relationships in the Family [. . .] when I was six to eight years old, when I was
with my grandparents, I think thats a moment, a
few years of happiness, a time, because I already
In the narratives that make up this study family is was able to think and reason. When I was younger I
a vital entity for women, both materially and might have been happier but I couldnt say, but at
symbolically in the present moment and in retro- this age I can already remember, I didnt think about
anything, one does not worry about anything, one
spect. Although dependent on the type of
has everything, you just have to ask and if they have
relationships established among its members, it then they give it to you, if they didnt have it, then
family can be a source of resources for life or they didnt give it, there wasnt any, one stayed
serious limitations for women. Women of differ- calm, one wasnt demanding. One was taken care
of and felt protected and I think, that was a happy
ent ages as Javiera16 (17 years old) or Hilaria
time because I had everything, I didnt have to think
(76 years old) refer similarly to the relationship about what I was going to eat because others did
with their spouses, their children or mothers as that for me, and they just gave me. I didnt have to
central to their conception of happiness. Like- worry about health or shoes or clothes or anything
[. . .] I think that was the best time.
wise, the absence of a parental gure or paternal
Then, when I had my daughter, well, I had
irresponsibility as well as different types of sexist wanted her. I think that is another happy time
violence help determine a vision in which being because well, I had nished studying. Right after
alone (single) is an unwanted situation for many, I nished studying I became pregnant, I had a
daughter. Sometimes one suffers, its a big respon-
but offers peace and quiet or is the best option to
sibility but its also a happy moment because one
achieve true wellness. Either way, the support has concluded ones plans and ideas. After that,
and protection of the family, especially from well. . . uhmmm no there hasnt been another time
mothers and fathers, is essential in the concept that I can say its relevant, I havent suffered
excessively but I havent been super happy either.
of happiness for these women.
(Taken from story #30)
In narratives such as those of Fernanda,

16
Teresa and Beatriz, three adult women in rural
All names used in this chapter are pseudonyms.
families still living in the countryside, described member image. All her identities shape her
the labor performed as girls within their families. conceptions of poverty and happiness. Poverty
We note that work within the family as children and happiness are manifested in: feeling alone
was not experienced traumatically, but rather or supported, being excluded or participating,
from the joy of life in the countryside, from being heard or not, being invisible or being val-
playing as a learning experience and is clearly ued. It also has to do with her personal develop-
relational. In these cases, child labor, though ment and that of her children, two of whom are
widely debated and fought against from universal still her responsibility.18
standards such as human rights of children, It was when I started having children when I expe-
represented for the women a process of learning rienced the most poverty [. . .] even when I was
skills and values in a moral and productive pregnant it was hard because I had to go to the
spheres. In womens narratives this child labor hospital to give birth all alone with no family to
help me. I had to tough it up. Three days after I had
is part of the concrete memories of happiness the caesarean section to give birth to my son it
related to playfulness. As it has been noted, a had to be a caesarean section because the baby was
Euro-centric perspective often leads to in a breech presentation- I went down to the river
neglecting the creative aspect that involves to do other peoples laundry and make some
money for food. (Taken from story #15)
child labor in a context that is not labor exploita-
tion, or family abandonment and how it also Carolina is a 42 year old woman who lives
opens up possibilities for children and girls to with her husband in the coffee farm. Besides the
learn to deal with the world (Liebel 2003). farm she has two small businesses, selling food at
In contrast to these stories where protection, home, and is making some improvements to start
learning and support were experienced from the a small mountain eco-tourist hotel in the coffee
family, we have Nora 57 years old. She was route. She is very proud of her and her familys
kidnapped and incorporated involuntarily to the achievements. While his son and daughter study
Resistance17 which she was a part of from 1981 outside the community, its a family where
to 1990. Her mother and father gave her to the everyone works in a common interest, packing
armed organization and took her 3 month old son coffee together, discussing plans, etc. Happiness
away from her. In her story she exonerates the for her is directly related to their collaborative
Contra and emphasizes the familys responsibil- and loving family relationships because she
ity for her suffering. Despite the detailed account started without owning land and now she owns
she gave on the armed struggle in which she two small businesses and a coffee farm with her
participated, the war situation, the history of husband.
abuse and survival, she nally focused on her Well the greatest happiness is to be healthy, to
mom Ill tell you something, I did not suffer have your parents, my dad is not here but I have
because of the Contra but because of my own nothing against him, but to have my mom, and
family, my mom did not love me. once married, to have my children. To me my
children were a blessing from God, to see them
Today Nora feels part of the armed group that be born and grow up and then leave me [she
kidnapped her. It was there that she found some laughs]. Happiness is something big that comes
protection. This identity is only surpassed by the from the heart, something big that I couldnt
organized indigenous women and health brigade explain [. . .] because its something exciting that
comes from the heart [. . .] Yes, of course, some-
times the material things are together with heart,
17
Insurgent armed group in the 1980s, known internation-
18
ally as the Contra revolucion, there is now a political Her older son is in El Salvador, her second son already
party called Resistencia Nicaragua. The kidnapping of has his home and lives with his family in the place where
peasants was a widely used strategy by the Resistance Nora was beneted by a housing project for people of the
and internationally denounced, the most known Resistance, and he helps his mother when he can because
testimonials are mostly peasant men (see for example he already has a family. Nora lives with her two younger
Envo (1985) and Bendana (1991)). children.
but the major part comes from the heart [In which I tell my daughter, I put up with all that from
moments of your life have you felt happy?] When him for them, I put up with a lot of problems but I
my children come, when we are all together and think that my life has changed now. [What has
can all talk, we can talk to them. It is a moment of been the happiest time in your life?] Now that
happiness when the four of us are together. Also Im on my own [she laughs] yes, because now
when my family comes and when my mom comes. Im independent. If women go out, men think
(Taken from story #28) that you are going to see someone, maybe you
are just working, working hard, and they think
Teresa is 44 years old and lives with two of you are doing something else, they think you are
her three daughters and son. Her oldest daughter only doing bad things. Things are not the way they
who is 26 years old lives with her spouse. Her think, its not that I feel free to do other things but
when I come and go I can be unconcerned [. . .]
24 year old daughter has a child, teaches in the [And what is happiness to you?] Happiness?
community preschool and has just won a schol- Happiness is like, lets put it this way, Ill repeat
arship to the Magisterium. Her 18 year old son myself, when you dont need anything, when there
also lives in the house who left school in the is no one mistreating you, judging you, men are
always like that. (Taken from story #22)
freshman year, and her 14 year old daughter
who is in charge of the house when Teresa is As antithesis of happiness, other women
not there or she is working in the eld. Although that also experienced sexual, psychological and
her younger daughter and son work together on physical violence at some point in their life tra-
domestic chores and agricultural tasks, Teresa jectory, considered these experiences as poverty
does not like to overload them with work there- from the helplessness that they felt in the absence
fore she pays people to assist them in agricultural of the paternal or maternal protection, nancial
tasks, because they also have cattle. limitations of their family and the scarce family
At the beginning of her narrative, love and institutional support in the face of those
relationships she experienced emerge. She violent events. The contrasts in these stories
began her married life at 17 years old with a allow us to highlight that although family
soldier during the war the 1980s. Beatings, relationships are an essential element of
humiliation, hunger and poverty dened their wellbeing in these women, when they are full of
relationship until she decided to leave him. Her violence, control, or lack of support, there are
second partner, during the 1990s, also took other relationships that acquire a greater value
advantage of her but not with physical violence. to them such as those of friendship or compan-
Teresa only completed second grade. Not know- ionship in social groups in which they participate
ing anything due to the lack of education is part (i.ewomens organizations and churches). We
of the explanation she has not only to what hap- move now to describe another important aspect
pened to her, but also the way men are. Her love of social relations revealed in the stories of these
relationships are, to this day, a source of sadness women, institutional relationships in the
in her life, and also a major source of poverty. communities as part of the social fabric that
For Teresa, to be happy means to live a life free facilitates, strengthens or limit the experience of
of violence and to have an occupation. Being happiness.
poor is related to a life of control, scarcity and
violence.
[Reecting on what you have told me, what 7.3.4 The State, Community
moments would you say that you have experienced
the most poverty?] The poorest? When I lived with
and Women: Ambivalent
the girls father [Was that when you were with the Institutional Relations
soldier living in Aranjuez?] Yes, with him because
at the time I didnt have anything, by the end I Most of the women who participated in this study
didnt even have food at home. He was very mean,
are or have been organized in various ways: in
the money he made was only for his addiction, to
harm himself and he was very mean to me. community structures, with local womens
organizations around the pastoral work in Catho- us. What we need is leadership, support. For exam-
lic and Protestant churches, some are part of ple, we work the land but that is not enough to x
our houses. My house is in need of a change of
co-operatives and others are part of programs wood but at my age I cant work as hard as before.
such as Usura Cero or Bono Productivo (Take from story #6)
Alimentario.19 These experiences reinforce a
vision of happiness where peace, harmony, coop- Fabiola continues questioning the role of the
eration, solidarity and social participation are its state, giving the example of her Guanacaste tree
constituent elements. which she does not have permission to cut to
Beyond the family arena, inside the enhance her home even though she has pruned
communities, women interviewed are immersed it many times because it damages electric cables.
in a network of relationships that are strongly She says that permit managers are biased against
inuenced by the performance of different her. Her perception is fueled by the identication
agents; one of those agents that stood up in the she makes of clear favoritism toward others who
stories is the state. We pause here to present the receive all the benets of social programs in the
main aspects that dene this ambivalent relation- community.
ship with women, which gives room for happi- In two of the narratives, from different
ness if they feel heard, included and active municipalities, the story of how the state
participants, but allows poverty when they feel prevents farmers from cutting trees is present,
abandoned, excluded and oppressed by the while companies or people linked to local
state apparatus. This also accounts for the impact power circles are expeditiously granted
of institutional and political actors in the daily permissions. This inequality accounts for the
lives of people. micro-dynamics of the power of government
Fabiolas vision of happiness goes beyond the bureaucracy at the local level and how it
individual level, it demands dialogue and har- marginalizes and sometimes forces people to
mony for their achievement. Both words are seek solutions outside the law. Moreover, and
excluded when describing her relationship with above all, it speaks of how women identify and
the state which is given by the municipal resist these injustices and exclusions. Scott
authorities and community leaders involved in (1985) emphasizes in a deep analysis on other
government programs. Exclusion from Plan forms of peasant resistance, how people who are
Techo program and solar panels, plus the absence powerless over hegemonic groups do not subor-
of actions to boost access to electricity and water, dinate passively. Instead, they show their dissent
determines her discomfort towards community against the impositions of those in power with
leadership through which all national and local common, individual and political practices in
decisions pass. everyday life.
Teresa instead, linked her greatest happiness
Ill tell you how it really is, government came here to her entry into the Bono Productivo Program in
with a zinc sheet, but my dad bought it, that other
zinc sheet was given to me when the liberals where 2007. Additionally, living free from spousal vio-
in power. Look I dont say anything against the lence and her participation in two other programs
government because it gives to everyone. Its the of the governments social policy gives her a lot
local leaders that dont include everyone; they of enthusiasm and joy. However, despite the fact
work in the town hall. If you look at the house it
all has a parge coat but because my dad did it. Now that she is a supporter of the political party that is
on the side of the government, you tell me, when a in power nationally, she has been excluded from
government wins its for everyone. Here it is the local government programs.20 In her account she
community leader who sometimes does things or also shows the situation of political polarization
not. [. . .] I could say that here we are abandoned
and there is no one who wants to acknowledge that exists in municipalities and tells how women
20
This is the unique municipality in the Department
19
Top government social sector programs. where the mayor belongs to other political party.
involved in the Usura Cero Program are told not They have never helped us, governments come
to talk about politics and to remain silent if they and go, and we that endured the war, we were the
Resistencia, I say that, we were the Resistance. It
dont like something: wasnt people from here or there, because they
Right now in politics, if you belong to another were around with guns and it was life or death.
party they try to push you away. But I dont like And there is no support for the people like us who
to be selsh, I have helped women who are not didnt do anything.
party members to become beneciaries of the So that is Resistencia. Because we stayed here,
nationals programs and they always get benets. because we didnt want to leave for Honduras.
In this case, its me, a sister-in-law and another Nowadays governments and mayors come and go
woman [. . .] the town hall that belongs to a differ- and they dont even turn to see us. [What about
ent party, has pushed me away [. . .] but I dont like now with the new mayor?] Yes, now el Frente won
to be selsh, the other women who are with me but all the projects are being given to the south
support a different party [. . .] Im from a different because they say there are more poor people there.
party as the other two [another party?] a different So we always need a home, this was a cost, this
one, that is Usura Cero [the name of a program] but wasnt a gift from the mayor or the government, it
I tell them, the good thing is to work, we dont have was a cost because we bought this house through
to pay attention to political parties, just dont Caritas de Estel [. . .] since they dont give us, but
offend them if they are from a different party. maybe a loan. (Taken from story #18)
Throughout the project the rst thing they tell
you is that the government is helping you. I tell The organized life of Rosa began as a health
the other women even if you dont support the brigader and changed in 2002 when she joined
ruling party or if you disagree with something, the Council of Elders of the indigenous people in
the best thing is to keep quiet, you gain more, a time when women were already part of several
what you want is just to work. . . (Taken from
story #22) structures within the indigenous community.
Later, in the municipal government, women
We can also look back on this relationship took over all spaces, so she hopes there will be
with the state, where, regardless of political a change in relation to the abandonment of indig-
belief the historical exclusion of people in rural enous people. She cant be sure but she raises it
areas shapes perceptions of their relations with as a possibility.
the state. Rosa, an indigenous woman of 67 years Retrospectively, Ana who is 61 years old,
old, uses every opportunity to talk about the describes her moments of greatest poverty as a
unequal treatment she and her family have expe- result of the vulnerability felt in the war in the
rienced. Rosa remembers a great deal of 1980s and Hurricane Mitch on 1990s. Both con-
suffering and discrimination towards people liv- trast because of her different experiences, rstly,
ing in rural areas during the years of war. total helplessness of her and her entire family to
Throughout her narrative regarding political cal- the state, her brother died and her husband was
culation of the electoral process, a continuous imprisoned. Secondly with greater strength and
assessment of the situation that exists in the resources to face it as there were many families
community without party ideology and a search together in the same situation and her house
for higher wellbeing is clear. Her observations on became a refuge for families in the community.
armed factions versus civilian populations and While war caused casualties in her family and she
organized people close to political power and felt spied on and persecuted, the harshness of
those not close to power, reveal a sharp analysis Mitch resulted in only suffering material losses
of power relations and a complex situation in the in the community and they were all together.
country: the majority affected by war that have Anas experience illustrates how the authoritarian
not been compensated. institutional relations contrast with the experience
. . . if you were organized you ate well, sugar, our, of solidarity and support between neighbors
everything ne; but if you werent organized experiencing a similar situation. To her, happiness
you didnt eat right. So I always fought with my is to share with family and friends and also, in a
kids, I always sowed elds [. . .] the suffering part
passed. Then in the 90s Miss Violeta won, we decisive manner, it depends on an inner peace that
voted so things would be peaceful and a lot of according to her comes from God and has allowed
people came. her to overcome what she lived in the 1980s.
7.4 Conclusion CEPAL. (1999). Nicaragua: Evaluaci on de los Danos

Ocasionados por el Hurac an Mitch, 1998: Sus
Implicaciones Para el Desarrollo Econ omico y Social
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Aging, Family Relations and Well-Being
in Chile 8
Mara Soledad Herrera, Mara Beatriz Fernandez,
and Carmen Barros
8.1 Introduction little difference between the circumstances of life

and ones perceived achievements and
Chilean population is aging due to the increase of benchmarks. It is a long-term cognitive appraisal
life expectancy and the decrease of birth rate. of the past, present and lifetime, and it is rela-
However, this phenomenon generates concerns tively stable. Usually, only one question is used,
about whether elderly people will live this period which asks about the global perception of per-
having adequate living conditions and with good sonal satisfaction in response scales that can go
level of well-being during the gained years. In from 1 to 10 points: from totally unsatised to
this context, the major objectives of this article totally satised. It has the advantage of gathering
are to describe the level of the elderly peoples the evaluation that the individual makes of
well-being in Chile and to test a hypothetical his/her own satisfaction based on a very simple
model of the factors that are associated to it. question that several studies had considered
highly correlated to other multidimensional
measures of well-being (Abdel-Khalek 2006).
8.2 The Conception of Well-Being In Chile, this question presents enough
and Its Measurement variability (Herrera et al. 2011).
The second dimension is taken from Bradburn
Two dimensions of well-being will be included (Bradburn and Caplovitz 1965; Bradburn 1969),
according to the experience founded in previous which includes a balance between positive and
studies: general satisfaction with life and emo- negative feelings. Several studies have conrmed
tional well-being (Brown et al. 2004). Diener that there are two different scales, one for posi-
et al. (1999) suggest that, although they are dif- tive affections and another one for negative
ferent concepts, both are somehow associated. affections (Kercher 1992; Leue and Lange
Diener et al. (1985) denes life satisfaction as a 2011; Stock et al. 1994). Previous studies have
cognitive judgmental process, dependent upon a demonstrated that in Chile the negative items
comparison of ones circumstances with what is discriminate better (Barros et al. 2004, 2006).
thought to be an appropriate standard. One would This paper mainly uses data from a study that
achieve greater satisfaction with life if there is deepens in family relations in old age. It is based
on a survey applied face to face to a representa-
tive sample of adults aged 60 and over, in the city
M.S. Herrera (*) M.B. Fernandez C. Barros of Santiago in 2009. It has been sponsored by the
Ponticia Universidad Cat
olica de Chile, Santiago, Chile Chilean Government (project FONDECYT
e-mail: mherrepo@uc.cl

130 M.S. Herrera et al.
1090326 Family cohesion, intergenerational various Chilean surveys. In general terms, the
solidarity and conict: impact on the elderly well-being reports are relatively high between
well-being) (hereafter Fondecyt 1090326 Sur- older Chileans, but there are some differences
vey).1 Perception of well-being is studied by between surveys that depend on the survey
inquiring about subjective judgments of general questions. For example, the dichotomous ques-
satisfaction with life in the last 6 months and by tion about satisfaction (if the person has felt
distress index. The rst variable has four basically satised or not with his/her life over
response categories: not satised (11 %), not the past week) asked in the National Survey on
very satised (24 %), satised (54 %) and very Dependency 20092 has more responses on the
satised (11 %); it is dichotomized as 1very side of being satised (89.3 %), in comparison
satised or satised and 0not very satised or to the 4-response item question (1 very satised,
not satised. The latter combines six self- 2 satised, 3 not very satised, or 4 dissatised)
referred questions: During the last six months, from the First and Second National Surveys on
have you felt: calm, depressed, lonely, energetic, Quality of Life in Old Age 2007 and 20103
nervous, tired? The response ranges from (56.2 % and 59.2 % respectively), and from the
1 (quite often), 2 (sometimes), to 3 (almost Fondecyt 1090326 survey (65 %).
never). A principal component analysis carried The Chilean National Socioeconomic Survey
out in the Fondecyt 1090326 survey showed that 20114 rst introduced the question of perception
the six items have high factor loadings (up to of life satisfaction on a scale from 1 to 10, from
0.625) with only one dimension, that explains completely dissatised to completely satised,
50 % of the total variance. The two positive with a mean of 7.0 in old age. It is concentrated
emotions (energy and calm) have the lower fac- on higher values (22 % responded 10; 43 %
tor loadings in the rst component, so the distress from 8 to 10; 59 % from 7 to 10).
index was constructed only with the negative In this point it is interesting to stress the rela-
emotions. The distress index calculated only tionship between well-being and age. As it can be
with the four negative emotions- behaves in a seen on Table 8.1, contrary to what we
one-dimension way, with factorial weights
between 0.815 for the indicator of feeling 2
National Study on Dependency in the Elderly,
depressed and 0.712 for the indicator of feeling commissioned by the Servicio Nacional del Adulto
lonely. It has Cronbachs alpha 0.77. A simple Mayor (SENAMA) (http://www.senama.cl/
average is calculated among those four indicators CentroDocument.html) in the year 2009. It is representa-
(negative emotions), calculating an index that tive of the Chilean elderly population and it also included
various questions on well-being.
goes from more to less distress (with values 3
These surveys were conducted to describe the living
from 1-quite often feels such negative emotions conditions of the elderly people, to know their way of
to 3-almost never feels such emotions), with an life, their concerns, their perceptions of their economic,
average of 2.26 in the sample studied. The R family, social, and health situation, as well as the factors
that allow them to feel more satised with life and enjoy a
Pearson correlation between satisfaction with
better well-being (http://adultomayor.uc.cl/encuesta-
life and the distress index is 0.454. calidad-de-vida.php). The universe of the 2007 survey
In Table 8.1 we can see the responses to was the population aged 60 or older, living in private
different ways of measuring well-being in housing in cities of more than 30,000 inhabitants in
Chile, representing 75 % of the older population of
Chile, with a sample size of 1,613 cases. In 2010 the
representativeness of the survey was expanded to the
1
Respondents were selected by systematic randomization national population of Chile who live in urban areas,
of blocks and private houses. In the last stage, we applied increasing the sample to 2,000 cases and being represen-
a quota sample to allow the same number of interviews in tative of 86 % of the total elderly Chilean population.
4
each age group (6074 years and 75+ years). The sample Encuesta Nacional de Caracterizaci on Socioecon omica
was weighted according to data from CASEN 2009 to (CASEN) is carried out in Chile at intervals of 23 years,
ensure proportionality in gender and age according to with a large national representative sample (over 200,000
their weight in the population. people), that also provides information about older adults.
8 Aging, Family Relations and Well-Being in Chile 131
Table 8.1 Well-being by age, results from different Chilean surveys

Source/question Age groups Total
6064 6569 7074 7579 8084 85+ 60+
First national survey on quality of life in 55.1 % 55.0 % 57.1 % 53.2 % 59.6 % 64.4 % 56.2 %
old age 2007 (national sample in cities
over 30,000 inhabitants)/% been satised
or very satised with life (4-item
question)
Second national survey on quality of life 61.6 % 60.1 % 60.9 % 55.2 % 58.6 % 55.0 % 59.5 %
in old age 2010 (national sample in cities
over 10,000 inhabitants)/% been satised
or very satised with life (4-item
question)
National survey on dependency 2009 87.2 % 89.6 % 88.1 % 91.5 % 90.5 % 94.8 % 89.3 %
(national sample)/choose the best answer
for how you have felt over the past week:
are you basically satised with your life?
%YES (dichotomous format)
Socioeconomic national Chilean survey 7.0 7.0 7.0 7.1 7.3 7.2 7.0
(Encuesta Casen) 2011 (national survey)/
mean score from a single question with
10 item response from 1 (completely
unsatised) to 10 (completely satised)
Fondecyt 1090326 survey on 63 % 81 % 75 % 66 % 62%a/ 65 %
intergenerational relations (Santiago
Chile)/% been satised or very satised
with life (4-item question)
Fondecyt 1090326 survey on 2.21 2.39 2.25 2.22 2.20a 2.25
intergenerational relations (Santiago
Chile)/distress scale from high distress
(1) to less distress (3)
a
Calculated for 80+ years old
could have expected, well-being does not individuals that have a sense of identity (struc-
necessary decrease as years go on, and besides, ture), experiment some degree of emotional
in some surveys it seems to increase with age. bonds (cohesion, affective closeness), and have
This is what has been named aging paradox ways to satisfy the needs of family members and
(Baltes 1993). of the family as a whole. Family is
Below is a brief overview of the factors that in conceptualized as a group of people united by
the literature are associated to the well-being of kinship bonds, with a sense of belonging and
the elderly. First we deep into family united by affection and solidarity bonds (Barros
relationships, which are the main focus of this and Munoz 2001).
article, and then we present the individual factors So, we have three signicant dimensions for
associated with well-being. studying family: its structure and composition,
affective closeness and cooperation or support
among its members. The rst dimension refers
to those living with the elderly and to the avail-
8.3 Family Relations, Social
ability of different kinds of relatives, such as the
Support and Elderly Well-
couple, the children, parents, siblings, and others.
Being
Having relatives does not necessarily mean
that they are close or that they give assistance
According to Sabatelli and Bartle (1995),
to each other.
family is dened as a group of interdependent
The second dimension refers to the affection The absence of direct effect of support on
and closeness between the members of the family. well-being may be explained by the fact that the
It refers to the quality of the family relationships. effect is more indirect, helping to mitigate the
One should assess subjective perceptions of the negative effect that may be produced by stressful
quality of relations especially family relations, situations experienced by the elderly particu-
looking at the way in which family climate is larly when they have health problems
perceived, in terms of unity and trust in mutual (Silverstein and Bengtson 1994). There is agree-
aid, or in negative terms of being abused, left aside, ment regarding the importance of the reciprocity
and misunderstood (Lowenstein and Ogg 2003). of support (Lowenstein et al. 2007). When
The importance of such negative conicting or exchange is reciprocal, positive effects are
disturbing relations lies in the fact that they can generated among participants. When someone
have an even greater impact on psychosocial well- gives more than one receives, one may experi-
being than positive supportive relations (Newsom ence frustration and overload; when someone
et al. 2005; Rook 1984). receives more support than one gives, it is possi-
Belonging to a family group is not only ble to feel dependence and indebtedness. In this
associated to some affective links, but also to a context, people may not wish to establish support
set of commitments to receive and provide help, links, unless these can be reciprocal (Guzman
in which these members are related by bonds of et al. 2003).
mutual responsibility. This provides them trust
and safety to count with support in cases of need.
The availability of social support fulls 8.4 Individual Dimensions
expressive, affective, and instrumental functions. Explaining Well-Being Among
The affective and expressive functions stem from the Elderly
the fact that feeling attached to others through
affective links increases self-esteem, provides a Several studies have demonstrated that well-
feeling of accomplishment, and enables the being is associated to economic and health
expression of negative feelings. Instrumental conditions. Income has a positive effect on
functions refer to the fact that support is a well-being (Diener and Ryan 2009), but the
resource that facilitates the carrying out of daily strength of this association falls as the income
activities, and that it is useful in the face of increases, being more important the perception
whatever may happen to the individual (Grundy of having enough income than the amount of it
2005; Guzman et al. 2003). (Herrera et al. 2011). Undoubtedly, health and
Nevertheless, in the literature there is no physical functioning are strongly correlated to
agreement with regard to the positive impact of well-being (Arita 2005; Diener 1994; Mella
such support on well-being, although generally et al. 2004; Moyano and Ramos 2007).
the studies have shown positive associations Education is mentioned as one of the most
(Hombrados et al. 2012; Merz and Huxhold important protective factors of good physical
2012). Lee et al. (1995) found that receiving and cognitive functioning (Fernandez 2001). It
support increases distress among elderly persons, inuences the access to knowledge, life habits,
because this is interpreted as a loss of indepen- and better income opportunities. Educational
dence. Davey and Eggebeen (1998) also found a levels are also associated to what Baltes (1993)
negative effect of regular support around specic calls the pragmatic knowledge of life, or the
transitions in the lives of parents and children, way individuals deal with the situations of daily
even when one control by the level of functional life, in which persons with higher levels of edu-
dependence. Other studies have not found effects cation will be more able to adapt themselves to
of support. In different studies carried out in changing situations (Bandura 1997; Lawton
Chile, social support does not appear to affect 1991).
the well-being of the elderly (Barros et al. 2006; Another protective factor proposed by Rowe
Herrera et al. 2011; Silva et al. 2003). and Kahn (1997) is the perception of self-
efcacy or the ability to face situations. As we calculated linear regression, because the
Lawton (1991) states, the ability to adapt oneself dependent variable is a summative index.
to changing circumstances allows individuals to This study considered the total answers of
experience well-being. The perception of self- 400 elderly people from 60 years old and up,
efcacy reects belief in the ability to control residents in the city of Santiago de Chile, where
the changing demands of the environment 59 % are women and a 70 % are among
through adaptive actions (Bandura 1997; 6074 years old. The 24 % of these people live
Steffena et al. 2002). This sense is a valuable only with their couple, approximately 60 % live
personal resource in human adaptation that with their children and other people (with or
helps to perceive changes as challenges resulting without couple) and only 16 % live alone; the
in actions (Jerusalem and Mittag 1999). On the 62 % states having enough income (see
other hand, those who have low self-efcacy tend Table 8.2).
to perceive changes as threats, thus creating All the variables theoretically hypothesized as
apprehension, apathy, or despair. associated to elderly well-being were analyzed:
Given this background, the present study perception of available support, household com-
contrasts the following hypothesis: elderly well- position, quality of family relations, health, per-
being is associated not only to living conditions ception of income and perception of self-
education, health, level of income but also to efcacy, and were controlled according to age
family relationships and psychological skills as and gender. In the appendix we can see more
self-efcacy perception. In regard to family, we details about the variables included.
hypothesize that the principal dimension is the Let us now refer to the main ndings resulting
affectivity and the sense of belonging to a har- from this study. Coming back to the initial aim of
monious and united family on which someone determining the factors that are associated to
can rely on. Well-being does not depend much on elderly peoples well-being, at a bivariate level,
the specic interchange of resources among higher satisfaction and lower distress appear
relatives, but rather on the perception of close- among men, as well as among those who per-
ness. The composition of a household does not ceive higher income, those with better health,
have either great importance, but we expect that higher self- efcacy, those having more support
those who live only with their couple should be perception and those living only with their cou-
the ones who experience more well-being. ple (see Table 8.3).
The associations among the predictor
variables are rather weak, standing out the
associations between the family indexes of affec-
8.5 Results About Variables
tion and conict, which are associated to higher
Associated to Elderly Well-
levels of self-efcacy, more support and living
Being
only with the couple. Being a woman is
associated with having not enough income and
This section describes the results of regression
having no couple; having enough income is
analysis on well-being in old age, computed from
associated with good or excellent health and
the Fondecyt 1090326 survey. We calculated two
with high self-efcacy (see Table 8.3 in the
different regressions on two indicators of subjec-
appendix).
tive well-being: satisfaction with life (See
Tables 8.4 and 8.5 (in the appendix) show the
Table 8.4) and distress (See Table 8.5). For the
regression models estimated for each of the two
rst one, in order to test the correlations between
well-being measures. First, we will describe the
the predictors and the different dimensions of
results regarding the family variables.
satisfaction with life, we performed multivariate
Family affection and family conict are
logistic regression models, because the depen-
correlated to satisfaction, in the sense that to
dent variable is dichotomous. For the last one,
perceive better quality of family relations (high
affection and less conict) increase the odds of conclusions supported by the evidence described
satisfaction in the last 6 months. Nevertheless, above.
when both are included together in model 4 of Life conditions are signicant predictors not
Table 8.4, the family affection index loses statis- only for satisfaction but also for distress. Health
tical signicance, although the direction of the and income have a strong impact. Education does
association is kept. Both family functioning not appear in the models, because it has an indi-
indexes are also correlated to emotional distress rect inuence by allowing the access to higher
and both remain with statistical signicance income, better health, and to psychosocial skills
when they are included simultaneously in that help individuals adapt better to new
model 4 of Table 8.5. backgrounds due to a higher perception of self-
Social support has not a signicant correlation efcacy. Education is a resource that can be
with either satisfaction or emotional distress. accumulated through time with cumulative
Household composition is only associated to disadvantage, affecting the different components
tress, in the sense that living only with a couple of well-being and its predictors.
or with other people, in comparison to living The quality of family relations has diverse
alone, are associated with less distress. associations depending on how it is measured.
As expected, living conditions are strongly It is worth noticing that having disturbing fam-
associated to well-being. Having enough income ily relations decreases the satisfaction level and
and good or regular health in contrast with bad increases the distress. On the other hand, notic-
health are associated to lower distress and more ing that if someone has appropriate affective
odds of reporting satisfaction. family relations, this only decreases the
Age also appears as signicant, in an inverted level of distress. This study conrms that
U-shape: the group between 60 and 64 years old, social support does not have direct impact on
and the one being 75 years old and older, are well-being, as has been shown in other
more dissatised and have more distress than the studies in Chile (Barros et al. 2006; Herrera
group being 6575 years old. et al. 2011; Herrera and Kornfeld 2008; Silva
Likewise, self-efcacy is also relevant: high et al. 2003).
self-efcacy is associated with lower distress and The household composition is associated to
with more odds to be satised. distress, whereas people who live alone are
Women have higher distress than men, but those who experience it the most. This could
they do not necessarily have worse perception be explained because people that live alone
of satisfaction with life. have worst evaluation of family environment
and less support availability (Herrera and
Kornfeld 2010).
Getting older being a woman involves a
8.6 Conclusions and Discussion
higher risk of experiencing distress, but this is
not quite related to sex as a biological phenome-
We have contrasted a hypothetical conceptual
non but to genre as a social phenomenon; in other
model regarding protective factors associated to
words, it is related to the access to societal
well-being in old age. We have conrmed that
resources income and education and to the
life conditions are one of the most important
ways how they are socialized, with strong
predictors of well-being, but the variations in
emphasis on the affective aspect.
this measure in old age are better explained if
One of the most interesting results is that one
we incorporate other factors, such as the quality
in which age, in spite of the restriction in life
of family relations and self-efcacy. Therefore it
conditions, does not decrease the satisfaction
is interesting to highlight some of the
perception (Kunzmann et al. 2000), fact that to understand such social relations.5 Staying
Baltes called a paradox (Baltes and Baltes active and embedded in social networks is
1990). A possible explanation for the rst con- directly associated with better health and to
clusion is presented by Baltes, who states that greater subjective well-being (Herrera
subjects would have a vision of their life that et al. 2011; Rowe and Kahn 1997). Helliwell
would be evaluated from the practical knowl- and Putman (2004) showed in a comparative
edge; in other words, the stock of knowledge study of several countries- that the social context
acquired during life about how society -measured as capital or strength of social ties
conceptualizes old age and what is possible or (family, religious, neighborhood and commu-
not to obtain during it. This would lead to objec- nity) is fundamental for both physical health
tive displacement and to the modication of the and for subjective well-being. Also, social par-
expectations, emphasizing what has been ticipation has been found associated with lower
achieved and what we still have. mortality risk. Maier and Klumb (2005) found
This is better understood if we remember that that time spent being with friends is associated
satisfaction level is a global judgment, a cogni- with higher chances of survival in people aged
tive evaluation of life, while distress is an emo- 70 or more years.
tional balance, an affective component that Another study in Chile through qualitative
depends on the reaction and ability of adaptation research carried out by Osorio et al. (2011) also
to specic events that happen during life (Duran showed that there are other important
2010). components of quality of life in old age as impor-
Thus, age per se is not a distress predictor, tant as the biomedical ones, such as: interactions
because what really has an inuence is the per- and leisure activities, relationships with
ception of the individual of his/her ability to deal caregivers, ability to make decisions at this
with any circumstance that could happen by stage of life (autonomy) and socio-cultural
either resolving it or coming to term with dimensions.
it. That is, the predictor is not an age category Finally, we want to refer to the results of other
but the perception of the self-efcacy of the studies developed by the same authors of the
individuals. This is consistent with other studies. present chapter, where we have calculated vari-
For example, Isaacowitz and Smith (2003) found ous logistic regression models on different
no unique effects of age after they controlled measures of subjective well-being, as satisfac-
demographic, personality and health and cognition with life, distress and depressive
tive functioning variables. complaints. Consistent with the results of the
Further, we have to remember the low R present study, in these studies, life conditions are
square observed in the regression models, one of the most important predictors of well-
which leads to the question about what other being, but the quality of family relations are
aspects of quality of life have not been included almost equally important:
in this study. In terms of family relationships, a
quantitative study like the one presented here Logistic regression models on satisfaction
could not deepen into the quality of social with life calculated in both national samples
relationships, especially into the issue of the
ambiguity of intergenerational relationships 5
For example: institutional participation (access to public
(Lowenstein 2007), or into other social relations,
services), civic participation (Burr et al. 2002), labor
such as neighbors or friends, and time use in participation (Menec 2002), neighborhood social capital
recreational and social organizations. (Bowling et al. 2002), social networks and time with
Several studies have shown positive family and/or friends, provision and/or availability of
social support (Maier and Klumb 2005), quality of inter-
associations between high levels of social
personal relationships (Berg et al. 2006), intergenera-
relationships and better quality of life in old tional solidarity and conict or ambivalence
age, although with different concepts about how (Lowenstein 2007), among others.
of 2007 and 2010 National Survey on Quality supports (company to run errands; help in
of Life in Old Age show that having at least case of illness; company in case of feeling
one unsatisfactory interpersonal relation and alone; company in case of feeling sad). In
perceiving high quality of family relations are Chile the perception of available support is
associated to more probabilities of being very high, where in this sample only 3 %
satised with life, whereas the disposition of does not have any type of support, 28 % has
social support does not have statistical signi- up to 3 supports, 73 % has the four supports.
cance (Herrera et al. 2011; Herrera and Due to this distribution, we dichotomized the
Kornfeld 2010; UC 2011). variable in: 0 03 supports, 1 all the
To have conict with close relatives or friends supports.
and the absence of instrumental support from Household composition: (1) Lives alone;
the informal network are associated to more (2) Lives only with his/her couple; (3) Lives
probabilities of having depression complaints with other people, mainly corresponds to
in a representative sample of older adults in families where more than one generation
Santiago of Chile (Carrasco et al. 2013) coexist (grandparents, sons, daughters,
The perception about the availability of social grandchildren). The respective Dummy
support, although in the expected direction, variables are constructed, considering living
does not have statistical signicance on satis- alone as reference category.
faction with life in the studies mentioned Index of family affection: It is a scale of
above. Nevertheless, when we contrast the perceptions about the quality of family
models with the affective dimension of well- relations that averages the responses to the
being, the availability of social support is following questions with three response
associated to less distress (Barros et al. 2004, categories (1. Yes, often, 2. Sometimes,
2006) and to less depressive complaints 3. Never): (1) Do you feel that your relatives
(Carrasco et al. 2013). love you less than what you expect? (2) Do
you feel that you family see you like an obli-
In the studies referred to in the two preceding gation? (3) Do you feel that your family does
paragraphs, the sense of self-efcacy also not understand you? (4) Do you feel that your
appears as one of the most important variables. family does not care about you? The index
Besides, some leisure activities as reading and behaves in a one-dimension way, with facto-
leaving home several times a week are also rial weights over 0.53, and with values that
associated with greater well-being. goes from 1 (low affection) to 3 (high affec-
The results of age and gender in these studies tion), with Cronbachs alpha of 0.78.
are somewhat mixed. In some of them no Index of family conict: It is a scale of
associations were found, and if any, they are perceptions of the quality of family relations
rather weak and go in the direction of more age, that averages the responses to the following
greater sense of wellbeing; and in which women questions with three response categories
tend to express less well-being. (1. Yes, often, 2. Sometimes, 3. Never):
(1) Do you feel that some of your relatives
abuses you; (2) Do you feel that in your family
there are people that make you feel extremely
Appendix
stressed; (3) Do you feel that your relatives
meddle a lot in your affairs. This is a
Variables Included in the Regression
one-dimensional index, with factorial weights
Analysis
over 0.48, and with values that goes from
1 (more contention) to 3 (less contention),
Perception of available support: index that
and with a Cronbachs alpha of 0.60.
quanties the availability of four kinds of
Health perception: this was measured with the Perception of self-efcacy; this combines two
indicator Would you say that your health questions: (i) How able have you felt to face
is. . ., which was categorized into three difcult situations in recent years: very able,
groups: 1 good, very good or excel- little able or unable?; (ii) In this last year
lent perceived health; 2 regular health; have you felt condent that if you make the
3 poor health (reference category). effort, you will achieve what you want: quite
Perception of income; this was measured with often, sometimes or almost never?. Value
the question does your income meet your 0 considered to have low self-efcacy
requirements?, with three categories: yes when the person is unable or little able
comfortably, yes fairly or no. In relation to face difcult situations and/or is almost
with well-being, there is a clear difference never condent that if they make the effort,
between not having enough income and the they will achieve what they want; 1 other
perception that income is enough, although values
not fair. So, we decided to dichotomize it
in: 0 not enough and 1 enough (fairly or
comfortably).
Table 8.2 Descriptive statistics

Perception of satisfaction with life Not very satised or not satised 30.0 %
Very satised or satised 70.0 %
Distress index (range 1 (higher) to 3 (lower)) 2.26
Age 6064 years old 26.4 %
6574 years old 43.5 %
75 or more years old 30.1 %
Gender Male 41.5 %
Female 58.5 %
Enough income Not enough 38.1 %
Fairly or comfortable 61.9 %
Perception of health Good or excellent perception of personal health 49.9 %
Regular perception of personal health 40.2 %
Poor perception of personal health 9.8 %
Perception of self-efcacy Low self-efcacy 25.5 %
Medium to high self-efcacy 74.5 %
Perception of social support Medium to low (03 supports) 27.5 %
High support (4 supports) 72.5 %
Household composition Unipersonal 15.9 %
Only with couple 23.7 %
Other household 60.3 %
Index of family affection (range 1 (lower) to 3 (higher)) 2.60
Index of family conict (range 1 (higher) to 3 (lower)) 2.65
Source: Fondecyt 1090326 Survey. N 400 older persons
Table 8.3 Bivariate associations with dependent variables
Satised
with life MEAN of distress index (range
No Yes 1 (higher) to 3 (lower))
Age 6064 years old 37.1 62.9 2.21
6574 years old 21.7 78.3 2.32
75 or more years old 35.7 64.3 2.21
Gender Male 24.9 75.1 2.37
Female 33.5 66.5 2.18
Enough income Not enough 47.1 52.9 2.13
Fairly or comfortable 19.0 81.0 2.35
Perception of Good or excellent perception of 15.0 85.0 2.47
health personal health
Regular perception of personal 37.5 62.5 2.14
health
Poor perception of personal 74.9 25.1 1.71
health
Perception of self- Low self-efcacy 47.8 52.2 2.00
efcacy Medium to high self-efcacy 23.8 76.2 2.36
Perception of social Medium to low (03 supports) 40.4 59.6 2.08
support High support (4 supports) 28.4 71.6 2.31
Household Unipersonal 36.0 64.0 2.08
composition Only with couple 18.3 81.7 2.45
Other household 31.9 68.1 2.23
Index of family affection (range 1 (lower) to 3 (higher)) Pearson Pearson correlation: 0.316***
correlation:
0.268***
Index of family conict (range 1 (higher) to 3 (lower)) Pearson Pearson correlation: 0.342***
correlation:
0.242***
*** p < 0.01; ** p < 0.05; * p < 0.1
Table 8.4 Logistic regressions on satisfied with life

Standardized beta
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4
High support 1.158 1.216 1.190 1.136
Only with couple1 1.429 2.297 2.187 2.115
Other household1 0.951 1.518 1.653 1.562
Index of family affection 2.045*** 1.757** 1.358
Index of family conict 1.638* 2.351*** 1.971**
Female 1.102 1.116 1.123
6064 years old2 0.295*** 0.258*** 0.273***
75 or over years old2 0.545* 0.451** 0.483**
Enough income 3.206*** 2.934*** 3.030***
Good health3 11.295*** 13.643*** 12.581***
Regular health3 2.595** 2.800** 2.634**
High self-efcacy 1.404* 1.500* 1.403*
Constant 0.081 0.043 0.019 0.015
R2 Nagelkerke 0.108 0.372 0.380 0.384
N 362 362 347 346
***Coefcient is signicant at 0.01 (bilateral); **Coefcient is signicant at 0.05 (bilateral); *Coefcient is signicant
at 0.1 (bilateral)
Table 8.5 Logistic regressions on distress Distress index ranges from 1 (higher) to 3 (lower)
High support 0.042 0.100* 0.092* 0.076
(0.035) (0.083) (0.076) (0.063)
Only with couplea 0.185** 0.178** 0.162** 0.141*
(0.138) (0.133) (0.121) (0.105)
Other householda 0.066 0.117* 0.137** 0.115*
(0.059) (0.104) (0.122) (0.102)
Index of family affection 0.240*** 0.230*** 0.145***
(0.246) (0.233) (0.147)
Index of family conict 0.234*** 0.306*** 0.231***
(0.198) (0.260) (196)
Female 0.090* 0.089* 0.089*
(0.081) (0.080) (0.080)
6064 years oldb 0.106 0.132** 0.113
(0.076) (0.094) (0.081)
75 or over years oldb 0.019 0.071 0.050
(0.018) (0.065) (0.046)
Enough income 0.139*** 0.101** 0.114**
(0.123) (0.089) (0.100)
Good healthc 0.458*** 0.506*** 0.465***
(0.417) (0.461) (0.424)
Regular healthc 0.170** 0.194** 0.164***
(0.153) (0.175) (0.147)
High self-efcacy 0.162*** 0.180*** 0.155***
(0.131) (0.146) (0.126)
Constant 0.879 1.141 0.935 0.814
R2 0.183 0.345 0.358 0.373
N 360 345 344 344
Standardized Beta in parenthesis
***Beta is signicant at 0.01 (bilateral); **Beta is signicant at 0.05 (bilateral); *Beta is signicant at 0.1 (bilateral)
a
Reference category: unipersonal household
b
Reference category: 6574 years old
c
Reference category: bad health
Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efcacy: The exercise of control.

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Happiness and Social Capital: Evidence
from Latin American Countries 9
n Morcillo and Rebeca de Juan Daz
Francisco Mocho
9.1 Introduction addition to GDP to explain subjective well-

being. In this sense, the role that social capital
The well-being of individuals is greatly plays in social relationships, especially in the
conditioned by their social context. In fact, medium and long term, has been emphasized
there is an important interaction between social (Bartolini 2011). The second is the emergence
context and the attitude of individuals within of a concept in the economics of happiness, rela-
their environment that has considerable bearing tional goods, which are directly linked to social
on the subjective satisfaction of people. The capital. The study of relational goods has
structure of social relationships can be developed highlighted the positive effects that social inter-
by factors as varied as marriage and family, action can generate in subjective well-being.
relationships with friends and neighbours, This chapter analyzes the role that social cap-
relationships at the workplace, or involvement ital plays in explaining the subjective well-being
in civic activities on an individual or collective of Latin American citizens during the period
level. The key lies in that this type of relationship 20002010. As part of this analysis, we consider
fosters integrity and trust in others and both a novel, multi-dimensional denition of social
appear to be closely linked to happiness. capital which enables us to identify it with social
The effect of social capital on subjective well- relationships (social networks), trust in other
being has been extensively studied in the litera- people and in institutions (social trust) and
ture on the economics of happiness. However, social norms. This expanded denition of social
there are two facts that highlight the role that capital was rst used by Grootaert and Van
social capital plays as an explanatory factor in Bastelaer (2001), Van Oorschot and Arts
subjective well-being. The rst is the updating of (2004), and Quillian (2006). Social capital under-
the Easterlin Paradox, synthesized in the research stood in this way is a broad concept that includes
by Stevenson and Wolfers (2008), Inglehart measures as disparate as those that make refer-
(2009), Sacks et al. (2010), Easterlin and ence to the degree of integration of individuals in
Angelescu (2009), and Easterlin et al. (2010). different social networks, those that demonstrate
This updating encourages the researcher to con- trust in people in general or trust in institutions
sider some other variable like social capital in and those that reect the degree of conformity
with social norms and the commitment and civic
F. Mochon Morcillo (*) R. de Juan Daz participation of individuals. These ties that
Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia, individuals establish make up part of their stock
Madrid, Spain of social capital from which future returns will be
e-mail: fmochon@cee.uned.es; redjuan@cee.uned.es

144 n Morcillo and R. de Juan Daz
F. Mocho
gained. Social relationships are a gooda rela- Latin American countries increased greatly, sub-
tional goodthat individuals have and which jective well-being was practically level (De Juan
enables them to improve their well-being. and Mochon 2012). This is one of the reasons
There is ample evidence which indicates that why we focus on the study of social capital as an
social interaction is an important source of hap- explanatory factor, in the medium-term evolu-
piness (Coleman 1988; Portes 1998; Narayan tion of the subjective well-being of Latin
1999; Putman 2000; Woolcock and Narayan Americans.
2000; Helliwell 2001, 2006; Bjrnskov 2003; This study has found evidence that the three
Helliwell and Putman 2004; Bjrnskov dimensions that dene social capital used in this
et al. 2006; Borooah 2006; Hudson 2006 ; paper (social networks, social trust and social
Bjrnskov 2008; Winkelmann 2009; Ahn and norms) are important determinants for the life
Moch on 2010; Ram 2010 ; Klein 2011 among satisfaction of individuals in Latin America.
others). In these articles, social capital is nor- Our ndings suggest that social relations within
mally measured by levels of general and institu- and between friends and families and participa-
tional trust, civic participation and perceived tion in voluntary organizations increase the hap-
corruption, and indicators of sociability. The piness of individuals. Individuals who generally
expanded denition of social capital mentioned trust more in others tend to be more satised with
above has been used in Portela and Neira (2012), life than average and those individuals who
to analyze the determinants of happiness in Spain behave dishonestly are less happy than average.
for the year 2008. Regarding social norms, those individuals who
The evidence provided in this article aims to follow social norms, are aware of their
complement the few Latin American empirical obligations and engaged in favor of a community
studies that include some variable of social capi- are more satised with life. Those citizens who
tal as an explanatory factor of happiness. The perform actions that have negative connotations
most noteworthy of these are the following: for society, such as drug trafcking and crime,
Graham and Felton (2006), Rojas (2006), Lora are less happy.
(2008), Ateca-Amestoy et al. (2011), Corral The rest of the paper is organized as follows.
(2011), and Switek (2012). In these articles, Section 9.2 presents a brief background about the
social inuences are not their main focus, with relationship between social capital and life satis-
the exception of the study by Ateca-Amestoy. faction or subjective well-being. Section 9.3 sets
These researchers examine the effect of out the empirical model and the hypotheses to
comparisons and social capital on subjective test. The data and the variables used in this paper
well-being in Latin American countries for the are described in Sect. 9.4. Section 9.5 presents
year 2007, though they use a relatively restrictive the empirical results and in Sect. 9.6 some con-
denition of social capital. In fact, only two types cluding remarks are made.
of social capital are examined (bonding and
bridging capital). Bonding capital is measured
by relationships between friends and bridging 9.2 Background
capital by the active participation of individuals
in politics, religion, sport and leisure associations The appearance of social capital in the context of
and labor and professional organizations. This happiness economics is something relatively
information comprises one of the three new. However, the reality is that an accurate
dimensions of social capital (specically, social denition of this concept already existed at the
networks) used in this research paper. Another beginning of the twentieth century. It took into
signicant difference lies in the period of study. account the things that matter most in the daily
This article was written with an eye on the lives of most people, like good will, companion-
medium term (20002010), a period which ship, kindness and social relationships between
shows that although the per capita income of individuals and families that compose a social
9 Happiness and Social Capital: Evidence from Latin American Countries 145
unit (Hanifan 1916; Woolcock and Narayan Empirical evidence tells us that social
2000). interactions are an important source of happiness
In this article, we use a broad vision of social (Helliwell 2001, 2006; Helliwell and Putman
capital which allows us to identify it with social 2004). The effect of social interactions may
relationships, trust and social norms (OCDE result from the existence of relational goods.
2001, p. 41), Putman (2000). Specically, we Relational goods emanate from social
use the denition of social capital created by interactions, which are sustained in the develop-
Van Oorschot and Arts (2004). These authors ment of social capital, as they help to generate
point out that the empirical indicators of social trust in society. This type of good includes infor-
capital can be grouped into three broad mal activities like gatherings with family, friends
categories: social networks- relations within and or colleagues and more formal activities such as
between families and friends (informal sociabil- voluntary participation in cultural, political,
ity); involvement in community and organization civic, athletic or religious organizations (Ateca-
life (e.g., volunteering); public engagement (e.g., Amestoy et al. 2011).
voting); social normsshared civic values, In this conceptual framework, it is seen that
norms and habits of cooperation; and social individual subjective well-being is inuenced by
trust- generalized trust in social institutions and social forces as a consequence of the comparison
in other people (e.g., Putnam 2000; Narayan and effect and the social capital effect. From the
Cassidy 2001; OECD 2001; Rothstein 2001). A perspective of the comparison effect, some
similar denition was used previously by articles have found that the income, spending,
Grootaert and Van Bastelaer (2001) and later by salaries or wealth of other people has a negative
Quillian (2006). effect on the subjective well-being of individuals
Social capital viewed as such facilitates (Graham and Felton 2005, 2006; Clark
activities that are done cooperatively both within et al. 2008; Bookwalter and Dalenberg 2010;
and between social groups (bonding social capi- Tao and Chiou 2009). This negative inuence is
tal and bridging social capital, respectively). associated with feelings of envy. However, there
Social networks, norms and trust diminish the have also been ndings that show that the situa-
costs of confronting uncertainty and improve tion in terms of income, spending or wealth of
trust thanks to coordinated actions, forming a acquaintances can have a positive effect on the
virtuous circle. These actions are easy to develop subjective well-being of individuals (Senik 2004,
and maintain when the parties are close and share 2008; Kingdon and Knight 2007). This relation-
the same norms and institutions. ship is justied by pointing out that the situation
We focus our research about how individuals of the reference groups has an information effect
life satisfaction is inuenced by social capital. In or a signal effect on the future of the individual.
what follows, we briey describe an overview of The achievements of others produce a positive
some contributions that explore this relationship. impact on the subjective well-being of
The effect of social capital on subjective well- individuals as in some sense it is believed that
being has been studied extensively in the litera- they are an indication of ones own future.
ture on happiness economics. Studying the rela- The positive effect of social relationships
tionship between social capital and the level of becomes even more evident upon analysing the
social well-being can be justied by: (i) the inad- social capital effect. The impact of social
equacy of per capita income for explaining interactions on subjective well-being has been
differences in subjective well-being, as has been demonstrated on observing that individuals who
shown again with the updating of the Easterlin have active social relationships tend to be more
Paradox (Easterlin and Angelescu 2009; satised with their lives. Social relationships and
Easterlin et al. 2010; Bartolini 2011; De Juan networks, with their norms of reciprocity and
and Moch on 2012) the growing importance of trust, have a powerful effect on social well-
relational goods. being and the efciency with which a society
F. Mocho
functions (Inglehart 1999; Helliwell and Putman improve their well-being was already pointed out
2004). These effects are considered a kind of by Putman in 1995. The importance of
social capital (Coleman 1988; Portes 1998; generalized trust and civic participation has
Narayan 1999; Putman 2000; Woolcock and been amply contrasted in Bjrnskov (2003),
Narayan 2000) or proof of the existence of rela- Borooah (2006), Bjrnskov et al. (2006),
tional goods (Gui and Sugden 2005; Bechetti Bjrnskov (2008), and Ram (2010). The rele-
et al. 2008; Bruni and Stanca 2008). The main vance of trust, as an indicator of social cohesion
point is that they have a positive effect on sub- in various institutions, has also been contrasted
jective well-being and efciency. by Hudson (2006), and Ahn and Mochon (2010).
When we speak of relational goods, we are The relevance of political, social and cultural
referring to phenomena like companionship, participation has been highlighted in Wilkemann
emotional support, social approval, solidarity, (2009), and Klein (2011).
the feeling of belonging to something, the need By way of summary, it can be afrmed that
to feel loved and recognized by others (Bechetti the ties that individuals construct form part of
et al. 2008). In the generation of these goods, their stock of social capital from which future
relationships with family and friends play a returns will be obtained. Social relationships are
very important role. The positive effects a gooda relational goodthat individuals have
generated by relational goods can be used by and which allows them to improve their well-
individuals and are fundamentally based on being. Mutual trust, trust in institutions, informa-
three elements: mutual trust, information and tion that social networks transmit, norms and
effective norms and sanctions. Trust can be common patterns of behaviour are important
understood as the expectations that one has factors for individuals and for society as a
about the behaviour of other agents. This trust whole. They contribute to reducing uncertainty
is normally the product of repeated personal and increasing efciency and have a positive
interaction or of general knowledge that one has effect on well-being. The information that
of individuals. Information can be considered circulates in networks and the trust that spreads
one of the most important consequences that provide a basis for making decisions and taking
social relationships have, as it facilitates action. action. In this sense, the goal of this article is to
Norms, when they exist and are effective, aid in quantify the impact of these variables in the
looking out for the collective interest instead of subjective well-being of Latin Americans during
individual ones. The ability to design rules that the period 20002010.
generate stable mechanisms of mutual aid and
clear and effective sanctions, facilitates group
action and reduces the possibility of the free
rider. For these reasons, social interactions can 9.3 Empirical Model
be considered an asset, that is, a relational good
of great value for the subjective well-being of As pointed out in the background, in the recent
individuals. literature on social capital, there is a consensus
The suitability of using a group of indicators that it is a multidimensionality phenomenon. In
that reect the three aforementioned dimensions particular, the empirical indicators of social cap-
of social capital (social networks, trust and fol- ital can be grouped into three categories: Social
lowing social norms) to try to capture the impact Networks, Social Trust and Social Norms (see
of social capital on subjective well-being is Van Oorschot and Arts 2004). In this paper, we
something that emerges from the explanations will use this denition of social capital to exam-
in previous paragraphs (Leung et al. 2011; ine the effect of social capital on the life satisfac-
Portela and Neira 2012). The determining role tion or happiness of Latin American citizens.
of social networks at the individual and/or social Based on this denition of social capital, we
level as an instrument that individuals can use to assume that standard life satisfaction of
individual i (LSi) is a function that can be written dishonest behaviors tend to be less happy (Ahn
as follows: and Mochon 2010).
Relying on the majority of the previous litera-
LSi LSSCi SNwi, ST i , SNr i , Xi 9:1 ture, we expect a positive effect of generalized
where SCi(.) represents the Social Capital of trust in social institutions and in other people on
individual i, which can be expressed as a function life satisfaction, whilst we expect a negative
of three categories: Social Networks of individual relationship between dishonest behavior and
i (SNwi), Social Trust of individual i (STi) and happiness.
Social Norms of individual i (SNri). Xi describes
the individuals socio-economic and demo-
graphic characteristics and the variables used 9.3.3 Social Norms Hypothesis
to measure these characteristics have been previ-
ously identied in the literature.1 This hypothesis relies on the particular attitudi-
The hypotheses to be tested are the following: nal or behavioral characteristics of people them-
selves. There is evidence that individuals who
meet social norms and perform actions on behalf
of the community are more satised with their
9.3.1 Social Networks Hypothesis
lives (Liu and Aaker 2008; Aaker and Akutsu
2009; Dunn and Norton 2013). Social capital
The economic and sociological evidence shows
facilitates cooperation between two parties and
that individuals who have a life of active social
refers to the collective value of social networks.
relationships (relations within and between
In any case, social capital does not have to pro-
friends and families, participation in voluntary
duce good things. Sometimes, social capital can
organizations, etc.) tend to be satised with
have negative connotations, as in the case of the
their life. As noted in the paper by Ateca-
maa. Therefore, we will also contrast the effect
Amestoy et al. (2014), social interactions gener-
on the happiness of individuals that take actions
ate relational goods and produce powerful posi-
that are detrimental to society and morality. We
tive inuences on individuals subjective well-
expect a positive relation between meeting social
being. Thus, we expect a positive effect between
norms and life satisfaction, whilst we expect to
social networks and happiness.
nd a negative effect of doing actions detrimen-
tal to society and happiness.
From Eq. 9.1 we formalize these three
9.3.2 Social Trust Hypothesis hypotheses in an empirical model. We assume
that each individual evaluates his satisfaction
Empirical evidence outlined in the previous sec- with life, LSi. We model the life satisfaction of
tion shows that individuals with interpersonal individual i (LSi) as the result of a transformation
trust and trust in institutions tend to be more of a latent variable measure on a 4-point scale.
satised with their lives. However, there is
some evidence that indicates that interpersonal LS*i Social Networksi
trust has no effect on the happiness of individuals Social Trusti
0
(Bjrnskow et al. 2006; Borooah 2006; Ram Social Normsi xi C
2010; Klein 2011). We also analyze the impact i 9:2
of dishonest behaviors on subjective well-being.
The evidence indicates that people who accept LSi k , k1 LS*i < k k 0, ::, 3
Where LSi* denotes latent life satisfaction,

1
See, among others, Argyle (1999); Helliwell and Putnam Social Networksi includes the social networks
(2004); Senik (2004); Seligman (2005); Ahn et al. (2012). variables, Social Trusti includes the social trust
F. Mocho
variables, and Social Normsi includes the social wide sample with the weights3 assigned in the
norms variables.xi represents the vector of whole dataset for each individual and country.
observed individual variables (socio-economic
and demographic variables), C counts for coun-
try xed effects, and K represents the thresholds
9.4.1 Life Satisfaction
increasing in k. , , , and are the parameters
to be estimated, and i is a normal distributed
The dependent variable is the degree of satisfac-
error-term. We estimate Eq. 3.2 using an ordered
tion that individuals have with their current life.
probit method.2
To measure it, we use the information that
The value and sign of the parameters , , and
derives from the following question: Could you
allow us to test the three hypotheses of social
please tell me on a scale from 0 to 10, where 0
capital and relational goods.
means you are very dissatised and 10 means
you are very satised, how satised you are
with the way your life has turned out so far?
9.4 Data With this information, we construct the depen-
dent variable which is dened in four categories,
The data source used in this paper is the very dissatised, dissatised, satised and
Latinobarometro (Latinobarometro Organiza- very satised. Graph 9.1 shows the percentage
tion) for the period 20002010. The of individuals in each Latin American country
Latinobarometro survey has been conducted on that are satised or very satised with their life
a yearly basis since 1995 in 18 Latin American during the period 20002010. In 9 of the
and Caribbean countries for the purpose of 18 countries, more than 69 % of the population
investigating the opinions of the Latin American is satised or very satised with their current life.
population regarding the political and socio- People are less satised with life in Peru, Bolivia
economic situation. The data processing is rela- and Ecuador. In these countries, less than 54 % of
tively complex because some questions and cod- individuals are satised or very satised with
ing remained unaltered in the years under study. life.
Also during the period, other countries to con- Graph 9.2 shows the evolution of the average
duct surveys in have been added, like the Domin- level of satisfaction with life and the GDP per
ican Republic in 2004. capita of Latin American countries for the period
The total sample consists of 209,292 20002010. The comparison between the two
individuals, with approximately 1,0001,200 variables reveals different behavior. The GDP
interviews for each country per year. The per capita of the zone has increased signicantly
18 countries considered are Argentina, Bolivia, (from $4,000 US in the year 2000 up to nearly
Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Ecuador, El $9,000 US dollars in 2010), while subjective
Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, well-being shows a virtually at evolution,
Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Domin-
ican Republic, Uruguay and Venezuela. The dis-
3
tribution of the sample per country during the In the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala,
Honduras and Nicaragua, the sample is weighted with
period is shown in Table 9.5 in the appendix. respect to stratum; in Chile it is weighted with respect to
The entire sample is treated as a large region- age, sex, educational level and geographical area; in
Argentina with respect to sex and age; in Colombia with
respect to age, sex, educational level and size of habitat;
in Paraguay with respect to type of area, and in
Venezuela, it is weighted with respect to sex and educa-
tional level. In Bolivia, Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador,
2
For a detailed description of the model, see, among Mexico, Panama, Peru, and Uruguay, the sample is not
others, Chapter 15 of Econometric Analysis of Cross weighted. More details are also provided by the Method-
Section and Panel Data by Wooldridge (2002). ology Report (Latinobarometro 20002010).
Costa Rica 81.81

Venezuela 79.22
Panama 77.4
Colombia 74.62
Guatemala 73.87
Brasil 73.71
Mexico 72.71
Uruguay 69.95
Dominican Republic 69.01
Paraguay 68.22
Argentina 68.14
Honduras 68.01
Chile 65.55
El Salvador 63.94
Nicaragua 62.73
Ecuador 53.6
Bolivia 48.95
Peru 44.66
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Graph 9.1 The percentage of the Latin American population that is satised or very satised with life over the period
20002010
Latin America Countries

9000 3
8000 2.5
7000
2
6000
1.5
5000
1
4000
3000 0.5
2000 0
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
GDP per capita Life satisfaction
Graph 9.2 Evolution of the average satisfaction level current life takes on value 0 if very dissatised and 3 if
with life and GDP per capita of Latin American countries very satised. GDP per capita is measured in US$ to
(Period 20002010). Note: The satisfaction level with current prices (see The World Bank: Open Data)
increasing from 1.28 in the year 2000 to 1.86 in on the differences in GDP per capita. This is
2010. This brief descriptive analysis shows that consistent with the conclusions reached in the
the explanation for the differences in the happi- articles by Easterlin and Angelescu (2009),
ness of Latin American countries does not hinge Easterlin et al. (2010), and Bartolini (2011).
F. Mocho
As has been pointed out in the literature, we Table 9.1 The first principal component of social net-
distinguish three main dimensions of social capi- work items
tal: Social Networks, Social Trust and Social Social
Norms. The Latinobarometro data offer informa- networks
tion that allows the elaboration of several Informal sociability with friends and 0.255
family
indicators for each dimension. One of the
Virtual network
problems we have faced is that some questions Internet 0.683
regarding the indicators that measure social cap- Email with friends and family 0.685
ital have varied from year to year. What is more, Eigen value 1.7
in other years these questions were dropped from Total explained variance 56 %
the questionnaire. Therefore, we only use the
questions that are repeated several years in
order to have enough observations. individuals report hearing of political issues
from family and friends.
To measure the relationship between friends
9.4.2 Social Networks through new technologies (virtual networks), we
used two survey questions that provide informa-
The networks dimension of social capital can be tion on whether people use internet every day
measured by different scales referring to infor- and whether they communicate by e-mail with
mal sociability with friends and family, virtual friends and families. In our sample, 49 % of the
networks to socialize with friends and family and individuals use the internet every day and 18 %
participation in voluntary organizations. The communicate with friends and families by
Latinobarometro survey contains several e-mail.
questions that can be used for measuring partici- Given the variety of information related to
pation in voluntary organizations, like political sociability, it is helpful to elaborate an index
parties, church or other religious organizations, that allows one to aggregate the information
sports, leisure or cultural groups, etc. However, and facilitates the analysis. In this sense, we
this information is only available for a 4-year dene the Social Networks variable as and
period. Thus, we could not use such information index which is a linear index constructed with
because of the small number of observations individuals answers about informal and virtual
available. network sociability mentioned above (see
To analyze this dimension, we build an index Cordova 2009).4 This index allows us to capture
of social networks, using the questions that refer the effect of Social Networks on life satisfaction.
to informal sociability with friends and family Table 9.1 summarizes the rst principal compo-
and the use of new technologies for socializing nent used to derive the weights of the index.
with friends and family. The survey contains
several questions that allow us to measure socia-
bility. We dene informal sociability with 9.4.3 Social Trust
friends and family by using the information
about individuals who are asked if their friends The trust dimensions can be measured by three
or their family inform them about politics. We scales, which refer to interpersonal trust, trust in
would like to have data about the frequency of institutions and whether people are dishonest.
contacts with friends and family or about how
important they regard relations with friends and
family, but this information is not available for 4
We use the method of Principal Components Analysis
the period, only for 2 years. For this reason, we (PCA) to calculate the index. The rst principal compo-
use the denition mentioned above as a proxy for nent is used to derive the weights. This methodology has
informal sociability. On average, 54 % of the been used in the paper by Ateca-Amestoy et al. (2011) to
calculate the Social Capital Bridging Index.
90
80
70
Police
60
Press
50 Parliament
40 Justice system
Political parties
30
Church
20 Life satisfaction
10
0
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
Graph 9.3 The proportion of Latin American people who trust institutions and life satisfaction during the period
20002010
To measure Interpersonal trust, we use the nine countries that are among the most satised
information obtained from the following ques- with life are the ones which are most trustings of
tion: Generally speaking, would you say that their institutions. Likewise, the countries with the
you can trust most people, or that you can lowest level of satisfaction (Peru, Bolivia and
never be too careful when dealing with others? Ecuador) also have the lowest levels of trust in
This variable takes the value 1 if you can trust institutions. In particular, Peru and Ecuador have
most people and 0 otherwise. On average, 19 % the lowest levels of trust in institutions such as
of the individuals in the sample note that they can parliament, political parties, and the justice sys-
trust most people. Uruguay is the country with tem (below 16 %). We also draw attention to the
the highest percentage of individuals who trust case of Chile. This country is among the group
people (30.4 %), while in Brazil only 5.6 % of the with the highest level of trust in public
population trust most people. These trust levels institutions and companies but its level of happi-
are maintained over time in each of the countries. ness is not among the highest.
With this variable we can measure whether peo- Graph 9.3 shows the proportion of Latin
ple with a high degree of interpersonal trust have American people who trust institutions during
a high degree of life satisfaction or not. the period 20002010. We observe that trust
Institutional trust is the second dimension of levels decrease when there is a decline of GDP
social trust. The Latinobarometro survey in most Latin American countries. This is, in
contains several questions regarding condence 20022003 and in the year after the onset of the
in a great number of institutions. We select the global nancial crisis (2008). The prole
following institutions: parliament, political observed for each country matches the prole
parties, the justice system, the police, the church, of the average level of satisfaction with life in
the press and private companies. On average, these countries with the exception of 2003. In
29.5 % of the individuals trust in parliament, this year, the average level of life satisfaction
19.7 % in political parties, 30.8 % in the justice grows considerably (16.8 %).
system, 35.6 % in the police, 71.1 % in the Using individuals answer related to institu-
church, 46.9 % in the press and 38.66 % in tional trust, we construct the Institutional trust
private companies. When the analysis is done index. This index allows us to summarize the
by countries, it is interesting to note that the information about trust in different institutions
F. Mocho
Table 9.2 The first principal component of institutional The methodology for both indices is the same
trust items as the one used to construct the Social Networks
Institutional trust index and the Institutional trust index. The
Condence, parliament 0.446 Latinobarometro contains several questions that
Condence, political parties 0.415 allow us to know whether individuals engage in
Condence, justice system 0.444 civic behavior. To construct the civic commit-
Condence, police 0.395 ment index, we have chosen seven questions:
Condence, church 0.208
are citizens law-abiding, are citizens demanding
Condence, press 0.313
of their rights, are citizens conscious of their
Condence, private companies 0.366
Eigen value 2.9
obligations and duties, do citizens have equal
Total explained variance 42 % treatment before the law, have individuals ever
contacted a government employee or the media
and have they taken part in authorized
demonstrations. On average, 24 % of the
into a single item. We use the method of Princi- individuals say they are law-abiding, 54 % are
pal Components Analysis (PCA) to calculate the demanding of their rights, 36 % are aware of
index and the results are summarized in their obligations and duties, 34 % believe that
Table 9.2. everyone has equal treatment before the law,
As we pointed out, the possibility of dishonest 22 % have at some time contacted a government
behavior is the third scale of trust that we ana- employee and 21 % the media, and 40 % have
lyze. To measure dishonesty, we use the infor- taken part in authorized demonstrations. Using
mation given in the following question: Could the answers to these seven questions, we con-
you please tell me if you have recently heard struct Civic Commitment index. This index
about someone; (i) pretending to be ill in order allows us to summarize the information about
not to go to work; (ii) managing to avoid paying civic commitment into a single item. Table 9.3,
taxes; (iii) enjoying a benet he/she was not column 1 summarizes the rst principal compo-
entitled to. Using the answers, we dene the nent used to derive the weights of the index.
dummy variable Dishonest, which is coded 1 if Trying to capture the effect of uncivic behav-
the individual knows someone who has engaged ior on social capital, we have constructed an
in some dishonest behavior. In our sample, 55 % index of uncivic commitment. We have consid-
of the individuals claim to know someone who ered three questions from the Latinobarometro.
has behaved dishonestly. These questions are as follows: (i) Have you, or
someone in your family, been assaulted,
attacked, or the victim of a crime in the last
12 months?; (ii) Have you, or someone in your
9.4.4 Social Norms
family, been aware of an act of corruption in the
last 12 months?; (iii) Have you, or someone in
This dimension of social capital refers to partic-
your family, known somebody who has sold
ular attitudinal or behavioral characteristics of
drugs in the last 12 months?; The results
people themselves. We analyze two aspects
obtained from these questions can be
within social norms: civics and uncivil behavior
summarized as follows. 38 % of the individuals
of individuals. To do this, we construct two
report that he/she or someone in his/her family
indices. The rst one measures the civic behavior
has been assaulted, attacked or the victim of a
of individuals, that is, whether individuals follow
crime in the last 12 months, 20 % of the citizens
social norms, if they perform actions on behalf of
say that he/she or someone in his/her family have
a community. The second index measures uncivil
been aware of an act of corruption in the last year
behavior, actions that are detrimental to society
and 15 % of the individuals indicate they know
and morality.
someone dedicated to drug trafcking. Using the
Table 9.3 The first principal component of social norms items

Civil commitment Uncivil commitment
Law-abiding 0.474
Demanding of their rights 0.403
Conscious of their obligations and duties 0.517
Have equal treatment before the law 0.506
Have contacted a government employee 0.203
Have contacted the media 0.191
Assaulted, attacked, victim of a crime 0.477
Act of corruption 0.635
Drug trafcking 0.607
Eigen value 1.9 1.6
Total explained variance 30 % 52 %
answers to these three questions, we calculated Inactive dummy takes the value 1 when the indi-
the index of Uncivil Commitment. Table 9.3, col- vidual reports being a housekeeper. The refer-
umn 2 summarizes the rst principal component ence variable is whether the individual is
used to derive the weights of the index. working in a paid job (Working). In the sample,
6 % of the individuals are unemployed, 7 % are
retired, 7 % are students and 23 % are inactive in
the labor force.
9.4.5 Variables Related to Socio-
We dene the Educational level as a qualita-
economic and Demographic
tive variable with seven categories: Illiterate,
Characteristics
Primary incomplete, Primary, Secondary
incomplete, Secondary, University incom-
The set of socio-economic and demographic
plete and University. In our sample, 9 % of
characteristics contains the following variables:
the individuals are illiterate, 19 % have not
Female, which is coded 1 if the individual is
completed primary school, 17 % have completed
female and 0 otherwise. On average, 51 % of
primary school, 18 % have not completed sec-
the individuals are female. Age measures the
ondary education, 20 % have completed second-
age of the individuals of the sample. In order to
ary school and 8 % have university studies.
test nonlinearity between happiness and age, we
Economic level is measured by the variable
also introduce the variable age squared (Age2).
Economic. Economic measures the socioeco-
The average age in the sample is 39 years. Mari-
nomic status of the individual and it takes four
tal status is measured by three dummies
values: Low, About average, High, Very
indicating whether the individual has never
high. In the sample, 7 % of the individuals
married (Single), is divorced or widowed
have a low income, 32 % have an income that
(Divorced-Widowed). The reference variable is
is about average, 42 % have a high level of
whether the individual is married. On average,
income and 15 % have a very high level of
31 % of the individuals are single, and 11 % of
income.
the individuals are divorced or widowed.
The attitude towards religion (believer,
We dene three dummies to control for
practicing, reference variable: non-believer) is
individuals labor market status. The variable
measured by the variable Religious, which takes
Unemployed takes the value 1 if the individual
four categories: Non-practicing, Low
is unemployed. The dummy Retired is coded 1 if
practicing, Practicing, and Very practicing.
the individual is retired. The Studying dummy is
In our sample, 11 % of the individuals are
equal to 1 if the individual is a student. The
F. Mocho
non-practicing, 40 % are low practicing, 36 % The ndings of this research are consistent
are practicing and 13 % are very practicing. with an Aristotelian perspective of man, in that
To measure the relationship between ones he is a social being, which is why happiness has a
current situation and happiness, we introduce relational dimension; that is, it also depends on
the variable Present. The Present variable is non-instrumental social relationships or rela-
represented by the response to the question tional goods. In other words, happiness depends
How have things gone with you during the pres- on a series of non-economic variables as it is a
ent year? The possible responses are very bad, phenomenon of a social nature.
bad, so-so, good and very good. Because
of the small number of observations in the
categories bad and very bad, we combined
9.5.1 Social Capital Variables
the two into one category. In our data, 5 % of
the individuals feel that things have gone very
The results obtained are in general consistent
badly in the present year, 17 % feel that things
with the hypothesis formulated in relation to the
have gone badly in the current year, 55 % feel
three dimensions of social capital. In terms of the
that the things have gone so-so and 23 % feel that
Social Networks Hypothesis, our results show
things have gone well or very well.
that relations within and between friends and
To measure the effect of the inuence of past
families and participation in voluntary
experience on happiness, we include a variable
organizations increase the happiness of
that measures whether the individuals economic
individuals. In line with previous studies, the
situation has progressed or worsened with
results from Latin American countries suggest
respect to the previous year (Economic prog-
that social networks are strong correlates of life
ress). In our sample, 23 % of Latin American
satisfaction (Helliwell and Putman 2004; Ateca-
people feel that their economic situation has
Amestoy et al. 2011). The positive effect of the
worsened with respect to the previous year,
coefcient can be justied by arguing that social
while 34 % feel that their economic situation
networks diminish the costs of confronting
has progressed.
uncertainty. In fact, information is usually con-
Finally, to capture the country effect, we con-
sidered to be one of the most important
struct a set of country dummies (Argentina omit-
consequences that social relationships have, as
ted from category). These variables allow us to
it facilitates action.
take into account how others factors that are not
There are three main results regarding the
measured but are related to the different
Social Trust Hypothesis tested in Eq. 9.2. Firstly,
countries impact the degree of life satisfaction.
the variable measuring whether individuals
Table 9.6 in the appendix summarizes the
believe they can trust others appears positively
variables and gives some statistics.
related to happiness. Individuals who are gener-
ally more condent tend to be more satised with
life, as we expected. Secondly, the coefcient of
9.5 Empirical Results Institutional trust is positive. Therefore, those
individuals who trust in the institutions of their
To assess the empirical validity of the multidi- country tend to be happier. Moreover, the proba-
mensional measurement of social capital on life bility of being very happy when individuals trust
satisfaction, we estimate Eq. 9.2 by using the in institutions increases by 1 percentage point.
ordered probit method as indicated above. Thirdly, the effect of the variable Dishonest on
Table 9.4 reports the results of this regression. life satisfaction is negative, as expected. Those
The coefcients for the majority of the variables individuals who behave dishonestly are less
are signicant and show plausible signs. happy. Specically, among those individuals
Table 9.4 Effect of the multidimensionality of social capital on life satisfaction ordered probit regression
Marginal effects
Explanatory variables Coefcients z Prob (LS3)
Multidimensionality of social capital
Social trust
Interpersonal trust 0.030 1.28 0.011
Institutional trust 0.029 5.10 0.010
Dishonest 0.062 3.18 0.021
Social norms
Civil commitment 0.030 3.69 0.010
Uncivil commitment 0.033 4.13 0.011
Social networks
Social networks 0.017 2.11 0.006
Social economic and demographic variables Yes
Country dummies Yes
N of observations 14,255
Pseudo R2 0.09
Note: The dependent variable being the satisfaction level with current life, which takes on value 0 if very dissatised
and 3 if very satised
Prob(LS3) Probability of being very satised with life
that are less honest, the probability of being very mutual aid, having a positive effect on the sub-
satised with life decreases 2.1 percentage jective well-being of individuals. The coefcient
points. of the Civic Commitment index conrms that
These results allow us to say that the dimen- those individuals who meet social norms, are
sion of trust in social capital is an important aware of their obligations and engaged in favor
determinant of happiness. Trust, understood as of a community are more satised with life. This
the expectations one has about the behavior of result is in line with Leung et al. (2011).
other agents, is normally the product of repeated In analyzing the uncivil behavior measures by
personal interaction or of the general knowledge Uncivil Commitment, we see that the result is
one has about individuals and the positive effect consistent with what we expected. Those
it has on subjective well-being. These results individuals who perform actions that have nega-
reinforce the point made in the literature on this tive connotations for society, such as drug traf-
topic in the sense that people who trust in their cking and crime, are less happy. The probability
institutions are on average happier (Bjrnskov of being very satised with life in individuals
2003, 2008; Borooah 2006; Bjrnskov who do not meet social norms decreases 1.1
et al. 2006; Hudson 2006; Ahn and Mochon percentages points.
2010; Ram 2010). The results of the estimation
are also consistent with the observed relation
between subjective well-being and the social
9.5.2 Demographic and Socio-
trust variables (Graph 9.3).
economic Variables
Our estimation results also conrm the Social
Norms Hypothesis. Keep in mind that norms,
Analyzing the effect on the happiness of a large
when effective, foster greater care for the collec-
number of demographic and social-economic
tive interest as opposed to individual interests
variables, we obtained the following (Table 9.7
and the development of stable mechanisms of
in the appendix):
F. Mocho
There are no appreciable differences due to are Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala,
gender on the subjective satisfaction of Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, the Dominican
women and Latin American men, as expected. Republic and Venezuela. Venezuela is the
The relationship between age and happiness is country that shows the greatest marginal
U-Shaped with a minimum at the age of 49. This effect, 0.42. In the second group, there are
is consistent with ndings in others studies six countries where the probability of being
(Argyle 1999; Helliwell and Putnam 2004; very satised with life increases from 12 to
Senik 2004; Ateca-Amestoy et al. 2011; Ahn 20 percentage points compared to Bolivia.
et al. 2012). These countries are Argentina, Chile, El
The situations of divorce, widowhood and Salvador, Honduras, Paraguay and Uruguay.
being single are negatively related to happi- In the third group are the countries whose
ness, as we expected. probability of being happy increases from
Education appears positively correlated with only 1 to 8 percentage points compared to
happiness. This result is in line with generally Bolivia. These countries are Brazil, Ecuador
established in the literature (Seligman 2005; and Peru.
Graham and Felton 2006).
The impact of employment status on happi- The results of the estimation of the impact of
ness is as we expected: those employed are the demographic and socio-economic variables
clearly happier than the unemployed. There is on subjective well-being are shown in Table 9.7.
a negative signicant effect between an unem- As a general rule, the coefcients obtained are
ployed person and happiness. These results consistent with those found in the extensive liter-
are consistent with the importance of social ature on happiness. As remarked above, these
networks that are created in the workplace. results, besides being interesting themselves,
The satisfaction of individuals appears to be provide a measure of condence about the reli-
positively correlated with income level. ability and validity of the data used and encour-
The relationship between religious belief and age us to explore the main purpose of this study,
happiness also ts evidence in the literature, i.e., the inuence of social capital on individuals
showing a positive relationship. happiness.
An Individuals current situation and happi-
ness appears to be strongly correlated in the
sense that those that have a positive response 9.6 Conclusions
present a high level of satisfaction with their
current life, as we expected. The results show This article aims to examine the role that social
that past experience has the expected effect. capital plays in explaining the subjective well-
Those who have improved economically feel being of Latin American citizens during the
happier that those whose economic situation period 20002010. In light of the results obtained
has worsened compared to the previous year. in this research, it can be afrmed that the happi-
The country dummies conrm the statement in ness of Latin Americans can be explained by a
the descriptive analysis in the Data section. diverse series of variables, and that an approach
There are three clearly dened groups of which considers only economic variables is lim-
countries according to the level of life satis- ited. Most important among this diverse group of
faction. In the rst group, there are eight variables are those of a socio-relational nature.
countries whose probability of being happy In accordance with the ndings, the different
increases considerably (between 21 and variables that compose a broad denition of
40 percentage points) compared to Bolivia social capital play an important role in
(the country of reference). These countries explaining the happiness of Latin Americans. In
terms of the Social Networks Hypothesis, our performed in this article shows the limitations of
results show that relationships within and the traditional focus of economics, which centers
between friends and families and participation on the existence of a separate individual agent and
in voluntary organizations increase the happiness considers the social or relational dimension of
of individuals. In line with previous studies, the individuals to be something extrinsic or accidental.
results from Latin American countries suggest The results also show that man is essentially a
that social networks are strong correlates of life social being, which is why happiness has a rela-
satisfaction. tional dimension. As such, they encourage us to
With regard to the Social Trust Hypothesis, take a more holistic approach to economic policy
we found that: (i) Individuals who are generally in its attempt to create happiness, as long as a
more condent tend to be more satised with reassessment of the latest policy goals can entail
life; (ii) those individuals who trust in the changing the direction as well as the instruments
institutions of their country tend to be happier; used. To this effect, it is important to remember
(iii) those individuals who behave dishonestly that one fundamental aspect of human beings is
are less happy. These results allow us to say their social or relational character, which is why
that the dimension of trust in social capital is an the happiness of individuals will depend to a
important determinant of happiness. These great extent on the quantity and quality of
results reinforce the point made in the literature established relationships with others.
on this topic in the sense that people who trust in
their institutions are on average happier.
In terms of Social Norm Hypothesis, the results
Appendix
show that those individuals who meet social
norms, are aware of their obligations and engaged
in favor of a community are more satised with Table 9.5 Distribution of the sample per country during
life, whilst those individuals who perform actions the period 20002010
that have negative connotations for society, such Countries N observations Percentages
as drug trafcking and crime, are less happy. Argentina 13,050 6.24
The ndings of this research are aligned with Bolivia 12,848 6.14
those that, categorized under the generic name of Brasil 12,478 5.96
paradox of happiness, highlight the need to Chile 13,049 6.23
analyze happiness and its determinants from a Colombia 10,867 5.19
broader perspective than usual and emphasize Costa Rica 13,003 6.21
the importance of individuals relational ties. Ecuador 13,050 6.24
These results differ from the non-existent rela- El Salvador 10,927 5.22
Guatemala 10,873 5.20
tionship between happiness and per capita
Honduras 10,881 5.20
income of Latin Americans during the period
Mexico 13,079 6.25
20002010, as well as from the fact that the Nicaragua 10,907 5.21
countries which are apparently happier are not Panama 10,905 5.21
those which have the highest levels of per capita Paraguay 10,056 4.80
income. However, it turns out that the so-called Peru 12,743 6.09
income-happiness duo, is the key relationship Uruguay 10,650 5.09
behind many economic policy proposals. These Venezuela 13,050 6.24
systematically resort to economic growth as the Dominican Republic 6,876 3.29
priority objective variable. Total 209,292 100.00
In verifying the relevance of social capital in
the happiness of Latin Americans, the analysis
F. Mocho
Table 9.6 Summary and statistics of the variables employed in regression

Explanatory variables Mean SD Min Max
Life satisfaction 1.89 0.88 0 3
Social economic and demographic variables
Woman (re: man) 0.51 0.50 0 1
Age 39.33 16.28 16 101
Marital status (re: married)
Single 0.31 0.46 0 1
Divorced/widowed 0.11 0.32 0 1
Working situation (re: working)
Retired 0.07 0.25 0 1
Unemployed 0.06 0.25 0 1
Studying 0.07 0.26 0 1
Inactive 0.23 0.42 0 1
Education 3.79 1.72 1 7
Income level 2.25 0.92 0 4
Religion 1.51 0.87 0 3
Present 1.98 0.82 0 4
Economic progress 2.10 0.95
Multidimensionality of social capital
Social trust
Interpersonal trust 0.19 0.39 0 1
Institutional trust 0.08 1.70 3.22 5.25
Dishonest 0.55 0.50 0 1
Social norms
Civil commitment 0.012 1.38 1.75 3.49
Uncivil commitment 0.038 1.24 1.27 2.39
Social networks
Social networks 0.005 1.35 1.27 2.40
Table 9.7 Determinants of life satisfaction in Latin American countries

Ordered probit
Marginal effects
Explanatory variables Coefcients z Prob(LS3)1
Social economic and demographic variables
Woman (re: man) 0.012 0.54 0.004
Age 0.0087 2.48 0.003
Age squared/100 0.00007 1.91 0.00003
Marital status (re: married)
Single 0.033 1.39 0.011
Divorced/widowed 0.161 4.89 0.052
Working situation (re: working)
Retired 0.008 0.17 0.003
Unemployed 0.169 4.42 0.055
Studying 0.035 0.84 0.012
Inactive 0.020 0.72 0.007
Education 0.022 3.16 0.008
(continued)
Ordered probit
Marginal effects
Explanatory variables Coefcients z Prob(LS3)1
Income level 0.086 7.25 0.029
Religion 0.066 5.81 0.023
Present 0.329 23.11 0.112
Economic progress 0.056 4.90 0.019
Social capital variables Yes
Country dummies Yes
N of observations 14,255
Pseudo R2 0.09
Notes: The dependent variable being the satisfaction level with current life, which takes on value 0 if very dissatised
and 3 if very satised
Prob(LS3) Probability of being very satised with life
Bjrnskov, C., Dreher, A., & Fischer, J. (2006). Cross-

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From the Individual to the Romantic
Relationship: In Search of Happiness 10
n and Rolando Daz Loving
Rozzana Sanchez Arago
10.1 Introduction plethora of similarities and differences that are

traceable to specic ecological niches, cultural
Happiness is considered an ancient aspiration of heritages, biological predispositions and per-
mankind. While there is no denition that sonal experiences which interact with each
satises everyone, its clearly a social desirable other to produce social behavior (Diaz and
state for all human beings. Tales de Mileto Draguns 1999). As a response to the state of
(624546 B.C.) offered one of the rst denitions knowledge, this chapter includes mainstream
of this concept, he was followed by Democritus concepts of psychological literature with the idi-
(460?370 BC), who made substantial osyncratic manifestation of the universal phe-
contributions regarding why happiness is central nomena derived from Mexican
to life itself, and Aristotle (384322 BC) who ethonopsychology.
said that happiness is the ultimate goal of
human beings, but not simply reduced to plea-
sure, honors or wealth, but as a way of life 10.2 Two Main Types of Happiness
subject to certain guiding values for each culture
(Silva Colmenares 2008). In spite of the central role and many discussions,
At the beginning of psychological inquiries, both philosophical and psychological, around it,
Wundt (1916) raised the need for a behaviorally the nature of happiness is still a mystery. But
objective and culturally sensitive science. The rather than reducing its scope to a manageable
goal of combining these two positions was to term, it becomes necessary to distinguish
create an objective, generalizable and culturally between its two main types which become the
sensitive discipline. Regardless of the theoretical mainstay of this chapter: a long term sentiment
and methodological paradigms advanced, it is reected on the well-being, prosperity, and per-
clear that human behavior includes processing, ceived success in life; and as a short-term emo-
codifying, interpreting, archiving and recovering tion evident in sporadic moments of enjoyment
verbal, physical and contextual cues. In addition, and satisfaction. As a feeling, happiness is the
human evolution is immersed in a processes of most universal positive emotion; it involves deep
socialization and enculturation that resulted in a and positive life evaluation as a whole, or at least
signicant aspect of life such as work and family.
R. Sanchez Aragon (*) R. Daz Loving As a transient emotion, happiness is a state of
Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Mexico
City, Mexico
short duration of pleasure or satisfaction that
e-mail: rozzara@unam.mx occurs as a result of a specic change (real or

164 n and R. Daz Loving
R. Sanchez Arago
imagined). In this facet, it involves the optimum 10.3 Definitions of Happiness

performance of the human being, not in its mini-
mum level as a simple sense of happy or relaxa- Having recognized that happiness includes a
tion in life, but at that point where satisfaction is brief thrill that can be based on a deeper senti-
achieved, and with it the desire for gratication is ment that is underneath and permeates the expe-
generated. This kind of happiness is related more rience of this construct, it is convenient to
with an occasional reaction in the foreground examine the ways in which the literature for
towards specic positive events, while happiness more than four decades happiness has been
as a sentiment represents a frame of reference dened showing both overlapping between the
that the individual generated based on his or her two orientations as well as attempts to delimit
evaluation of life (Ben 2000). one from the other. So happiness is understood in
The relationship between these two types of the following ways:
happiness is complex. There is no doubt that
happiness as a sentiment represents the founda- (a) It is a positive internal experience, which
tion on which spontaneous happiness as an emo- includes: a pleasant emotion, life satisfac-
tion is experienced. Thus, the everyday tion, the absence of negative emotions or
experiences of happiness, which are above the psychological stress (Andrews and Withey
base line, generate a sentiment of happiness, 1976), self-actualization and personal
those, which are below the base line, produce growth (Ryff 1989).
the sentiment of unhappiness, and those that (b) For Veenhoven (1991) it is the degree in
match the base line are perceived as neutral. which an individual favorably judges the
Accordingly, the subjective experience of happi- quality of their life, which in the long run
ness is recognized. In fact, each individual base- crystallizes in a stable point of view, so
line differs from that of others, and in happiness is seen as an attitude towards life.
consequence the same event can be associated (c) Anything positive and good in life, such as
with different emotions; in those people whose peace, longevity, prosperity, health, virtue,
baseline, living standards and expectations are a comfortable death, obtaining material
low, it is more likely that they can easily surpass wealth, physical health and a virtuous and
their threshold and thus be happy. However, the peaceful life, and relief of the anxiety of
baseline is not the only function of the universal facing death (Xinhua 1987; Lu and Shih
feeling of happiness, it also determines the nature 1997).
of the emotional sensitivity, i.e. the way in which (d) A State of mind based on pleasant
a person typically interprets specic events as sensations that modulates the reception and
being positive or negative, and thus gives way interpretation of the impulses received from
to the expression of individual differences. This the environment in a pleasant and positive
is why many people seem to be consistently way; the storage in memory and body
happy or unhappy in most circumstances, regard- receptors of such sensations in order to con-
less of the objective situation. Some people strue cognitive or rational nuance to happi-
appear happy in almost all scenarios except ness (Delgado 1999).
those of great misfortune so, despite their cur- (e) Argyle (2001) says that happiness is capable
rent situation, they are people who have a predis- of producing positive thoughts, as well as a
position to see the world in an optimistic way; the greater recall of happy events, greater crea-
same is true for those who are unhappy most of tivity in problem solving and a more posi-
the time since they are invaded by pessimism tive evaluation of things.
except in those cases and events of great happi- (f) Happiness is an affective state of satisfac-
ness in which they are forced to leave their tion experienced by the individual in pos-
gloomy psychological surroundings. session of a desired good (Alarcon 2006).
10 From the Individual to the Romantic Relationship: In Search of Happiness 165
(g) Happiness is equivalent to the term ow, that should be considered, and whose role dene
i.e. a state in which a person is completely the nuances of its experience, its intensity and
immersed in an activity that requires full construction. In the following sections we will
concentration, that offers is a unique and addressed: (a) aspects of the socio-cultural niche
total enjoyment since it does not require where the individual is born and grows; (b) traits
effort and feels easy due to its natural ow and abilities that develop from temperament, and
(Csikszentmihalyi 1997, 2009). which can be strengthened through learning (per-
(h) Positive psychological state characterized sonal resources); and (c) the ways in which people
by a high level of satisfaction with life, a cognitively processes or react to an event evoca-
high level of positive and a low level of tive of happiness (emotional regulation strategies).
negative affect (Carr 2007).
(i) A purely pleasant emotion that produces a
feeling of tranquility, optimism, exaltation 10.4 How Does Culture Impact Our
and fullness. Thoughts present in this stage Experience of Happiness?
start with positive emotions that linger onto
create permanent sentiments, thereby As we mentioned earlier, happiness is considered
facilitating ideas that range from being to be a universal experience since it is basically
lucky to being a happy person. In addi- evaluated in the same way across cultures, with a
tion, this emotions and thoughts are linked clear preference for pleasant stimuli over those
to the implementation of activities that who are not (Ryff and Keyes 1995). According to
enhance and facilitate the maintenance of Anguas Plata (2000) some cultures restrict the
energy such as sharing, singing, talking expression of intense emotions, while in others
and being a better person, etc. (Carrasco happiness and satisfaction are considered very
and Sanchez 2008a). important, and therefore, people think about
them more frequently. In contrast, there are
In essence, these conceptualizations of happi- some cultures where happiness is not a goal or
ness give way to two fundamental central value and consequently people give little
considerations. On the one hand, the emotion of thought to it. In this regard, Reidl and Hernandez
happiness involves an experience or positive (2008) indicate that culture penetrates deeply for
mental state of the individual which is derived almost all components of the emotions, not only
from stimulation that can be: (a) internal (e.g., in the cognitive and linguistic elements, but also
evaluation of the own sensations and life itself or in the physiological and neurological, requiring
an attitude toward what the person experiences) an adjustment process that allows the individual
or (b) external (e.g., everything that arises from to achieve a reasonable degree of adaptation to
the interaction with others or that comes from the cultural environment. In summary, emotional
material wealth), which produces positive expression is mediated by culture by providing
thoughts and feelings that strengthen the individ- specic opportunities to experience certain
ual for personal growth, creativity, optimism, emotions and to give meaning to these
with more desire to share, feel fullled, and at experiences (Mesquita and Albert 2010).
the same time, a better human being, whose For example, Markus and Kitayama (2004)
nature is more emotional (Zeev 2000). And on point out that in European cultures happiness
the other hand, the consideration that happiness critically depends on the assertion of the positive
is a result of both the individuals own evaluation attributes of the self. In addition, happiness is
of his own life and of his interpersonal reality, seen as an internal attribute that is evidenced in
insuring the social essence of happiness. personal achievement. Thus, the factors that cor-
In the nal outcome, for happiness to appear in relate with this emotion are self-fulllment and
an individuals life, there are a series of elements self-esteem (Uchida et al. 2004; Kitayama
R. Sanchez Arago
et al. 2009). In the case of the Asian cultures, culture emphasizes the importance of
based on the premise that the self is connected relationships in the life of the individual; the
and interdependent with others, happiness social roles of members and membership in the
depends fundamentally on achieving positive group are basic because they are the basis of
social relationships or social harmony, which is personal identity. Therefore most of the salient
endangered when happiness serves only an indi- features of the emotional experience are external
vidual purpose. Building on the socio-centric self and interactive, which favors expressiveness,
that is constructed from links with others, the role sharing and affection, however, it also stipulates
of social support becomes an important determi- a strict control over revealing emotions that may
nant of happiness that is derived from interper- be socially undesirable or inappropriate. In syn-
sonal relationships (Kitayama et al. 2009). For thesis, several researchers stress and integral and
their part, Safdar et al. (2009) indicate that col- multi determined view of happiness. Alvarez
lectivist cultures seem to be less restrictive in the (1987 in Palomar Lever, 2005), points out that
demonstration of positive emotions, although the tendency to happiness or unhappiness comes
they can be assessed as undesirable. For exam- from: (a) the personal emotional state, (b) the
ple, Eid and Diener (2001) found that Chinese degree of rapport with parents, (c) the degree of
expressed all positive emotions including happi- mutual understanding with spouse, (d) state of
ness, less frequently and with less intensity when mind within the home, (e) the optimistic or pes-
compared with Australians and North simistic vision of the future and, (f) the degree of
Americans. satisfaction. For his part, Rojas (2005) indicates
In this regard, Anguas Plata (2005) points out that this excitement comes from family relations,
that two-thirds of the world population lives in their nancial situation, their work, their commu-
collectivist cultures where the distinction nity and friends, health, personal freedom and
between the self and others is diffuse. In these personal values. As can be seen, for Mexicans
cultures, socio-cultural norms stress maintenance there is more emphasis on the importance of
of harmony with others and self modifying relations with signicant others such as parents
strategies geared towards reconciliation of own or family, the couple, community and friends,
behaviors with the needs and expectations of and slightly less on individual aspects.
others. If necessary, individuals are expected to Once the cultural priorities of Mexicans have
subordinate their personal feelings and desires to been established, and recognizing their collectiv-
those of their reference groups (i.e. family). Also, ist character, it is necessary to deal with the
in these cultures the expressing authenticity of socio-cultural premises (norms and beliefs) that
internal feelings is considered a sign of personal direct the behavior of its members (Daz 1972).
immaturity or selshness. In such socio-cultural For this author, the socio-culture crystallizes in a
ecosystems, individual thoughts and feelings system of thoughts, ideas, or interrelated
only acquire full meaning in reference to the premises which feelings, ideas, the hierarchy of
thoughts and feelings of others who are of crucial relationships, the stipulation of the types of
importance in the denition of the self (Markus social roles that must be lled, the rules of inter-
and Kitayama 1991). In the specic case of the action within the individuals in these roles, the
Mexican culture, extensive literature positions it where, when, with whom, and how to play them.
as socio-centric with all the basic characteristics These elements are called historical-socio-cul-
of the collectivist cultures, in addition, the catho- tural premises (HSCP), in order to operationalize
lic religious inuence postures that happiness is the norms and beliefs by means of simple or
conditional on the individuals relationship with complex popular statements that provide the
the social group he or she is a member of and the basis for the functional logic and behavior of
harmonious interaction that you want to keep specic groups. Its genesis arose from learning
with them (Daz 2003a; Daz and Draguns these rules, from authoritative and signicant
1999). According to Paez et al. (2000) Mexican gures of its socio-cultural context, i.e., the
parents and the family. The functions of these Daz (2003b) points out that happiness for
HSCP are usually reinforced almost by all adults Mexicans represents the hope of an eternal
of a socio-cultural group particular and therefore, reward and satisfaction provided through the
its functions include: (a) equip individuals from approval of the members of their society, hence
symbols that facilitate interpersonal group, social the rst 4 factors in the self-concept of the Mexi-
and national communication, and (b) forge the can are plagued by social-emotional expression
most important bases for the creation of the real- (Daz 2005).
ity of interpersonal and group. But, do other factors contribute the way peo-
ple live and experience happiness? Certainly one
important dimension is made up of specic indi-
10.5 Measurement HSCP vidual characteristics, in this case, each person
of Happiness Emotional combines inherited traits and life experiences
Expression in Mexico that melt in to the formation of traits and skills.
Based on the contributions of Daz (1972),

Anguas (2000), Reidl and Hernndez (2008), and 10.6 Do I Have the Personal
Mesquita and Albert (2010) that allow the study Resources to Experience
of transmission of culture through historic-socio- Happiness?
cultural premises HSCP (norms and beliefs
that guide everyday life), these authors are able Happiness, either as a momentary emotion or as
to conrm the role of culture in the expression an inherently human feeling, is inuenced in its
and emotional experience. In order to measure experience and expression by aspects such as
the effect of culture on emotional expression, perception, expression and emotional under-
Sanchez and Daz (2009) designed among standing. In other words, for a person to feel
others a HSCP measure of expression of emo- his/her own happiness or that, which emanates
tional happiness in Mexico. This tool showed from others, it is necessary that he/she to possess
robust psychometric qualities with a total reli- certain skills that will allow them to identify,
ability of: 0.89; as well as construct validity express and understand it, and consequently
demonstrated in conceptually clear dimensions interact with it. In the next paragraphs we will
specied in four factors indicating beliefs around describe the effect of each of these capabilities in
the emotional expression of happiness: Social theoretical terms and discuss the psychometric
expression (smile, share with others, disclose qualities of ethnopsychological measuring
feelings, being sociable and friendly), Enjoyment instruments to assess these dimensions in
of life (higher desire to do things, do things Mexico.
safely, feeling good about selves and others,
feel happy and in a good mood), Happiness
maintenance (try preserve the experience by all 10.6.1 Emotional Perception: Research
means, do everything possible so that the emo- in Mexico
tion will endure and feel satised) and Be
authentic (be yourself, express mood in personal Emotional perception is dened as the elemen-
fashion, be natural and act calmly). With regards tary and basic form of knowledge of an emotion,
to face validity, the dimensions of the scales involving cognitive processes like attention,
reect what a sample of Mexicans considered appreciation, thinking, remembering and imagin-
you should feel, think and do when happy, Also ing (Young 1979). According to Sanchez
in Mexico, Sanchez Aragon and Retana Franco et al. (2014) this attribute encompasses two
(2007) found that people should laugh, enjoy, be sub-capabilities: (1) the ability to identify
in a good mood, be sociable, feel safe, prolong emotions in their own physical and psychological
the experience and be natural. In this regard, state, and (2) the ability to recognize emotion in
R. Sanchez Arago
other people. These two attributes were the sub- between the members of the relationship, and
ject of measurement in Mexico from a maximum maintaining intimacy, trust and interdependence
performance approach. The ndings reect that (Alexander and Wood 2000).
happiness as an emotion was the easiest to iden-
tify correctly both their own experience and in
the faces of men and women. Gender differences 10.6.3 Emotional Understanding: Some
respond to differential training during the process Research in Mexico
of socialization (Alarcon 2007), such as handling
activities that have been ascribed to women, In regards to emotional understanding, Extrema-
since they are linked to the experience and Pacheco and Fernandez-Berrocal (2002) point
expression of positive emotions needed to estab- out that this skill requires that human beings
lish and maintain relationships with others (Alex- learn from themselves, from their needs and
ander and Wood 2000; Daz et al. 2004). desires, of what things, people, or situations
cause certain feelings? From what thoughts gen-
erate each emotion?, from how all these environ-
10.6.2 Emotional Expression: Research mental and internal cues affect us? and what
in Mexico consequences and reactions they cause in us?.
The literature identies three sub-capabilities of
With regards to emotional expression, it is emotional understanding that require understand-
constructed and combined with the perception ing: (1) the ideal context for expressing each
of social interaction, this occurs because the dis- emotion, (2) the causes and consequences of
crimination of emotional states is achieved each emotion and (3) the management of com-
through the expressive component, which at the plex and conicting emotions. With reference to
same time constitutes a source of signals to these skills, Sanchez et al. (2008) created a max-
others (Fridlund 1997). Emotional expression is imum execution test of emotional understanding.
built around three skills: (1) accurate expression Their ndings show that happiness is one of two
of emotions, (2) calibrating its intensity emotions detected correctly by male and female
(or expression) level and (3) the capacity to get participants. These results illustrate a gender
hitched, prolong or dispose of an emotional state. coincidence in emotional recognition and the
The rst two were measured through six typical role of culture when it emphasizes the value of
and maximum performance tests (Martnez and happiness in the Mexican(s), favoring transmis-
Sanchez 2008), were they found that happiness sion of the deployment of cultural rules around
can be reliably and validly assessed both by how, when and why to express or regulate happi-
means of the expression of a photographed face ness (Reidl and Hernandez 2008).
and through drawing. In addition, these authors,
identied a dimension for which emotional
expression where happiness is attached to love, 10.7 What Emotional Regulation
and which implies the resemblance of both Strategies Do I Use When
emotions in this experience. In a similar fashion, a Situation Which Causes
Ben-Zeev (2000) points out that there is an Happiness Presents Itself?
afnity between happiness and love, and this is
expressed in the fact that love is one of the most The study of emotional regulation (ER), becomes
important reasons why the individual feels hap- important when it analyzes the ways in which
piness. Furthermore, it seems positive emotions people are capable of managing their positive or
like happiness and love generally facilitate the negative emotional experience, (Cicchetti
formation and maintenance of relationships, et al. 1991); in order to preserve their
improving the level of attraction toward others, relationships with others and achieve harmony
enriching subjective well-being of the interaction (Parrott 1993). From this perspective, ER is the
process by which, people start, prevent, inhibit, openly and (f) anxious. Although the ndings
maintain or modulate the occurrence, shape, seem to contradictory, on the one hand the idea
intensity or duration of internal emotional States that the Mexican culture exalted happiness and
(Eisenberg et al. 2013). Moreover, Eisenberg and its power to enhance the well-being of the indi-
Spinrad (2004) point out that the ER refers to vidual within their group, and on the other a
attempts to modify the components of the emo- series of suppressing strategies in face of the
tional experience (i.e. subjective experience, happy experience, conciliation con be found in
physiology, expression and behavior) regarding the fact that the goal is for the group to be happy.
its occurrence, form, duration, and intensity. The Under these conditions, excessive happiness in
modication of the emotions can occur starting, one individual is disrespectful to the lack of
preventing, inhibiting, maintaining or changing happiness in other members of the group (Daz
an emotional experience. and Daz 1994). Therefore, Mexican men and
In 2007, Gross and Thompson proposed a women show an ambivalent pattern between con-
series of ve cognitive processes responsible for centrate, reect, embracing emotion, being
the manifestation of a series of strategies of ER opened and anxious, estrangement, modication
behavior, these are: (1) situation selection, (2) sit- of the situation, distraction, denial, engage in
uation modication, (3) attention, (4) cognitive something and hiding. In this respect, it can be
change and (5) response modulation. These cog- inferred that on the one hand, the rst reactions
nitive processes are generated in the individual or strategies seek to increase emotional happi-
when they recognize a stimulus that triggers an ness experience of the individual, while the latter
emotion, namely, each reaction or strategy tend to decrease it to demonstrate a humble
corresponds to a specic emotion, whether it is amount comparable to ones groups level.
positive as negative, such as happiness, sadness A more general way of explaining the ambig-
or anger. Taking into account this proposal, uous behavioral pattern of approach-avoidance,
Carrasco and Sanchez (2008a) designed a test can be extracted from the fact that although hap-
to measure these ve processes in the eld of piness is a source of motivation toward the
happiness and managed to identify particular accomplishment of important goals, overcoming
strategies of ER very for this emotion. A rst obstacles and having intimate connection with
response within the situation selection process other people, and even the possibility of avoiding
is defensive since people tend to move away physical and mental diseases (Gruber
from the situation that triggers the emotion. For et al. 2011), it can also have a dark side leading
a second process, situation modication, it seems people use strategies to decrease intense or over-
people try to control what they still do not fully whelming amounts of happiness that can nega-
understand, so it was noted that they attempted to tively affect creativity and even make inexible
change the situation and responded in ways that people face new challenges (Fredrickson 1998;
were inconsistent with the event they were Davis 2008), creating an unreal sensation of
experiencing. For the third and fourth process, capabilities which can lead them to ignore the
encompassing deployment of attention and cog- signals of warning in their environment and
nitive changes, these authors found three main exposing them to risks or hazards (Friedman
strategies for happiness: distraction, concentra- et al. 1993). In addition, according to Keltner
tion and denial; with concentration coming rst, (2009) extreme happiness can lead to negative
followed by distraction, and at the end, denial. social outcomes such as aggressiveness towards
Finally, for the fth process regarding response others, self-centeredness that hinders ones abil-
modulation, the authors report the existence of ity of empathy or the possible onset of mania.
six factors that describe the response of the indi- From a more individual perspective, the pres-
vidual to happiness: (a) engage in something, ence of diverse and sometimes antagonistic hap-
(b) act extroverted to emotion, (c) reect, piness management strategies could depend on
(d) conceal their feelings, (e) express feelings individual differences. Starting with the premise
R. Sanchez Arago
that the base line of happiness feelings permeates the romantic experience of love, becoming
and inuences momentary emotional meshed and complementary in the subjective
experiences, as well the existence of different assessment of the quality of the relationship
reactions of individuals depending on their man- known as marital satisfaction. That refers to an
agement of happiness capabilities and their per- index that indicates how happy the members of a
sonality, the interaction of individual and the dyad are regarding their partners characteristics
scenario in which the experience unfolds could and their romantic relationship.
lead to different responses dependent on the For the Mexican culture, there is consistent
interplay of these variables. evidence that the experience of happiness is
It is precisely in the crossroads of the individ- closely linked to love. In fact, according to Daz
ual and the interpersonal spheres, that happiness (2003a), love is the main way for Mexicans to
and love become inherently fused and fundamen- achieve happiness, given the importance given to
tal to the human existence. Initially, we stressed love and be loved; this pattern is so extreme, that
that happiness has two distinguishable and comin many cases it becomes the main reason for
plementary aspects, one that arises in each per- living (Valdez et al. 2005; Ortiz 2007; Valera
son a temporary emotion or deep feeling 2009). It is in this context that Daz (2003b)
regarding their own life at the individual level, pronounces that the Mexican culture is the cul-
or one whose release is given derived from exter- ture of love, as a result, happiness is dened in
nal and social stimulation that causes happiness terms of the quality of interaction Mexicans have
and is based, among other things on intimacy. with others.
We have covered the individual experience, we Recently, in Mexico, Pozos (2012) studied the
will now move on to the search for happiness in experience of happiness resulting from couple
relationships. relationships. Based on the descriptions given
by a set of participants he derived a measure of
happiness in couples and identies correlates of
10.8 Couple Relationships: the construct. Results yield the following deni-
Searching for Happiness tion: happiness in couples is an emotional eval-
in Company uation of the relationship at a specic time and/or
particular situation where there is love, affection,
Authors like Argyle (1987) and Javaloy need for committed and constant interaction of
et al. (2009) have given a special weight to social its members (p. 113). Among the factors
interaction as an important predictor of happi- involved in the assessment of happiness in the
ness, this is due to the fact as individuals possess couple, this author was able to distinguish the
a signicant other, such as close friends, family following:
and couple relationships, they present higher
rates of happiness. And it is not only the presence (a) Commitment, i.e. the ability of each mem-
of intimate relationships that is important, Myers ber to maintain the relationship based on
and Diener (1995) show greater personal happi- understanding, patience, stability, correc-
ness as interpersonal relations become more tion of errors, sharing time, humility, per-
close and intimate, thus, couples relationship severance, consideration and solidarity;
are fertile ground for this experience. (b) Sexuality, understood as the set of feelings
The basis for the relationship of well-being and erotic experiences that the person has
and intimacy is derived form the inevitable union in interaction with their partner;
between happiness and love, not only in how the (c) Exclusivity, which refers to the explicit or
emotion is experienced, but also in their implicit agreement that involves the dedi-
expressions and fazes (Carrasco and Sanchez cation of space and time for the couple,
2008b). So it is no surprise that happiness is an which excludes other people;
emotion or feeling that cannot be separated from
(d) Romance, that is, expressions of affection and achieving goals; which according to Nettle
and commitment between the members of (2006) is the embodiment of the ideal of uto-
the couple; pian happiness. More specically, Argyle (1987)
(e) Independence, which means the need to proposes that the relationship must provide three
maintain a certain amount of individuality types of satisfaction to the basic needs of the
and autonomy within the relationship; human being in order to achieve happiness:
(f) Economic welfare, which expresses the (1) instrumental, referring to the satisfaction of
search and use of material possessions basic needs such as food, clothing and money;
and economic security; (2) emotional, that includes receiving support,
(g) Peace of mind, i.e. stability that comes engaging in intimacy and exercising sexuality;
from routine, habits and monotony devel- and (3) the playful, which covers activities of
oped in communion from everyday life; entertainment and recreation which cause well-
(h) Maintenance, understood as actions and being.
activities that people develop to preserve With reference to the correlates of happiness,
their link; Pozos (2012) found that communication, trust,
(i) Empathic understanding, which means the respect, support, tolerance and honesty are
ability to understand the position and how strongly associated to the persistence and main-
to see things from the point of view of each tenance of a romantic link, and therefore with the
other; and welfare experienced in this relationship. How-
(j) Social stability, indicated by having a job, ever, some sex differences emerged in the
having food to eat, sharing children and emphasis in the amount of support, harmony,
a home. solidarity and romance needed to achieve happi-
ness; while men are happier when they perceive
These elements show the importance that the peace and social stability derived from economic
level of involvement and mutual agreement aspects and material goods, women stress sup-
regarding emotionality, sexuality and delity port, happiness and solidarity.
(Sanchez 1995), as well as freedom for personal It is evident that both individual and couple
development that may enable economic support derived happiness have a permanent quality (as a
and welfare, have in order to achieve happiness long lasting feeling or life framework), that is
in the relationship (Rivera et al. 2008). The com- reected in the subjective evaluation of the gen-
bination of these factors gives the couple the eral status of the relationship, but also a situa-
ability to preserve a harmonious and caring link tional facade (as a brief and intense emotion)
(Levinger 1999). based on of what occurs in the everyday interac-
This dialectic processes between the individ- tion. The secret to a healthy balance or harmony
ual and shared aspects of the relationship is requires both members of the couple to nd a
detailed by several authors (Argyle 1987; way to co-regulate their everyday comings and
Veenhoven 2005), who point out the high corre- goings in order to generate a consistent ad uid
lation between and the level of happiness pattern of interaction. This co-regulation is a
generated by the couples relationship. In fact, specic form of interpersonal emotional regula-
personal happiness increases when people get tion that works as a link or connection between
married. The argument is advanced that the the oscillating channels of emotion among each
bond and commitment derived from marriage member of the couple (subjective experience,
provides safety, support and responsibilities, expressive behavior and autonomous physiologi-
which correspond to the expectations of each cal response), which contributes to the emotional
member to achieve a balance in their life. The and physiological stability of both members of
behaviors that ensue include the acceptance of the relationship. Co-regulation also represents a
the other, the reception of support, meeting needs central mechanism by means of which the quality
R. Sanchez Arago
of the relationship contributes in the health and feel special, making plans, making positive
well-being of the couple (Butler and Randall remarks, enjoying and rejoicing with memories
2013). of good times, building trust, paying special
In order to explore emotional co-regulation of attention to happy experiences. According to
happiness strategies, Sanchez (2013) interviewed Scherer and Wallbott (1994), when a couple
97 women and 100 men involved in a romantic share good times and laughs, it is an indication
relationship and conducted content analysis on that enjoyment is present in their lives and this
the descriptions of both members on how they has at least two social functions: (1) indicates
react to different positive emotions such as love, similarity in the interpretation of life and in the
passion, surprise and happiness. She reports that reasons and goals for the day among them, and
both men and women tend to regulate happiness (2) it strengthens the bond between its members.
with their partners by enjoying it, trying to keep Similarly, sharing positive emotions, pleasurable
the emotion alive, communicating, laughing, experiences, behaving friendly, talking with
looking for physical contact, having fun, enthusiasm and planning activities together is
expressing affection, living, having a positive highly reinforcing (Shaver et al. 1987).
attitude, sharing, using humor, and avoiding con- The second dimension of co-regulation
ict. Moreover, only men reported that they go strategies refers to Physical and Emotional
on a happiness binge and use the opportunity to Closeness. It includes behaviors in which both
make plans for the future. The same procedure members of the couple express their love by
was used to analyze the other positive emotions approaching, caressing, saying what they feel
yielding very similar categories, leading to the for the other, excitement maintenance, giving
development and psychometric analysis of a gen- support and joking around. According to
eral positive emotional co-regulation strategies Andersen and Guerrero (1998), this generalized
inventory linked to happiness. interpersonal warmth that refers to the intimate
The development and validation of the feeling of pleasure and happiness that occurs
co-regulation inventory is based on the responses during positive interactions with the romantic
of a sample of 430 participants (196 women and couple, is, perhaps, the most important and least
233 men), ages between 16 and 66 years with a understood of the emotions. As a result, those
mean education of high school and with strategies included in this factor, clearly enrich
relationships that range from 2 months to the warmth or pleasant emotional connection that
43 years. Of the total sample, 39 were single, people feel when they communicate with their
321 were married and 70 were living together at loved ones. So, it seems that physical and emo-
the time of the application. The measure format tional closeness not only constitute a common
is a pictoric Likert with ve squares of increasing way of reacting to the positive emotions, it is
size indicating how much each one of the men- also a way to strengthen the bond, develop safety,
tioned strategies is used to react jointly to a give and receive affection and love, and expand
positive emotion. Findings yield four General and transcend the individual experience
co-regulation strategies (KMO 0.981 and the (Bochner 1984).
test of Bartlett Sphericity 34784 The third complex of co-regulation strategies
39, gl 2,485, p 0.000) explaining 70.22 % is a more automatic set of responses that appear
of test variance and showing high internal con- before the positive emotions. These strategies
sistency Cronbach Alpha coefcients. include reacting with spontaneity, playing,
The rst group of emotional co-regulation breaking routines, doing special nothings for
strategies appears in the rst factor, and has to partner, experiencing new things, having a good
do with aspects of Communication and Harmo- sense of humor, getting carried away by the
nious Coexistence. It includes actions such as moment and doing unexpected things. According
sharing, encouraging each other, doing things to Bulcroft et al. (2000) spontaneity is the best
together, laughing, celebrating, making partner way to ensure happiness and enrich the passion in
the relationship. Along the same lines, relationship. In addition, the same pattern is evi-
Baumgardner and Crothers (2009) posture dent with perceived intimacy or closeness, thus
humor as one of the main reasons why happy construing an interdependent model for the
couples enjoy the company of the other. In fact, effects between variables.
it helps the relationship dynamics, detoxifying
conict and alleviating stress. In general, lack
of control in a positive (happy related) automatic 10.9 Conclusions
emotional reaction, allows couples to increase
the intensity of their positive emotions, that Integrating the variables into a model, on one
together with a constantly renewed emotional level Guerrero et al. (2011) claim couple prox-
state, allows the manifestation of different imity represents an opportunity to expand ones
nuances that keep novelty and mystery alive. identity, which encourages both individual and
Finally, a Niceties and Surprises aggregate dyadic development, by exposing members of
appeared as the fourth grouping of co-regulation the relationship to new experiences. As a result,
strategies. The behaviors that appear include giv- couples confront a greater variety and quantity of
ing each other niceties, surprise each other, look shared activities, and have greater satisfaction
for closeness, giving free rein to emotions and and relationship quality (Graham 2008). On a
avoiding any source of conict. This group of second level, the abundance and content of
techniques species the need to address relation- co-regulation strategies enrich and contribute to
ship dynamics, insuring exchange of niceties and the consolidation of the couples bond. The two
gifts (Sanchez and Daz 2010). The surprise com- components, the ability to expand their selves
ponent of the factor reveals a mechanism through and successfully co-regulate emotions, lead to a
which couples like to amaze each other through sense of mutual success and happiness.
unexpected actions, sharing time together and However, we should recognize that people
exchanging gifts. These strategies increase the occasionally experience negative emotions in
accumulation of emotional experience in the the course of their relationships. In these cases,
dyad, by reinforcing a transactional trade of pos- positive co-regulations strategies result in situa-
itive emotions felt by both members of the relational attributions that constrain the aversive
tionship (Sanchez 2013). condition as an event that is momentary and
In summary, the central purpose of the understandable, thus, more tolerable. In other
strategies is to prolong and increase the experi- words, the negative side of the relationship is
ence of love, surprise, passion and happiness. To represented as a deviation from the positive,
achieve this goal, behaviors are oriented towards rather than as a phenomenon that comprises the
promoting contact, reciprocity, mutual care, the totality of the relational experience. It is a fact
expression of love in its various forms, the use of that human nature is so complex that it takes into
humor, improvisation, a sense of natural ow in account both the difculties of maintaining the
the interaction and surprise. The insertion of positive side of things in real life, as well as an
these co-regulation strategies in everyday inter- awareness and recognition of the existence of
action imprints the relationship with both a sense conict that has to be confronted as a compensa-
of security and of innovation that precedes the tory side; in fact, this doesnt mean that the dark
perception of received attention, respect and side is dark in its effects, some of the best
affection that in turn lead to satisfaction. The resolutions in matters of relations come from
results are compelling, robust positive and sig- conicts. Duck (1994) this respect advances the
nicant correlations (r >0.46, p 0.000), are following:
found for communication with harmonious coex-
The negative and the positive sides of relationship
istence, physical and emotional closeness, spon-
need to be incorporated together theoretically into
taneity, niceties and surprises and the general one set of principles that can deal with both. . .It
subjective assessment of quality of the should be clear that I am calling for the redress of
R. Sanchez Arago
balance, not for a change of focus to relationship that can promote the experience of the emotion.
difculties rather than on the enjoyable. I argue for The search of a robust and stable happiness
a rethinking of the role of those behaviors and
experiences that these subjects probably get in seems a philosophical and mundane quest reach-
real life but never show up in the lab, where other able only with the knowledge extracted from
questions are asked, My claim is that a simple further socio-psychological research.
dichotomy into positive and negative is ultimately
misleading and that both elements, however
labeled are conjoint parts of relationships. (p. 4)
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The Role of Relational Goods
in the Relationship Between Illnesses 11
and Satisfaction in Latin America
Mariano Rojas and Maikol Elizondo-Lara
11.1 Introduction differences in the stock of relational goods can

explain why the same health problem can have
The production of relational goods has positive asymmetric consequences in terms the impact of
effects on the well-being that people experience a health problem on the well-being of a person.
in life as a whole.1 This can be seen in the form of These asymmetric consequences of a health
corresponded feelings, affective and emotional problem may explain why some countries have
support, recognition and friendship. Veenhoven high prevalence rates of both health problems
(1994) even speaks of a lack of satisfaction and health satisfaction; which at rst glance
among unmarried people, which means that may seem paradoxical given the absence of an
under the same circumstances, married people explanation. In terms of social policy, measuring
usually report more satisfaction with life com- the benets of relational goods during illness
pared to single people. The present research stud- enables complete cost-benet studies, thereby
ies the indirect effect of the availability of allowing a proper evaluation of policies that pro-
relational goods on the well-being of people. mote care of sick people through informal atten-
This indirect effect refers to the diminished tion provided during temporary leaves of
impact of a health problem given the presence absence. Among other things, the methodology
of relational goods. That is, this research used in this research allows one to quantify the
suggests that the difference in the intensity a size of the asymmetries of the negative effect on
persons suffers a health problem may stem from health problems in terms of loss of health
differences in her stock of relational goods. satisfaction.2
The topic has important implications both Empirical research has measured the direct
conceptually and for social policy. Conceptually, effect and an indirect effect of the presence of
relational goods on health satisfaction. Direct
positive effects are consistent with the published
1
Recent contributions include: Pugno (2007), Bruni and literature (see for example Bruni and Stanca
Stanca (2005), Mosca et al. (2006), Becchetti et al. (2006,
2008), Kafetsios (2006) y Priel and Shamai (1995).
2005; Mosca et al. 2006; Becchetti et al. 2006,
M. Rojas (*) 2
Recent articles propose an operative and conceptually
FLACSO-Mexico and UPAEP, Mexico City, Mexico
robust methodology to translate the loss in well-being that
is caused by the presence of health problems into mone-
M. Elizondo-Lara tary values, (see for example: Clark and Oswald 2002;
Astra Zeneca, FLACSO-Mexico and UPAEP, Mexico Groot and van den Brink 2006; Ferrer-i-Carbonell and van
City, Mexico Praag 2002; Rojas and Elizondo-Lara 2009; Rojas 2009).

180 M. Rojas and M. Elizondo-Lara
2008; Kafetsios 2006; Priel and Shamai 1995; religion, community and health among many
Moreira et al. 2003). However, indirect effects others.3 There are many studies that conrm
through reducing the negative consequences of the link between satisfaction across certain
health problems are the most important contribu- domains of life, and life satisfaction as a whole
tion of this research. (Easterlin and Sawangfa 2007; van Praag
The empirical research was carried out using et al. 2002; Rojas 2007a; Rojas-Lara and
data from 16 Latin American countries, with Elizondo 2011). In this research, it is the rela-
circa 1,000 people interviewed per country. The tionship between the presence of illness and
survey was conducted in 2007 by Gallup and personal health satisfaction that is studied.
contains, among other, information regarding What is expected is a stronger relationship
the satisfaction that people experience regarding between illness and health satisfaction than
health, health condition described by the between illness and satisfaction with life as a
standardised instrument for health evaluation whole (Michalos 2004).
the EQ-5D, relational goods and socio-
demographic information. The survey is repre-
sentative at country level therefore allowing for 11.2.2 The Impact of Health Problems
individual-level analysis as well as cross-country on Subjective Well-Being
comparisons.
Regarding the disease-satisfaction relationship,
the literature consistently shows a strong rela-
11.2 Subjective Well-Being tionship between physical and psychological
and Personal Health health, and subjective well-being (Dolan
et al. 2008). Health is a necessary condition for
11.2.1 The Focus of Subjective Well- a high level of satisfaction (Kirkcaldy et al. 2005;
Being Veenhoven 2006), and disease is seen as a pro-
cess that impairs health. In a considerable part of
A key concept in this research is subjective the literature, the relationship between illness
well-being, which is framed within the concept and life satisfaction or health satisfaction has
of quality of life (Veenhoven 1994; Michalos been raised. As an example, Rojas and
2004). Michalos (2004) explains that when Elizondo-Lara (2011) estimate the monetary
quality of life is measured in terms of experi- value of the impact of different diseases (chronic
enced satisfaction, a person makes a judgment and non-chronic) on health satisfaction using
about the value of his own life, where higher data for Costa Rica and nd that when an indi-
or lower values represent higher or lower vidual has cardiovascular problems, the probabil-
quality of life levels. In the words of Veenhoven ity of being satised with health is reduced by
(1994, 2000), subjective well-being is how approximately 25 percentage points. Other stud-
much an individual likes the life he/she leads. ies such as Shields and Wheatley Price (2005)
A more specic and regularly used term is life focus on clinical conditions, such as having a
satisfaction, what Pavot (2008) denes as a heart attack, on subjective well-being.
judgments of satisfaction with the conditions
and circumstances of life as a whole represent
3
an additional a partially distinct of subjective Research that focuses on health satisfaction as a con-
struct of life domains, or that studies specic life domains,
well-being. Life satisfaction judgments repre- include the following: Ferrer-i-Carbonell (2005),
sent broad, cognitively based evaluations of Easterlin (2001), Fuentes and Rojas (2001), Rojas
ones life as whole . . . (p. 125). (2010), Zumbo and Michalos (2000), Millar and Hull
In an important part of the literature, life (1997), Helliwell and Putnam (2004), Clark and Oswald
(1994), Di Tella et al. (2001), Kamp and Amato (2005),
satisfaction is studied as a construct of
Stutzer and Frey (2006), Michalos and Zumbo (1999),
life domains, such as education, employment, Michalos (2004), Ferrer-i-Carbonell and van Praag
private life, family life, nancial status, (2002), Werner et al. (2005), Rojas (2011).
11 The Role of Relational Goods in the Relationship Between Illnesses and. . . 181
11.2.3 Relational Goods as a Filter problem is a condition that is usually diagnosed by

in the Relationship Between a physician, either via the observation of symptoms
Health Problems and Health or by clinical diagnostic methods; on the other
Satisfaction hand, suffering a health problem is an assessment
on how much life is enjoyed under that health state,
Groot and van den Brink (2006) estimate that in which implies an inherently subjective assessment
Britain the impact of cardiovascular problems on of well-being itself. The difference between having
the subjective well-being equals a reduction of a health problem and suffering it is what this
0.13 points for males, and 0.07 for females when research has termed as Asymmetries in the Impact
measured on a scale of 17. The results of this of Health Problems.
study suggest that the size of the impact of the The main hypothesis in this research is that the
same health problems may differ between groups presence of relational goods is a lter factor. In the
of people. These asymmetries can be generated by past two decades, the role of social relationships on
conditions or traits that are inherent to people, subjective well-being is a topic that has been
e.g. being male or female, but can also be addressed in the literature (Kafetsios 2006).
generated by factors that lter the relationship According to Kafetsios, researchers distinguish
between health problems and health satisfaction. between structural and functional aspects of social
The latter is the central argument of this research. support. Structural aspects such as social network
There is evidence in the literature on subjective size, frequency of interaction, and membership
well-being pointing in the aforementioned direc- numbers only reect the existence of the social
tion. For example, Oswald and Powdthavee network. On the other hand, the functional aspect
(2006) present evidence that individuals are able of social support is typically associated with
to adapt to a state of disability, and as more time is emotions and with practical and instrumental sup-
spent experiencing the disability, adaptation is port. Social support and the creation of relational
greater. Michalos and Zumbo (1999), citing other goods are of psychological value; however, they
published studies, show that older adults may assess can present themselves as functional support in
their own health status more favourably than a times of stress and need, which is a pragmatic
physician, what is called health optimism, and value. Authors like Bruni and Stanca (2005),
so, in some cases the size of the impact of the Mosca et al. (2006), and Becchetti et al. (2008)
disease on subjective well-being may be more mod- refer to relational goods as interpersonal
est than expected, even in the presence of cata- connections. These connections may be with
strophic medical circumstances. Moreover, in a relatives or non-relatives through friendship and
review of eleven surveys carried out to explain participation in associations and organised groups;
happiness based on experienced satisfaction levels they can be translated as emotional support,
in different domains of life, Michalos (2004) found feelings of correspondence, recognition, friend-
that different groups of people use different ship and other values that have direct well-being
mixtures of ingredients to determine their happi- effects. Although from the perspective of
ness. This is similar to what Rojas (2005, 2007b) disciplines like psychology there is some consen-
calls the heterogeneity in the conceptual referent for sus that the structural aspects of social support are
happiness, arguing that what can be very important generally not correlated with well-being, the func-
for happiness to someone may be irrelevant to tional aspects are (Kafetsios 2006). There is a
someone else, which may explain why the size of weak relationship between the amount or size
the impact of a single health problem can be differ- of social network and well-being; however, recent
ent between people. research shows that satisfaction with social sup-
The phenomenon can be better understood when port is an important predictor of general well-being
the difference between what it means to have a (Priel and Shamai 1995; Moreira et al. 2003). The
health problem and what it means to suffer from a hypothesis of this research is that the lack of rela-
health problem is established. Having a health tional goods can enhance the negative effect of
health problems, or seen from another point of prevalence of health problems; in both countries
view, the presence of relational goods is able to 51 % of people state having some or severe
reduce the negative impact of disease. This problems in at least one of the EQ-5D dimensions.
research studies the role played by relational Countries with the least prevalence of disease are
goods in the relationship between health problems Panama (20 %) and El Salvador (22 %).4
and health satisfaction.
Relational Goods Regarding relational goods,
the 2007 Gallup survey includes a question
11.3 The Survey concerning access to social support. The question
is: Do you have family or friends who can help you if
Data was obtained from the Gallup World Poll needed? The question has a binary response: 1 when
Master Questionnaire Latin America 2007 with the individual has someone to turn to for help when
information for the following 16 Latin American needed and 0 when he has no one. In principle, this
countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, question can be a good proxy for what is known in
Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, the literature as possession of relational goods.
Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Pan- Although there is no information on the structure of
ama, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay. The survey is the support network, the question addresses the
representative at country level and provides data functional quality of the available support; more-
from approximately 1,000 personal interviews over, according to Kafetsios (2006) it is the func-
for each country. The information used in the tional factors that are positively related to the
research is described in the following sections. persons well-being, whether it be in an emotional
or pragmatic sense. Panama and Costa Rica present
Health Satisfaction In the survey, the follow- the highest percentages of people with possession of
ing question is asked: Are you satised with your relational goods, 93 % and 91 %, respectively. On
health? The response is binary and takes a value the other hand, El Salvador, Bolivia and Peru count
of 1 if the individual is satised with the health with the lower percentages of people with relational
and of 0 when he is not. The ve countries with goods, 71 %, 76 % and 79 % respectively.
the highest percentage of people satised with
health are respectively Costa Rica, Guatemala, Socio-demographic Variables The survey also
Panama, Honduras and Mexico. Countries where contains a full set of socio-demographic informa-
the percentage of people satised with health is tion. Of the respondents, 55 % are women, 62 %
lowest are Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Nicaragua and of people have at most primary education, and of
Paraguay (see Table 11.1). these, 18 % have no formal education. A total of
39 % of people are married and 33 % single,
Health Status The information related to health 61 % live in urban areas and the average age is
status is collected in the standard format of the 38 years old. Information on income is also avail-
EuroQol Group (The Euroqol Group 1999; see able in the survey; however, comparable data
also www.euroqol.org; Weinstein 1988). The between countries have their source in the
EQ-5D distinguishes between ve dimensions of adjustments made by Gasparini et al. (2008).
health: mobility, self-care, usual activities, pain/ Income is expressed in monthly dollars adjusted
discomfort and anxiety/depression. There are for purchasing power parity, making it a compa-
three levels of severity for each health dimension: rable variable among countries; the monthly per
no problems, some problems and extreme capita family income is on average 267 USD
problems. With the information, the EQ-5D has adjusted for purchasing power parity.
constructed an indicator of overall disease preva-
lence by country dened as the percentage of
people with some or extremes problems in at 4
A table with the complete breakdown of each dimension
least one of EQ-5Ds health dimensions. Chile for each country considered in the study is presented in
and Bolivia are the countries with a higher overall the appendix (Table 11.4)
Table 11.1 Health satisfaction, health problems and relational goods at country level
Countries Health satisfactiona General prevalence EQ-5Db Relational goodsc Number of interviewees
Brazil 84.7 47.1 86.3 991
Mexico 86.6 31.4 88.5 921
Costa Rica 93.5 30.4 91.5 926
Argentina 86.0 40.9 85.7 912
Bolivia 82.6 51.9 76.2 864
Chile 68.4 51.9 81.2 868
Colombia 84.2 38.1 88.8 939
Ecuador 80.0 27.3 83.0 1,026
El Salvador 84.0 22.7 71.7 959
Guatemala 92.9 25.8 86.2 910
Honduras 88.2 28.8 81.7 858
Nicaragua 80.4 42.0 86.6 977
Panama 89.5 20.0 93.6 931
Paraguay 80.6 28.4 85.6 939
Peru 79.0 47.3 79.9 898
Uruguay 84.8 36.7 87.2 820
Averaged 84.1 35.7 84.6 Total 14,739
Average dev. 4.2 8.8 4.2
Source: Gallup World Poll Master Questionnaire Latin America 2007
a
Percentage of people who report feeling satised with their health
b
Percentage of people that reported having some or extreme problems in at least one of the EQ-5D dimensions
c
Percentage of people with relational goods
d
Average across countries (uniformly weighted)
self-care, usual activities, pain/discomfort, anxi-

11.4 The Role of Relational Goods ety/depression), where each takes the value 1 if
in the Disease-Satisfaction the individual has some or severe health problems
Relationship and 0 if the individual has no health problems. The
variable br is binary and refers to whether or not
11.4.1 The Econometric Model the individual has relatives or friends who can
help if needed (relational goods). The variable
A probit model is used to establish the empirical eei refers to a continuous control variable which
relationship between illness and health satisfac- summarises information related to the emotional
tion, and the role of relational goods. The follow- state of the individual, where 100 is the best
ing two equations are used: emotional state and 0 is the worst emotional
SS*i 1 eq1i 2 br i 3 eq1*br state.5 Finally, for each equation, Xik is the vector
eei Xi i 11:1 of variables that describe individual is socio-
demographic prole (age, sex, education, residen-
SS*i eq5di 1 br i eq5d*br 3 tial area, marital status and household per capita
eei Xi i 11:2 monthly income in dollars adjusted for purchasing
power parity and country of residence).
Where for each equation SSi 1SSi * > 0. SSik The hypothesis regarding the partial effects is
is a binary variable of individual is health satis- stated in Table 11.2
faction, taking the value 1 if the individual is
satised. The variable eq1ik takes the value
5
1 when the individual has some or extreme The variable is built reducing the principal components
from variables that indicate whether the person experi-
problems in at least one of the EQ-5D dimensions,
enced, on the day before, one of the following emotions:
this indicator is called overall health. The vector enjoyment, worry, sadness, boredom, depression, anger
eq5dik comprises ve binary variables (mobility, and love. A polychoric correlation matrix is used.
Table 11.2 Assumptions regarding the partial effects in Eqs. 11.1 and 11.2
Variables Partial effects in equation 1 Partial effects in equation 2
eq1i (overall health) 1 0
eq5di 1 0
Mobility (eq5d_1)
Self-care (eq5d_2)
Usual activities (eq5d_3)
Pain/discomfort (eq5d_4)
Anxiety/depression (eq5d_5)
bri 2 0 2 0
eq1*br 3 0
eq5d*br 3 0
Such that: predicted (sensitivity 97 %, specicity 23 %,

see Table 11.1).7
1 1 3 in Eq. 11.1 and The estimated impact of disease in Eqs. 11.1
1 1 3 in Eq. 11.2 and 11.2 is negative and statistically signicant
except for personal care in Eq. 11.2. Using the
If the assumptions made for the interaction indicator of overall health, the impact of health
variables are positive, the presence of relational problems corresponds to a decline of 11 percent-
goods decreases the negative effect of the disease. age points in the probability of health satisfaction
for the average person.8 Individually analysing
the ve dimensions of the EQ-5D shows that
11.4.2 Results some or severe pain/discomfort has the largest
impact on satisfaction; this health problem is
Since this is a probit model, the estimated associated with a decrease of 18 percentage
coefcients in Eqs. 11.1 and 11.2 provide infor- points in the probability of health satisfaction.
mation about the direction of the effect of each For the dimensions of anxiety/depression, usual
variable on the probability of being satised with activities and mobility, the reduction in the prob-
health when it comes to non-related variables. ability of being satised with health is between
Regarding related variables the estimated coef- 5 and 12 percentage points.
cient does not provide information about the Relational goods have a direct effect on health
direction or magnitude of the partial effects. In satisfaction. In Eq. 11.1 the impact of relational
order to measure the size or direction of the goods corresponds to an increase of 8.6 percent-
impact of interacting variables it is necessary to age points in the probability of being satised
calculate the marginal effects. with health, however, it also has an indirect
The coefcients are estimated using effect by reducing the negative impact of the
heteroskedasticity robust errors. Equation 11.1 disease. Given Eq. 11.1, it can be estimated that
correctly predicted 85 % of observations (sensi- the impact of having moderate or severe
tivity 96 %, specicity 24 %, see Table 11.1).6 In problems in at least one of the ve dimensions
equation 2.87 % of observations are correctly of health generates an average reduction of
7
6
Sensitivity refers to the percentage of predicted The estimated coefcients and marginal effects for both
observations of people satised with health when in fact equations are presented in Table 11.1 in the appendix.
the individual is satised with health. Specicity refers to Table 11.5 shows the most relevant results.
8
the percentage of observations classied as not satised A 40 year old male, married, with completed secondary
with health when in fact the individual is not satised with education, 260 USD per capita household monthly
health. income and living in a big city.
Table 11.3 The effect of relational goods on the sickness- satisfaction relationship
Variables Partial effects in equation 1 Partial effects in equation 2
Overall health (eq1) 0.110***
Mobility (eq5d_1) 0.128***
Self-care (eq5d_2) 0.098
Usual activities (eq5d_3) 0.124**
Pain/discomfort (eq5d_4) 0.183***
Anxiety/depression (eq5d_5) 0.058***
br 0.086*** 0.124***
br*eq1 0.036**
br*eq5d_1 0.043*
br*eq5d_2 0.004
br*eq5d_3 0.006
br*eq5d_4 0.021*
br*eq5d_5 0.011
Source: Table 11.5
* P < 0.1, ** P < 0.05, *** P < 0.01
11 percentage points in the probability of being explaining the differences in the probability of
satised with health, but if the person possesses being satised with health.
relational goods, the reduction in the probability
of health satisfaction is only 7.4 percentage
points. This implies that a person will suffer a 11.5 Discussion
disease considerably less if accrued with rela-
tional goods than without. Two issues are studied in this research. The rst
The aforementioned effect is estimated for each concerns the direct effect of the presence of rela-
EQ-5D dimension using Eq. 11.2. The signs of the tional goods on health satisfaction. The second is
coefcients obtained are as expected for all cases an indirect effect referring to the possibly lower
(except in the personal care dimension), however, impact of disease on health satisfaction given the
the partial effect is only signicant for mobility presence of relational goods. Between the indi-
and pain/discomfort. In the case of pain/discom- rect and the direct effects of the presence of
fort, when a person possesses relational goods the relational goods, it is the latter that has been
reduction in the probability of being satised with studied extensively in the literature (Pugno
health is 2.1 percentage points lower than a person 2007; Bruni and Stanca 2005; Mosca
who does not have relational goods. For mobility, et al. 2006; Becchetti et al. 2006, 2008; Kafetsios
the effect of relational goods equals a decrease of 2006; Priel and Shamai 1995).
4.3 percentage points on the negative impact of The present research nds that the direct
disease Table 11.3. impact of relational goods equals an increase of
The coefcients and marginal effects 8.6 percentage point in the probability of being
associated with socio-demographic variables, satised with health. Moreover, one nds that
emotional state, and country-control variables are when a person has some or severe problems in
shown in Table 11.5 of the appendix. Overall it at least one of the ve dimensions of the EQ-5D,
would seem that the differences in health satisfac- the likelihood of dissatisfaction with health is
tion among people are mainly explained by reduced on average by 11 percentage points, but
differences in morbidity and specic structural if the person possesses relational goods, the like-
factors given the country of residence. The socio- lihood of dissatisfaction with health is only
demographic variables have a marginal role in reduced by 7.4 percentage points. This means
that, for the same health problem, a person will goods during illness enables complete cost-
suffer the disease less when she possesses rela- benet studies, allowing therefore, to properly
tional goods that when she does not. evaluate policies that promote attention of sick
This is a topic with important implications for people through informal care with temporary
public policy. The results suggest that it is possi- leaves of absence. Furthermore, the methodology
ble to improve health satisfaction among sick used in this research allows the quantication of
people even in cases where it is not possible to the size of the asymmetries in the negative effect
improve health status. In terms of social policy, of health problems in terms of decreased health
to be able to measure the benets of relational satisfaction.
11
Appendix
Table 11.4 Prevalence of health problems and satisfaction with health in the Latin American population
EQ-5D standardised instrumenta
Mobility Personal care Usual activities Pain/discomfort Anxiety/depression Individuals with at least one functional
Country Moderate Severe Moderate Severe Moderate Severe Moderate Severe Moderate Severe problemb
Brazil 13.69 0.39 2.80 0.10 11.86 0.39 31.02 5.20 20.64 4.46 47.13
Mexico 10.14 0.90 5.21 0.70 11.23 0.70 21.69 1.51 13.84 1.81 31.46
Costa Rica 9.92 0.20 2.50 0.10 6.81 0.20 16.92 2.20 12.64 2.61 30.49
Argentina 8.60 0.30 2.70 0.20 8.80 0.10 22.80 2.80 19.74 5.67 40.96
Bolivia 13.50 0.60 6.11 0.40 11.61 0.80 32.73 2.90 32.07 2.86 51.97
Chile 14.01 0.49 4.31 0.59 12.82 0.49 31.93 6.17 23.21 5.70 51.97
Colombia 8.91 0.40 1.40 0.00 8.32 0.30 24.10 2.80 17.91 1.61 38.16
Ecuador 7.35 0.28 4.15 0.00 8.01 0.38 19.42 1.23 14.81 1.42 27.31
El 7.35 0.20 4.02 0.00 6.73 0.40 15.42 2.00 7.34 1.01 22.75
Salvador
Guatemala 7.02 0.40 3.21 0.50 5.83 0.70 14.13 1.20 12.21 1.54 25.86
Honduras 9.39 0.71 6.23 1.01 9.18 1.31 15.96 2.41 9.75 2.07 28.85
The Role of Relational Goods in the Relationship Between Illnesses and. . .
Nicaragua 10.70 0.20 4.00 0.20 10.90 0.50 28.03 5.51 18.74 3.61 42.04
Panama 6.55 0.00 2.11 0.00 6.16 0.40 13.00 1.11 5.08 0.81 20.04
Paraguay 5.71 0.30 1.40 0.30 6.50 0.50 18.70 1.80 14.53 1.43 28.41
Peru 13.01 0.40 3.90 0.10 9.62 0.30 31.39 2.81 22.97 3.08 47.30
Uruguay 7.89 0.40 2.60 0.00 9.20 0.50 21.62 2.50 18.57 3.01 36.71
Source: Gallup Questionnaire Latin America 2007
N 14739
a
Percentage of people with moderate or severe problems in a particular dimension
b
Percentage of people with moderate or severe problems in at least one of the 5 dimensions
187
Table 11.5 Health satisfaction: the impact of health problems, relational goods and the interaction between both
factors
Equation 28.1 Equation 28.2
Marginal Marginal
Dependent variable: satisfaction with health Coefcient effecta Coefcient effecta
General prevalence (eq1) 0.703*** 0.110***
Mobility (eq5d_1) 0.347*** 0.128***
Personal care (eq5d_2) 0.249 0.098
Daily activities (eq5d_3) 0.335** 0.124**
Pain/discomfort (eq5d_4) 0.517*** 0.183***
Anxiety/depression (eq5d_5) 0.154* 0.058*
Relational goods (br) 0.316*** 0.086*** 0.313*** 0.124***
br*eq1 0.053 0.036***
br*eq5d_1 0.143 0.043*
br*eq5d_2 0.459* 0.004
br*eq5d_3 0.094 0.006
br*eq5d_4 0.071 0.021*
br*eq5d_5 0.018 0.011
Emotional state 0.010*** 0.002*** 0.010*** 0.003***
Female (1) 0.076** 0.018** 0.079** 0.031**
Age 0.016*** 0.003*** 0.011*** 0.004***
Primary school completed (reference no formal 0.047 0.011 0.027 0.022
education)
Secondary school completed 0.020 0.004 0.001 0.000
Superior 0.018 0.004 0.022 0.008
Married (referencesingle) 0.000 0.000 0.006 0.002
Separated 0.128 0.028* 0.096 0.035
Divorced 0.185* 0.047 0.218* 0.086*
Widowed 0.104 0.023 0.065 0.025
Common law 0.022 0.005 0.012 0.005
Town (referencerural) 0.018 0.004 0.023 0.009
Large city 0.040 0.009 0.062 0.024
Suburb of large city 0.094 0.021 0.081 0.031
Monthly household per capita income 1.6e-4** 3.9e-5*** 1.6e-4*** 6.5e-5***
Mexico (referenceBrazil) 0.120 0.030 0.129 0.051
Costa Rica 0.472*** 0.085*** 0.411*** 0.149***
Argentina 0.007 0.001 0.043 0.017
Bolivia 0.163* 0.035* 0.062 0.024
Chile 0.510*** 0.150*** 0.563*** 0.221***
Colombia 0.025 0.006 0.124 0.049
Ecuador 0.315*** 0.086*** 0.323*** 0.118***
El Salvador 0.167* 0.042* 0.190** 0.075**
Guatemala 0.359*** 0.069*** 0.346** 0.127**
Honduras 0.061 0.014 0.027 0.010
Nicaragua 0.298*** 0.080*** 0.313*** 0.114***
Panama 0.025 0.006 0.044 0.017
Paraguay 0.389*** 0.109*** 0.416*** 0.165***
Peru 0.170** 0.043** 0.243*** 0.096***
Uruguay 0.012 0.002 0.091 0.036
Constant 1.097*** 1.028***
Number of observations 11,245 10,673
(continued)
Equation 28.1 Equation 28.2

Marginal Marginal
Dependent variable: satisfaction with health Coefcient effecta Coefcient effecta
Prob > chi2 0.000 0.000
Pseudo R2 0.2261 0.2199
Log pseudolikelihood 3826.2156 3392.5113
Sensitivity Pr(+| D) 96.92 % 97.73 %
Specicity Pr(| ~ D) 24.90 % 23.72 %
Correctly classied observations 85.40 % 87.27 %
a
Estimated partial effects for a representative person: 40 year old man, married, completed secondary education,
average income and living in a big city
*** statistically signicant at 1 percent; ** statistically signicant at 5 percent; * statistically signicant at 10 percent.
Gasparini, L., Sosa Escudero, W., Marchionni, M., &

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Part III
Material Conditions and Happiness
in Latin America
How the Economy Affects Happiness.
Empirical Findings from Argentina 12
Dardo Ferrer and Victoria Giarrizzo
12.1 Introduction
that people establish between the existential and
economic spheres; (b) to what extent do the
During recent decades economics has tended
variables that make up the economic subsystem,
towards a systematic research into how happi-
such as incomes, employment, housing, or
ness is perceived and valued by people. The
access to consumption of goods and services,
evidence that more wealth and higher levels of
improve individual satisfaction; or (c) when,
material welfare are not necessarily associated
and under what conditions, do these
with bettering how satised people are with
components become an impairment for persons
their lives showed the need for a deeper under-
to experience feelings or perceptions of
standing of the causes of happiness and its links
happiness.
with the economy. Therefore, after being absent
The purpose of this paper will be to present
from economics for over 100 years, since the
three empirical surveys of economics and hap-
1980s economists have once again paid attention
piness carried out in Argentina during 2012. The
to this variable.
overall results of these investigations show that
Backed by the development of more robust
around 75 % of the inhabitants say they are
statistics and more rigorous methodologies,
happy. On an intensity scale, where 1 means
research into happiness multiplied in economic
that happiness is absolutely lacking to 10 where
science, especially during the past decade.
happiness is complete, the average happiness
Although there is still some theoretical vacuum
declared by the population was 6.7 points. But
that on one hand does not allow the economics
on the other hand economic welfare perception
of happiness to be called a sub-discipline of
was very low: 76 % of the same individuals in
science, and on the other hand to design public
the surveys rate it as weak, bad or very bad,
policies in terms of the results that were
revealing a profound gap between the aggregate
obtained, the methodological and empirical
valuations of happiness and the aggregate
advances are signicant, becoming essential
valuations of economic welfare.
tools to understand: (a) the nature of the link
Far from being conclusive, these results are of
a preliminary nature. Nevertheless they are a step
forward to know about individual assessments of
life, to understand the impact that economic
D. Ferrer V. Giarrizzo (*)
Center for Regional and Experimental Economics
variables have on them, and to detect how
(CERX), Buenos Aires, Argentina perceptions of happiness and the subjective
e-mail: vgiarrizzo@gmail.com

194 D. Ferrer and V. Giarrizzo
perceptions of welfare may diverge. From these the welfare or happiness of a society or of a
and other results that were obtained it will be person was increasing it was only necessary
shown that, at least in Argentina, the economy to observe the changes of certain economic
does not appear to be decisive for happiness, but variables, like Gross Domestic Product
that there are situations where it can clearly sig- (GDP) or per capita income.
nal the economy as a major conditional factor in
order to perceive this situation of being satised However, since the mid 1970s a number of
with life. empirical studies appeared that queried the direct
relationship between growth and happiness, and
proved that there was not always a direct and
12.2 Criteria to Measure Happiness automatic link (Easterlin 1974; Diener 1984). As
from the 1990s the evidence that more income,
With the marginal revolution that appeared in the more wealth, more employment or more consump-
mid nineteenth century which led to the so-called tion were not genuine indicators of a greater wel-
Neoclassical School, economics abandoned the fare or happiness of people became more abundant
classical tradition which associated economic (Inglehart 1990; Veenhoven 1991, 1993; Easterlin
welfare with happiness, and started to link it to 1995; Oswald 1997; Diener and Suh 1999;
utility. But there was a peculiarity: it converted Easterlin 2001; Blanchower and Oswald 2001,
this utility into a normative concept dened by 2004), and these opened up new lines of research
observable facts (consumers choices). This new to assess the welfare and satisfaction of
interpretation had two major consequences for individuals.
economic science and specically with the object These advances have latterly led to doubting
of its research: that traditional objective indicators, like GDP,
per capita income or the unemployment rate,
(a) At a microeconomic level, in the neoclassi- reect what is happening to welfare and personal
cal viewpoint that prevailed during almost happiness, leading to a search for alternative
all the twentieth century the welfare of any criteria that enable a better approach to these
person is measured by their utility. And variables. Some questions for which answers
according to this school individuals are are sought are: How happy does a human being
rational and maximizing beings, when they feel or perceive? Is he or she happier or
make decisions they are maximizing their unhappier than before? What do these
utility, and they are therefore maximizing perceptions of happiness depend on? What can
their welfare. The strong assumptions posed be done to make people happier?
by the neoclassical economists ensure that As a theoretical construct it does not seem
any decision and choice that is made or operational to dene a criterion to determine
carried out by an individual maximizes his who is happy, as if it were a poverty line or an
or her net pleasure. Therefore, from this unemployment rate. Because happiness is an
perspective it is not necessary to ask intrinsic factor for each person it is more appro-
individuals about how happy they feel, priate to quantify it according to the intimate
because the theory assures us that in each assessments that each person makes about their
of its choices a human being is revealing its happiness rather than by being judged by
preferences and maximizing its utility specialists. This is why studies of happiness tend
(happiness). to set up approximations by dening terms,
(b) At the macroeconomic level the new domi- concepts or subjective states that may be assumed
nant focus assumed that economic growth to be a happy state, and based on these inquire
and higher income would automatically how these are felt by individuals themselves.
lead to improving the welfare of the popu- One of the forerunners of empirical research
lation. Therefore, in order to know whether into happiness in economics was Easterlin, when
12 How the Economy Affects Happiness. Empirical Findings from Argentina 195
in 1974 he assessed individual happiness using Panel Survey (BHPS) and the German Socio-
questionnaires prepared by the World Values Economic Panel (GSOEP), among others.
Survey that included general questions in order Following the pattern of these developments,
to measure them qualitatively. The question that in 2012 the Centre for Regional and Experimen-
was asked, which is widely used nowadays was: tal Economics (CERX) undertook a further stage
Overall, to what extent do you consider yourself of the Economics and Happiness Research Pro-
happy, very happy, quite happy or not very gram (PIEF) it has been carrying out in Argentina
happy? In another range of data used by since 2007. The program was executed out in
Easterlin the people interviewed had to grade three stages during the year. In the rst stage,
their degree of happiness on a scale from 0 (the carried out in June, individual perceptions of
worst possible life) to 10 (best life). The purpose happiness and economic welfare were deter-
of these surveys was to know to what degree mined by general surveys. For this purpose it
people are happy. surveyed: (a) how happiness is assessed by
Since then different methods for research into individuals along a broad qualitative scale (the
happiness have been proposed. In general, infor- scale used was very happy, happy, slightly
mation about how happy people are is obtained unhappy and very unhappy); and (b) their eco-
from simple questionnaires, with direct questions nomic welfare assessments (the scale used was
to obtain values about how satised people are very good, good, regular, bad and very
with life. These surveys tend to include a few bad). These were accompanied by questions that
questions with various items to be answered on assessed social conditions of access to education
ranked scales which might be: unhappy, and health, using the same types of scales.
slightly unhappy, happy, very happy or In the second and third stages of the PIEF,
extremely happy. Many of these surveys often carried out between July and December, based on
include socio-economic variables in order to the results obtained from the overall survey spe-
assess how much these aspects affect the cic aspects were approached by eld
valuations (if women are happier than men, experiments and specic questionnaires in order
older people than younger, religious people or to be able to understand how changes of income
atheists, rich than poor, etc.). But while some or in the environment affect the results.
questionnaires ask individuals about their happi- Although these studies did not have a broad
ness directly, others, considering the difculties geographical coverage, they allow one to know
and not-always-transparent answers that persons individual feelings about happiness in Argentina,
give, seek to induce a reply through similar and to nd a connection with some relevant eco-
concepts like satisfaction, joy, enthusiasm or per- nomic variables such as incomes, employment
sonal development, among many others. quality, health, education, debt and free time.
In 1989 Argyle, Martin and Crossland devel- Meanwhile, depending on the context and the
oped the Oxford Happiness Inventory, which was hypothesis that were proposed, new variables
the basis of the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire were included that added value to the results.
prepared by Hills and Argyle in 2002. With this
questionnaire, which is much used at present,
people had to report their satisfaction with
29 items and from these measurements the stated 12.3 Happiness Research
degree of happiness is inferred. Other in Argentina
measurements that have been popular since the
mid 1980s were the life satisfaction indexes and During June 2012 a general survey of 800 people
scale (Diener 1984; Diener et al. 1985; Pavot and in Buenos Aires city and the metropolitan area
Diener 1993). The question about being satised was carried out in order to assess their individual
with life was used in the World Values Scale perceptions of happiness and welfare. The ques-
(WVS), Latinobar ometro, the British Household tionnaire was stratied by sex, age, occupation,
income, marital situation and the number of chil- people who say they do not have enough income
dren, and included eight questions about: to cover their monthly spending requirements
60 % say they are happy. The economy has a
(a) How each person rated their level of eco- clear impact on happiness, but at least for people
nomic welfare: Very Bad, Bad, Regular, whose households have some form of income,
Good or Very Good. although it may be a conditioning factor (as will
(b) How people rated happiness they obtained be shown below), it is not determinative. The
from their daily life: Very Happy, Quite results coincide with the different lines of
Happy, Unhappy, Very Unhappy. research that the international literature on econ-
(c) Satisfaction with their present life: Very omy and happiness has said in recent decades:
Satisfactory, Quite satised, Barely happiness has multiple dimensions and the econ-
satised, Not satised at all. omy is only a small part of them. People can feel
(d) Rating their degree of happiness on a scale happy even though their economic welfare
from 1 to 10. values are unfavorable (Table 12.1).
(e) Identifying things and situations that a per- When the results obtained in 2012 are com-
son believes might make him or her happier pared with the economics and happiness
and which at present are affecting their hap- perceptions obtained between 2007 and 2011, it
piness in a negatively. would seem that improving or worsening of eco-
(f) Impact of work on their perception of nomic welfare valuations does not affect how
happiness individual happiness is perceived: while in
those years the welfare feelings were lower, hap-
piness feelings remained stable. Although the
changes in welfare perceptions are due to
12.3.1 Comparisons of Happiness changes in variables like incomes, employment,
and Welfare or access to certain goods and services like edu-
cation, health and housing; happiness feelings,
The results of the rst survey showed similarities which seem to respond to a greater number of
with studies carried out in 2007 and 2011: people variables, show almost no signicant changes
revealed relatively high levels of personal happi- between one annual measurement and another.
ness perceptions, but not of economic welfare. Therefore, from a social values standpoint
According to the answers obtained, 74.9 % of the (such as education and health) one can see that
persons interviewed said they were happy or people feel happy even in with a weak economic
very happy, but simultaneously 72.6 % said and economic and social feeling: 69.7 % of
that their level of economic welfare was individuals say that their access to health services
weak, bad, or very bad. is Poor, Bad or Very Bad, and another
If the economy was the sole factor that deter- 60.3 % say the same about their households
mined happiness one might expect that if the access to the education system. Nevertheless,
number of people with positive economic wel- happiness feelings are relatively high, proving
fare ratings is low, the number of persons with that these conditions are not the sole explanations
positive happiness ratings should be likewise. of happiness (Table 12.2).
However, when contrasted the opposite occurs.
Low welfare perceptions do not lead to low hap-
piness feelings. This suggests an initial hypothe- 12.3.2 Economics and Happiness
sis: when people dene their degree of happiness
they can set their economic situation aside and What can make a person happier? The literature
decide how they feel valuing spheres of their has explicitly looked into this aspect, although
lives that transcend the bounds of economics. the results do not always coincide with personal
This emerges from another fact: even among beliefs. In a supplementary stage of the rst
Table 12.1 Happiness and welfare values in Argentina, 2012 percentages

If you had to dene how happy your day-to-day life is, you If you had to dene your economic welfare, you
would say that you are: would say it is
Very happy 9.3 Very bad 3.1
Happy 65.6 Bad 20.3
Slightly unhappy 23.3 Weak 58.1
Very unhappy 1.8 Good 18.5
Very good 0.0
Source: Research Programme on Economics and Happiness (PIEF), Centre for Regional and Experimental Economy
(CERX)
Table 12.2 How access to social goods is rated in Argentina, 2012 percentages
How do you rate your familys access How do you rate the quality of education your family
to the health system? has access to?
Very bad 3.1 2.7
Bad 21.1 15.2
Weak 45.5 42.4
Good 26.9 34.8
Very good 3.4 4.9
Source: Research Program on Economics and Happiness (PIEF), Centre for Regional and Experimental Economy
survey carried out in June 2012, the people

Table 12.3 What would you need to be happier?
interviewed were asked what they would need Argentina, 2012 percentages
to be happy or happier. This was an open ques-
More income 29.0
tion and over 60 % of the replies referred to
A better job 21.4
economic conditions: they were associated with Own a home 10.5
more income (29 % of the answers), more and Leisure 9.0
better jobs (21.4 %) and owning a home Welfare 6.2
(10.5 %). The other replies were different indi- Children/partner 4.8
vidual and social conditions, such as more free Personal development 4.3
time (9 %), more welfare (6.2 %), having a Economic stability 4.3
partner or children (4.8 %), personal develop- Fewer problems 3.3
ment (4.3 %) or economic stability (4.3 %). Training 2.4
This result does not contradict the initial Health 1.9
Education 1.4
assumption that people feel happy despite a
A car 1.0
weak economic situation, but in order to feel
Security 0.5
happy or to improve their happiness they believe
Source: PIEF-CERX
that better economic conditions are necessary.
Thus, although happiness is not an economic
dimension, it does appear to be a fact that is who are ailing economically say they are just as
conditioned by economics and, maybe because happy? Once again, this is proof of the overesti-
of this, the economic component of happiness is mation of the economic component of happiness
estimated in excess by people, especially when (Table 12.3).
the economic restriction is sharper. In fact, if One question that stems from the previous
people believe that better economic conditions conclusions is: why do people with a positive
are needed in order to be happier, why do people economic welfare say they are unhappy or
Table 12.4 How personal happiness is felt according to family income percentages
Family incomes
High Medium Low
Very happy 17.5 4.9 3.9
Happy 63.5 69.4 56.9
Slightly unhappy 19.0 24.3 35.3
Very unhappy 0.0 1.4 3.9
% of sample 33 33 34
Average income US$ 1,440 US$ 990 US$ 512
Source: PIEF-CERX
very unhappy? Dividing the sample in three other hand, a rationale is shown, because 12.3 %
tranches, according to the levels of family income of people who feel unhappy have the necessary
reported by those interviewed, one can observe income, coinciding with the 10.5 % who rate
that in the third with highest incomes (families their economic welfare positively. Obviously,
with average monthly incomes of US$1440) there are other reasons to be unhappy or happy.
19 % say they are unhappy, for example. Of In this scenario the issue reappears: why can a
middle income people (average monthly incomes person be happy even though their consumption
of US$990) 24.3 % say they are unhappy and is frustrated by the economic restriction?
another 1.4 % are very unhappy (Table 12.4). In order to answer these issues, in September
Evidently, there are hidden areas within eco- 2012 a series of experimental surveys were carried
nomic determinism. Different spheres of individ- out. Four hundred fty interviews were made in
ual and collective reality interact in a persons life. social recreational spaces like cinemas, theaters or
Being satised with life, such as by personal gyms, where the inquiry was once again about
achievements or setting up a family, interconnects how happy people feel, and which aspects
with how public policies are assessed and belong- improve happiness or worsen this. The results
ing to a group; and this is the basis of an individual exhibited some substantial changes. When people
happiness feeling that is not always representative were interviewed leaving socio-recreational
of peoples the economic situation. activities their happiness feeling also rose sharply:
more than 90 % of the persons interviewed said
they were happy or very happy, while at the
12.3.3 Consumption of Recreation same time their welfare valuations were also sig-
and Happiness nicantly higher. To some extent the consumption
of cultural, game and sports goods and services is
From an economic standpoint a persons welfare an indicator of social welfare, which, at least for a
is satisfactory access to the largest amount of while, modies individual happiness feelings
goods and services. With an ongoing desire for (Table 12.5). Of course, this also leads to a further
satisfaction, individuals face consumption question: do people say they are happier because
choices subject to budget restrictions. According they go to the movies, theater or the gym, or, on
to the general survey only 22.1 % of the persons the other hand, are happier people those who go to
interviewed said they had enough income to meet such places, and therefore raise the happiness
their needs. Of the people who said they were statements? According to the behavioral axiom,
happy, 25.3 % declared having sufcient income, the consumption of cultural goods causes satisfac-
while 12.3 % called themselves unhappy. tion in terms of reducing unpleasantness and
Again, a greater percentage of people feel increasing pleasure, which suggests that these
happy although their revenues do not cover people should make a more optimistic assessment
their subjective consumption threshold. On the of their happiness at the time.
Table 12.5 Happiness and welfare feelings of people involved in cultural and sports activities Argentina, 2012
percentages
If you had to say how happy you are, would you say you If you had to dene your economic welfare, would you
are: say it is:
Normal Leaving cinemas, theatres Normal Leaving cinemas, theatres
situation and gyms situation and gyms
Very happy 9.3 31.1 Very 3.1 4.5
bad
Happy 65.6 60.0 Bad 20.3 10.2
Slightly 23.3 8.9 Weak 58.1 35.6
unhappy
Good 18.5 38.6
Very 1.8 0.0 Very 0.0 11.1
unhappy good
Source: PIEF-CERX
12.3.4 Leisure, Beliefs and Causes 12.3.5 Happiness, Income Intensity

of Happiness and Changes
The second part of the interview carried out in If incomes rise, does happiness also increase?
the September 2012 survey of people who were Always? Sometimes? A third eld experiment
leaving games, recreation or sporting activities, carried out in October 2012 sought to determine
inquired about what things affected individual the intensity of happiness felt by people on one
happiness. What is interesting about the replies hand, and to assess the changes due to certain
is that when answering in another context, in this changes in the economic environment. For this
case in recreational spaces, the pattern of replies 450 people with jobs were interviewed, stratied
changed. As the concern about the budget restric- according to income levels, and they were asked
tion largely disappeared, aspects like free time, to rate their happiness and satisfaction with life
relationships and feeling good reveal their on a scale from 1 to 10. Three theories were
hidden sphere. If under normal conditions over tested:
60 % of the individual replies indicated that in
order to be happy required higher incomes, more Hypothesis 1: an increase in personal income
and better jobs or housing, in recreational levels initially leads to their happiness levels
environments 21.9 % of the people replied that rising;
in order to be happy they needed more free time, Hypothesis 2: the marginal utility of income is
a further 13.1 % a partner, and only 12.1 % declining (conrming the classical hypothe-
mentioned higher incomes (Table 12.6). sis), and as incomes rise further increases of
Apart from economic welfare, there are income provide successively lower happiness
conditions referring to satisfaction with life levels (if not none at all);
are seen to have a direct inuence on the personal Hypothesis 3: seeking happiness through eco-
happiness levels. One aspect that highlights this nomic factors has a ceiling that is not at the
situation is the call for free time and for quality of point where a person achieves total happiness.
employment and labor relations. Unemployment
and precarious employment are specically eco- To test theses hypothesis, how and to what
nomic facts, and a primary objective. But in this extent higher incomes lead to higher levels of
dimension, employment appears as a socializing personal happiness, as an initial effect, was
element that in excess detracts hours from per- analyzed. For this, the participants had to grade
sonal satisfaction and upsets the person doing their current happiness level on a numerical scale
the job. from 1 to 10, where 1 indicates a not happy at
Table 12.6 Causes of happiness of people taking part in cultural and sporting activities percentages
What things you believe would increase your happiness? What things you believe would decline your happiness?
Free time 21.9 Not enough free time 21.1
Partner 13.1 Job problems 13.1
More income 12.1 Personal problems 12.3
Emotional stability 11.5 Social inequality 11.0
Travel 10.8 Income and ination problems 10.9
Buying a car/house 9.0 National problems 9.4
Better society 6.4 Health 8.3
Less ination 5.6 Not having a partner or children 8.1
Better job 5.0 Lack of housing 5.9
Children 2.5
Others 2.1
Source: PIEF-CERX
all level and 10 total happiness. Based on this, For most of the population interviewed, the
alternative and consecutive hypothetical initial impact of a hypothetical income raise
scenarios were proposed, and the people was an increase of the perceived happiness
interviewed had to grade what they believed (hypothesis 1: increases of personal income
would happen to their happiness level at each of levels initially make happiness levels rise).
the stages. In the rst hypothetical scenario The happiness intensity in the initial scenario
monthly income was doubled, in the second was 6.7 (average value), and in the nal
hypothetical scenario it was four times as much, hypothesis scenario it was 8.6, which means
and nally it was multiplied by 10. The results that happiness increased 1.9 points and 80 %
conrmed the three hypotheses: of the people said that their happiness grew
when their incomes multiplied ten times. The
78 % of the people interviewed rated their same conclusion stems from the two previous
happiness levels at between 6 and 8. The aver- scenarios (when incomes doubled or
age happiness level of the initial scenario was multiplied by four).
6.7 points.
When the rst hypothetical scenario was pro- However, the improvement in happiness
posed, with income doubling, the happiness intensity due to higher income was smaller each
level rose to a 7.7 point average (+1.0 points). time: in the hypothetical scenario when incomes
Sixty-nine percent of those interviewed were doubled average happiness increased 1.0 point
happier than in the previous scenario. (from 6.7 to 7.7), when they grew four times
When the second hypothetical scenario with happiness only rose 0.6 points, and when
four times the income was proposed, the aver- multiplied by 10 happiness intensity increased
age happiness grading rose to 8.3 % (0.6 0.3 points. This data conrm the declining mar-
points more, which means the increase was ginal utility of income hypothesis (hypothesis 2).
less than the previous scenario). For 74 % of The results did not show signicant
the people happiness increased from the rst differences between income strata: in the lower
scenario. income sectors when hypothetical incomes dou-
In the third hypothetical scenario, where bled happiness grew steeper than in the middle
incomes multiplied by 10, average happiness and higher income sectors, which shows that the
rose to 8.6 % (up 0.3 points). For 80 % of income restriction for these individuals acts as a
those interviewed happiness increased from greater limitation to their happiness and also
the initial scenario. conrms the hypothesis of a declining marginal
utility of money as suggested by economic The replies reveal what a person believes
literature. would happen, not what in fact will happen. It
is possible that people overestimate the impact of
In the middle and high income tranches, the their income on their happiness levels and faced
average initial happiness rating was 6.8, while with a real life change similar to that posed its
in the lower income sectors the average initial actual impact on happiness may not change at all.
rating was lower at 6.4 points. In Kanehman and Sudgen (2005) terms, that the
When incomes doubled (hypothetical sce- utility experienced ex-post may not coincide
nario 1) the happiness level for the middle with the ex-ante utility perceptions. In fact,
and upper income strata rose 7.5 points on when what happens to the happiness of person
average (increasing 0.7 points), but for almost A whose income is hypothetically doubled
half of those interviewed their happiness (scenario 2) is then compared with the happiness
remained unchanged compared to the initial rating of person B who in the initial scenario
scenario. In the lower income strata with had an income equal to what A now has, one
twice the income 90 % of those interviewed concludes that what increases happiness is noting
felt that their happiness improved and the the change. In fact in 89 % of the cases happiness
average happiness of this sector was 8.1 was seen to be higher for A persons if in
(up 1.7 points from the initial scenario). scenario 2 they had the same income as B
When incomes were quadrupled (hypothetical persons in the initial scenario. This means that:
scenario 2) the average happiness rating of the
middle and upper income strata rose to Of the A persons whose incomes in scenario
8 points (0.5 points higher than the previous 2 were the same as the incomes that B
scenario), while for the lower income strata it persons had in the initial scenario 89 %
increased to 9.0 points (rising 0.9 points). declared higher happiness levels in scenario
Finally, when incomes multiplied by 10 happi- 2 than those reported by B persons in the
ness increased to 8.3 points in the middle and initial scenario.
upper income sectors, a 0.3 point increase
compared to the previous scenario, although In other words, at the same income level,
65 % of the people did not report any change. happiness reported by those who saw their
In the lower income sectors happiness the income change was higher than the happiness
happiness level rose 9.2 points (up 0.2 points) of those who remained unchanged.
and 18 % of those interviewed replied that at
this income level they would attain total
happiness.
12.3.6 Economic Situation
and Happiness
As emerges from these results economic
improvements seem to increase perceived happi-
The same questionnaire asked participants to
ness, but this increase is possibly temporary,
relate their happiness with their economic situa-
while having an average maximum of 8.6 points
tion. The results show that people consider that
(on a scale from 1 to 10). The gap between 8.6
economic welfare has a relative inuence on their
and 10 is made up by other factors that would not
happiness (Table 12.8). In fact 53.5 % of
be solved with higher incomes (hypothesis 3).
individuals indicated that their economic situation
Therefore, in so far as the marginal utility of
only more or less affects their happiness, and
income is declining, the link between economy
another 9.8 % said it does not affect it. 36.9 % said
and happiness reaches a maximum point as from
that their economic situations affect happiness a
which complete happiness is determined by other
lot (9.6 %) or quite a lot (27.3 %).
aspects of life (Table 12.7).
Table 12.7 Changes in how happiness is felt depending on hypothetical income changes
High and middle
income sectors Low income sectors Average for sample
Increase Increase Increase
from from from
Happiness prior Happiness prior Happiness prior
level level level level level level
If you had to quantify your level of 6.8 6.4 6.7
happiness on a scale from 1 to
10, how many points would you
give it (1 extremely unhappy;
10 utterly happy)
If your monthly income is doubled, 7.5 0.7 8.1 1.7 7.7 1.0
how would you rate your
happiness? (1 extremely
unhappy; 10 utterly happy)
If your monthly income is 8.0 0.5 9.0 0.9 8.3 0.6
multiplied by four (if you used to
earn ARS 4,000 monthly and you
now earn ARS 16,000 every
month), how would you rate your
happiness? (1 extremely; 10
utterly happy)
If your monthly income is 8.3 0.3 9.2 0.2 8.6 0.3
multiplied by 10 (if you used to
earn ARS 4,000 monthly and you
now earn ARS 40,000 every
month), how would you rate your
happiness? (1 extremely; 10
utterly happy)
Source: PIEF-CERX
Table 12.8 Economic situation and happiness

Argentina, 2012 percentages which enable one to quantify other expressions of
human welfare, including happiness.
How much do you feel your economic situation affects
your happiness Studies of happiness are quite recent, but they
A lot 9.6 coincide that it is a fact with multiple dimensions
Quite a lot 27.3 in which the economic dimension is only one of
More or less 53.3 the many factors that affect it and is not always the
Little 9.8 determining or causal factor. In fact, in Argentina
Not at all 0.0 empirical studies carried out in 2012 conrm that
Source: PIEF-CERX people may feel happy even though their economic
welfare values are unfavorable. To quantify this:
while 74.9 % of the people interviewed in these
12.4 Conclusions studies said they felt happy or quite happy, a
similar percentage said that their economic welfare
The twentieth century was marked by a widespread level was weak, bad or very bad. The popula-
development of theory that assumed economic tion declared relatively high levels of individual
growth and increasing wealth meant more welfare. happiness while feeling themselves weak economic
However, the progress in literature on happiness has and socially, where, for example, 69.7 % of the
shown that growth, welfare and happiness are not people said that their access to the health system
always associated, leading to the need to develop was weak or bad, and 60.3 % said likewise about
social indicators and alternative measurements their households access to the educational system.
This situation is far from being a paradox: as Papers 10499). Cambridge: National Bureau of Eco-
the economy is not the only cause of happiness nomic Research Inc.
Bourdieu, P. (2005). The social structures of the economy.
people may set their economic situation aside and Cambridge: Polity Press.
say how they feel valuing aspects of their lives Diener, E. (1984). Subjective well-being. Psychology
that go beyond the limits of economics. This is Bulletin, 95(3), 542575.
revealed by another fact: even among those peo- Diener, E., & Suh, E. M. (1999). National Differences in
Subjective Well-being. In D. Kahneman, E. Diener, &
ple who said they did not have sufcient monthly N. Schwarz (Eds.), Well-being: The foundations of
income to cover the expenditures that they hedonic psychology (pp. 434450). New York:
require, 60 % said they are happy, while at the Russell Sage.
same time another 40 % said that they were quite Diener, E., Emmons, R., Larsen, J., & Grifn, S. (1985).
The satisfaction with life scale. Journal Personality
or very unhappy, a percentage that is also signi- Assessment, 49(1), 7175.
cant and where the economic restrictions appears Dluhosch, B., Horgos, D., & Zimmermann, W. (2012).
as the main obstacle to feeling happy. Explaining the income-distribution puzzle in happi-
Despite this, people believe that the economic ness research: Theory and evidence. Helmut Schmidt
University, Econ Department Discussion Paper
sphere plays a more important role than these 117, May 2012.
results suggest: when asked what they would Easterlin, A. (1974). Does economic growth improve the
need to be happy, more than six out of ten human lot? Some empirical evidence. In P. A. David
answers referred to economic conditions like & M. W. Reder (Eds.), Nations and households in
economic growth: Essays in honor of Moses
incomes, more and better jobs, economic stabil- Abramovitz (pp. 89125). London: Academic.
ity or owning a home. In other words, although Easterlin, A. (1995). Will raising the incomes of all
happiness is not an economic fact, it is an eco- increase the happiness of all? Journal of Economic
nomically conditioned fact, and this leads people Behavior and Organization, 27, 3548.
Easterlin, R. A. (2001). Income and happiness: Towards a
to overestimate the impact of these economic unied theory. The Economic Journal, 111.
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Relative Income and Job Satisfaction
in Chile 13
Rodrigo Montero and Tomas Rau
13.1 Introduction (1978), many articles have been published

related to the determinants of job satisfaction.
Research on subjective well-being has gained For instance, there has been reported that job
importance during the last decades and much satisfaction is relevant for general life satisfac-
attention has been placed on its determinants. tion (Rojas 2006; Van Praag and Ferrer-i-
Since the Easterlin paradox (Easterlin 1974), Carbonell 2008), and that the reference group
there has been a growing literature studying the wage affects our own job satisfaction (Clark
determinants of subjective well-being and its and Oswald 1996). We have learnt that, on aver-
relationship with income (Frijters et al. 2004).1 age, women are more satised with their job
Partly as a result of this paradox, the literature (Clark 1997) and prefer part-time over full-time
has focused on the effects of relative income on jobs (Booth and Van Ours 2008). There is evi-
subjective well-being and in particular how to dence on how shocks in earnings distribution
determine the reference group to construct a change the distribution of job satisfaction
measure of relative income (Senik 2009; Clark (Hamermesh 2001) and that the effect of peers
et al. 2008; Clark and Senik 2010). salaries is asymmetric if they are above or below
Given that feelings about ones work is a very our own salary (Card et al. 2012).
important dimension of life, understanding the At the same time, studying the determinants
variables affecting job satisfaction seems a nec- of job satisfaction is important for the entire
essary task when studying individual well-being. economy as well since it has been reported that
Indeed, after the pioneering work of Freeman job satisfaction predicts quitting, absenteeism,
and productivity, factors that may affect employ-
ment and economic growth. In particular, study-
ing the link between job satisfaction and wage
1
structure is key for human resource managers
A good review of the economics literature on happiness
since workers effort and consequently their pro-
can be found in Frey and Stutzer (2002), Van Praag and
Ferrer-i-Carbonell (2008), and Stutzer and Frey (2012). ductivity, will depend on the distance between
fair and actual salaries (Akerlof and Yellen
R. Montero (*)
Departamento de Economa, Universidad Diego Portales, 1990). In this context, a fair salary can be under-
Santiago, Region Metropolitana, Chile stood as the average income of a workers refer-
e-mail: rodrigo.montero@udp.cl ence group, which could be dened as
T. Rau individuals with similar level of human capital.
Instituto de Economa, Ponticia Universidad Cat
olica de This explains the increasing interest in studying
Chile, Santiago, Region Metropolitana, Chile

206 R. Montero and T. Rau
the effect of relative income on subjective well- concern in terms of opportunity and income
being, e.g. job satisfaction. Therefore, it seems inequality (Contreras et al. 2012). This persistent
plausible that there is a negative relationship inequality may have an adverse effect on long-
between relative income and individual job satis- term growth, but can also negatively affect the
faction; that has been called the comparison perception of well-being among the population.
effect (Clark and Oswald 1996; Card Indeed, subjective well-being of people may
et al. 2012; Mumford and Smith 2012). Never- decrease in a society with prevailing high levels
theless, a recent branch of the literature has of inequality.
revealed a different potential relationship Our results show that not only personal wages
between relative income and subjective well- matters in job satisfaction, but also relative
being. Clark et al. (2007) argue that a higher wages. Moreover, our estimates reveal an asym-
reference group income level could increase job metric effect of reference income on job satisfac-
satisfaction because it reveals valuable information. In effect, the model estimated indicates that
tion about ones own future prospects. The people with wage lower than their reference
higher the future wage prospects, the higher the group wage have less job satisfaction; neverthe-
level of job satisfaction. This is known as the less those with higher wages compared to their
information effect (Manski 2000). reference group do not have more job satisfaction
Therefore, it is possible to establish a relation- (statistically non-signicant). Thus, we can infer
ship between relative wage, job satisfaction, and that if we are able to direct the benets of eco-
productivity. This fact reveals that simple economic growth towards low-income people, we
nomic growth, with increasing absolute wages, could achieve a signicant impact in terms of
does not guarantee higher levels of greater well- subjective well-being. Economic growth alone
being (Easterlin 2013; Easterlin et al. 2013). is not enough to increase the subjective well-
However, no study has been designed to capture being, measured as job satisfaction, of the
the impact of reference wages on individual job population.
satisfaction for Chile. Thus, the aim of this chap- The rest of this chapter is organized as
ter is to study the determinants of job satisfaction follows. After this introduction, Section 13.2
in Chile and to provide empirical evidence of the reviews the available literature on this topic.
relationship between relative income and job sat- Section 13.3 discusses the estimated model. Sec-
isfaction. To do so, we implement different tion 13.4 presents the data and main results. Last,
specications to construct the reference group in Section 13.5 we conclude.
wage following the available methodologies
(Clark and Oswald 1996; Ferrer-i-Carbonell
2005; Budria and Ferrer-i-Carbonell 2012). 13.2 A Brief Review
Chile is an interesting country to analyze of the Literature
since it is a middle-income economy that has
experienced consistently high levels of economic There is a vast international literature on job
growth over the last 25 years. According to satisfaction since the work of Freeman (1978)
gures from the Central Bank of Chile, the econ- but in this section we review recent studies that
omy grew at an average annual rate of 5.7 % focus on the relationship of job satisfaction and
during the 19862012 period. As a consequence, relative income, understood as the income of the
the poverty rate dropped from 38.6 %, in 1990 to individuals reference group, those who share
14.4 % in 2011 according to ofcial gures from similar socio-economic characteristics.
Ministry of Social Development. These positive The interdependence of preferences is the
indicators have enabled the Chilean economy to underlying factor of why individual satisfaction
obtain international recognition and, therefore depends on comparison with peers. Therefore,
acceptance as an OECD country. Despite this, individual job satisfaction may depend both on
inequality is severely high and still remains a an individuals own wage and on his reference
13 Relative Income and Job Satisfaction in Chile 207
groups wage. Certainly there might be many likely to be job searching. There is not any effect
different ways to construct an individual refer- for those earning above the median wage.
ence group, and that is a serious concern in the Mumford and Smith (2012) also present evi-
empirical literature of subjective well-being. For dence for British workers, testing different
instance, Clark and Oswald (1996) estimate a measures of relative wages (workplace average
Mincer equation and then predict the wage con- wage, workplace average male and female
ditional on individual characteristics. Thus, the wages). The authors found that relative wage is
predicted wage would represent the reference very important in terms of job satisfaction for
wage for the individual. Using data on British men, but do not nd a relationship between rela-
workers they found that job satisfaction is negative wage and job satisfaction for women.
tively affected by their reference group wage. Meanwhile, an opposite result has been found
The criticisms for this approach relate to the in the empirical analysis. Clark et al. (2007)
inherent problems in the estimation of mincer show that job satisfaction increases when
equations that threaten the consistency of the co-workers receive a higher wage. They point
estimators, such as miss-specication and mea- out that a higher reference wage has a double
surement error among others. effect. On the one hand it generates jealousy (the
Ferrer-i-Carbonell (2005) using data from the comparison effect) but on the other hand, it is
German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) for the also a signal of potential future wages, which
19921997 period construct a reference group could increase actual job satisfaction (the infor-
income measure using data for individuals shar- mation effect).
ing similar characteristics such as age, education, Clark and Senik (2010) offer interesting evi-
and geographical zone. She nds that an increase dence from Europe related to the intensity and
in individual income relative to reference group directionality of income comparisons. Their
income has a signicant positive effect on indi- analysis reveals that co-workers are the most
vidual well-being. In a related work, Budria and common comparison group. Hence the reference
Ferrer-i-Carbonell (2012) propose that group is endogenous because individuals are
individuals are actually rank sensitive. Hence, more likely to compare themselves with those
they dene a new variable called the rank as who they interact more often. In that direction,
the position of individual in terms of his labor Brodeur and Fleche (2013) present evidence for
income as a proportion of the number of the United States about the effect of neighbors
individuals in his reference group. Using the income on individual subjective well-being.
GSOEP they found robust evidence of the impor- They carry out an analysis at county, ZIP code,
tance of income rank in terms of life satisfaction. and street level, nding a negative relationship
They additionally argue that the said effect varies between neighbor income and well-being at the
based on different levels of non-cognitive skills. county and street level, but this relation is
For instance, the authors provide evidence reversed at ZIP code level. They argue that peo-
indicating that persons with high levels of neu- ple like living in a rich ZIP code with less or no
roticism and extraversion, or with low levels of poverty because of the preferences for high
negative reciprocity, are more sensitive to social status.
income comparisons. The evidence discussed so far focus on devel-
In a recent study Card et al. (2012) evaluate oped countries; little is known about well-being
the effect of peers salaries on job satisfaction of in developing countries. In Latin America, Rojas
American workers through disclosing wage (2012) analyzes the relevance of relative income
information. They found that job satisfaction using the Gallup 2007 survey. The author
reacts to relative wage in a nonlinear way. examines two measures of subjective well-
Workers earning below the median wage of being: life appreciation and economic satisfac-
their peers (at the same pay unit and occupation) tion. Constructing the income of reference group
report lower job satisfaction and they are more based on age and gender criteria, he found that
relative income is very important to explain both 1 ; 2 ; 3 , and . Assuming normality the
life appreciation and economic satisfaction. probabilities associated with each alternative are
Indeed, he found that 60 % of the gains in life the following:
appreciation are due to a rise in relative income, 0
while only 40 % because of a higher absolute P js k k x RI k1
0
income. x RI,
As can be derived from this brief discussion,
13:3
the evidence about the determinants of job satis-
faction is very limited for developing countries. where is the cumulative distribution function
Therefore, this chapter provides empirical evi- (cdf) of a normal distribution. Therefore, the
dence for a developing country, Chile. log-likelihood to maximize is given by:
X X
l; ; n
i1 k1 qi, k lnP jsi
4
k;
13.3 Relative Income and Job
13:4
Satisfaction
where qi,k is equal to one if jsi k and equal to
In order to estimate the determinants of job satis- zero otherwise.
faction and, in particular, the effect of relative The interpretation of marginal effects in
income, we follow an ordered probit approach. ordered probit model is a bit tricky. Assuming
This is because job satisfaction is measured in an that covariates are continuous, the marginal is:
ordinal manner. In effect, job satisfaction takes
four possible values: {1, 2, 3, 4} with 1 being not P js k 0
at all satised and 4 very satised.2 k1 x RI

xl
Thus, the model can be established as follows: 0
k x RIl : 13:5
js* x0 RI u 13:1
Assuming that l is positive, xl will increase P
where js* is the level of individual job satisfac- ( js 4) and it will decrease P( js 1), but the
tion, the vector x0 represents a set of factors effect of xl over the middle cells (probabilities) is
affecting job satisfaction, RI is a measure of the uncertain and must be calculated.
reference group income (wages), and u is a In what follows, we describe the covariates to
non-observable residual term. What we observe be included in Eq. 13.1. The covariate decision is
is the following: based on the international literature of job satis-
faction and the structure of the data. Therefore,
jsi ki f k1 < js
i k , 13:2 we include variables related to individual
characteristics (gender, age, schooling, wage,
with k 1,2,3,4, 0 -1 and 4 1. With
self employment, number of hours worked, ten-
this structure, the parameters to be estimated are:
ure), and variables related to rm where person
works (size, industry). Finally, we include a mea-
2
Van Praag and Ferrer-i-Carbonell (2008) have proposed sure of reference group income.
the probit-adapted OLS approach which consists of
We try three different measures of reference
cardinalizing the dependent variable in order to apply
the standard ordinary least squares estimator. Their results group income, following the literature. The rst
show that compared with an ordered probit model, the approach consists of estimating a standard
probit-adapted OLS provides similar results in terms of Mincer equation using schooling, age (and
the estimated trade-off ratios. The main advantage of the
its square) and hours worked as covariates,
probit-adapted OLS approach is that it is simpler in
computational terms than standard ordered probit model and correcting for bias selection (Clark and
while yielding equivalent results. This estimation method Oswald 1996; Heckman 1979). Then we predict
is especially attractive when working with more compli- wage conditional on individual characteristics
cated models.
to nd the reference income (Montero and of 2,000 households from the 2006 CASEN sur-
Rau 2015). vey in order to understand the missing
The second approach follows Ferrer-i- dimensions of poverty.6 Therefore, the data
Carbonell (2005) and consists of constructing contains nationally representative information
the reference group using information about about income, health, education, housing,
age, education, and geographical zone. We split employment quality, empowerment, physical
age in ve categories: 1825, 2635, 3645, safety, dignity, and subjective well-being (job
4655, and 5665 years old. Schooling is divided satisfaction among other subjective variables).7
in six groups: no schooling or incomplete basic In the survey, the key question for our analysis
education, complete basic education, incomplete was the following. In general, how satised or
high school, complete high school, incomplete unsatised are you with your job: (1) not at all
college, and complete college. Finally, the geo- satised, (2) not very satised, (3) fairly satised,
graphical zone variable was divided in three (4) very satised.
areas: north, central, and south.3 It is worth men- A rst look at the data is provided in
tioning that this strategy assumes that the refer- Table 13.1, which presents average job satisfac-
ence group is exogenous.4 tion for different groups. There are several inter-
More recently a third approach has been pro- esting features and some differences appear in
posed. Budria and Ferrer-i-Carbonell (2012) sug- terms of gender, age, and schooling. For instance
gest that individuals are rank sensitive, which is a difference in job satisfaction can be noted
supported by empirical evidence. Hence, like between women and men. Men have more job
Budria and Ferrer-i-Carbonell (2012), we dene satisfaction than woman (2.71 versus 2.60). Nev-
the rank as the position of the individual within ertheless, as will be seen later in the econometric
its reference group according to his salary.5 The analysis, this difference disappears when taking
variables used to construct the reference group other variables into account. Regarding age, it is
are age, schooling, and geographical zone. possible to see an inverted U relationship with
job satisfaction. In effect, the job satisfaction for
individuals 15 and 24 years old is 2.44, rising to
2.73 for those 4554 years old, and declining to
13.4 Data and Results
2.53 for older people. Despite this, the economet-
ric analysis shows that age does not signicantly
13.4.1 Information
affect job satisfaction. Finally the data shows that
there is a positive relationship between job satis-
The data comes from a survey conducted in
faction and schooling, which may reect the
20082009 by the Oxford Poverty and Human
effect of increased wage. It is worth to mention
Development Initiative (OPHI) with a subsample
6
3 The OPHI is a research institute within the University of
From combining these variables information we obtain Oxfords Department of International Development. Its
87 cells (there was some empty cells) and calculate the aim is to build and promote a more systematic methodo-
average wage for each one. logical and economic framework for reducing poverty
4
More recently an effort has been made to get an endoge- grounded in Amartya Sens capability approach. OPHI
nous reference group by asking individuals who they has identied and developed short modules to measure
compare themselves to (Clark and Senik 2010). Unfortu- ve missing dimensions of poverty: employment quality,
nately this type of information is not available for Chile. empowerment or agency, physical safety, the ability to
5
The authors suggest construct the rank as follow: not be shamed, and psychological and subjective well-
being.
Pig 1 7
The CASEN (Caracterizaci on Socioecon omica
Rig
Ng 1 Nacional) is a nationally representative cross-section sur-
vey and is a fundamental tool for social policy because it
where Pig is the position of individual i in group g, and contains valuable information on Chilean families regard-
Ng is the number of individuals in the group. ing housing, education, health, and employment.
Table 13.1 Job satisfaction by socio-demographic increase will result in an increased likelihood
characteristics for P(js 4). Thus the individuals wages have
Mean Standard deviation a positive and statistically signicant effect on
Male 2.71 0.98 job satisfaction in this model, since it increases
Female 2.60 0.93 the probability of being very satised.
1524 years old 2.44 0.89 Similarly, schooling and hours worked also
2534 years old 2.65 0.98 exert a positive impact on job satisfaction. Some-
3544 years old 2.63 0.96
thing interesting emerges with tenure because it
4554 years old 2.73 0.92
has a negative effect. Namely, the longer a
5564 years old 2.65 0.98
More than 64 2.53 0.99
workers rm tenure, the less job satisfaction.
No schooling 2.48 1.13 Being self-employed shows a positive relation-
Primary incomplete 2.94 1.15 ship with job satisfaction; this result, interpreted
Primary complete 2.50 0.92 as the procedural utility from being independent,
Secondary incomplete 2.59 0.92 has already been found in Chile (Cassar 2010).
Secondary complete 2.63 0.96 Finally, the model was estimated using
Higher incomplete 2.75 0.95 697 observations and presents a pseudo
Higher complete 3.22 0.77 R-squared in line with the empirical literature in
Source: OPHI Survey 2008/2009 this topic (9.21 %).
Note: (1) not at all satised, (2) not very satised, (3) fairly Models (2), (3), and (4) add different
satised, (4) very satised
measures of reference group income. Specically
model (2) includes the logarithm of wage
the effect of schooling does not vanish when we
predicted as suggested by Clark and Oswald
control for wage, hence schooling allows the
(1996). This wage corresponds to the reference
individual to have greater job satisfaction regard-
group income because it is the market value of
less of wages.
individual human capital stock. Estimates show
that this variable has a negative effect on job
satisfaction, which can be understood as the com-
13.4.2 Regression Analysis parison effect dominating the information effect
(Clark et al. 2007). The rest of the results do not
The model presented in Eqs. 13.1 and 13.2 were change signicantly compared to the previous
estimated, the results are presented in Table 13.2. model. Thereby, schooling, individuals wage,
There are four different specications because self-employment, and hours worked have a posi-
we have constructed three different variables in tive effect on individual job satisfaction. Again
order to measure reference group income, while the tenure variable has a negative effect on job
the rst model does not include one. satisfaction. It is interesting to highlight that the
Column (1) presents a specication without individuals age now also seems to have a nega-
relative income variable. In this, wages have a tive impact (at decreasing rate) on job satisfac-
positive and statistically signicant relationship tion. As with the previous model estimation is
with job satisfaction. It is useful to keep in mind carried out using 697 observations and presents a
that in an ordered probit, if an estimated coef- reasonable goodness of t (pseudo R-squared of
cient is positive, then an increase in the covariate 9.67 %).
associated with that coefcient will increase the Following the strategy proposed by Ferrer-i-
probability of being very satised P(js 4) and Carbonell (2005) we construct the reference
will decrease the probability of not being group using age, education, and geographical
satised at all P(js 1). However, the effect on zone information. Then we construct cells
the middle cells (probabilities) is uncertain and classifying individuals. Model (3) incorporates
must be calculated. Given that the coefcient for this new variable as a measure of reference
log(wage) is 0.31, this means that a wage group wage. In line with the previous ndings,
Table 13.2 Determinants of job satisfaction

Variable Model (1) Model (2) Model (3) Model (4)
Reference group income 1 1.680***
(0.653)
Reference group income 2 0.400**
(0.182)
Reference group income 3 0.811**
(0.344)
Female 0.162 0.161 0.149 0.205
(0.130) (0.129) (0.129) (0.133)
Age 0.026 0.068* 0.023 0.022
(0.034) (0.037) (0.035) (0.034)
Age squared 0.0004 0.001** 0.0004 0.0004
(0.0003) (0.0004) (0.0003) (0.0003)
Schooling 0.041* 0.242*** 0.085*** 0.070***
(0.021) (0.079) (0.029) (0.024)
Log(wage) 0.397*** 0.419*** 0.439*** 0.135
(0.100) (0.103) (0.101) (0.146)
Self-employment 0.318* 0.333* 0.367** 0.340*
(0.184) (0.182) (0.180) (0.185)
Log(hours worked) 0.197** 0.195** 0.201** 0.191**
(0.079) (0.166) (0.082) (0.079)
Tenure 0.013** 0.014** 0.013** 0.015**
(0.007) (0.007) (0.007) (0.007)
Dummies for size of the rm
Dummies for industry
Dummies for geographical zone
1 4.855 11.989 1.029 2.537
2 5.938 10.903 2.135 3.633
3 7.178 9.653 3.380 4.885
Pseudo R2 0.092 0.097 0.097 0.097
Number of observations 697 697 689 697
Source: OPHI Survey 2008/2009
Notes: Standard errors in parentheses
Reference group income (1) is the predicted wage conditional on individual characteristics. Reference group income
(2) is the log of the cells average wage (cells were constructed using age, schooling, and geographical zone). Reference
group income (3) is the rank of the individual within his cell
*10 % signicance level
**5 % signicance level
***1 % signicance level
it is possible to identify a negative relationship wage. As previously mentioned, Budria and

between job satisfaction and the reference group Ferrer-i-Carbonell (2012) recently suggested
wage, which is statistically signicant at 5 %. that individuals are rank sensitive, something
The signs and statistical signicance do not that has basis in light of the available empirical
vary for the rest of covariates.8 evidence. As Budria and Ferrer-i-Carbonell
It is possible to construct a third variable in (2012), we dened rank as the individual position
order to take into account the reference income in terms of his labor income as a proportion of
the number of individuals in his reference group.
8
We used the usual three variables to create the
We have lost eight observations in constructing refer-
reference group. Accordingly Model (4) includes
ence group income with this methodology.
this new variable. It should be noted that the sign abundant) and developing countries (which is
of the coefcient is now positive because a very limited).
higher rank represents a better relative position.
This coefcient turns out to be statistically sig-
nicant at 5 %.
13.4.3 Marginal Effects
Note that being female is not associated with a
lower level of job satisfaction, which is
As mentioned before, if the estimated coefcient
surprising in light of previous works that showed
is positive, then an increase in the associated
that women experience discrimination in the
covariates will increment the probability of
Chilean labor market (Montero et al. 2005;
opo 2012). Finally, it is worth mentioning that being very satised P(js 4) and will decrease
N
the probability of being not satised at P(js 1);
all the estimated models control for size of the
however, the effect on the middle cells (proba-
rm, industry, and geographical zone.
bility of being not very satised and fairly
In summary, we have found that reference
satised) is uncertain and it must be calculated.
group income negatively affects individual job
Thus we proceed to present the marginal effects
satisfaction; this result can be understood as the
of the covariates over job satisfaction;
comparison effect dominating the information
Tables 13.3, 13.4, and 13.5 present the marginal
effect. Our results reveal that schooling, individ-
effects for the three models estimated.
ual wage, self-employment, and hours worked
It is possible to notice a positive relationship
have a positive effect on job satisfaction and
between the coefcient estimated and the proba-
that tenure has a negative effect on it. All these
bility of P(js 4) and a negative one for P
results are in line with the available empirical
(js 1).
evidence for both developed countries (which is
Table 13.3 Marginal effects for Model (2)

Variable P(js 1) P(js 2) P(js 3) P(js 4)
Reference group income 1 0.205** 0.310** 0.031 0.484**
0.081 0.122 0.028 0.189
Female 0.019 0.029 0.003 0.046
0.0161 0.023 0.003 0.036
Age 0.008* 0.012* 0.001 0.019*
0.004 0.006 0.001 0.010
Age squared 0.0001** 0.0002** 0.00002 0.0003**
0.00006 0.00008 0.00002 0.0001
Schooling 0.029*** 0.044*** 0.004 0.069***
0.010 0.014 0.003 0.022
Log(wage) 0.051*** 0.077*** 0.007 0.120***
0.013 0.019 0.007 0.028
Self-employment 0.040* 0.061* 0.006 0.096*
0.023 0.033 0.006 0.052
Log(hours worked) 0.073*** 0.111*** 0.011 0.173***
0.021 0.031 0.009 0.048
Tenure 0.001** 0.002** 0.0002 0.003**
0.0008 0.001 0.0002 0.001
Notes: Standard errors in parentheses and calculated with delta method
Reference group income (1) is the predicted wage conditional on individual characteristics

Reference group income 2 0.048** 0.074 0.006 0.116**
0.022 0.023 0.006 0.053
Female 0.017 0.027 0.002 0.043
0.015 0.023 0.003 0.037
Age 0.002 0.004 0.0003 0.006
0.004 0.006 0.0007 0.010
Age squared 0.00005 0.00009 0.0000 0.0001
0.00004 0.00007 0.00001 0.0001
Schooling 0.010*** 0.015*** 0.001 0.024***
0.003 0.005 0.001 0.008
Log(wage) 0.052*** 0.081*** 0.007 0.127***
0.013 0.018 0.007 0.027
Self-employment 0.044* 0.068** 0.006 0.106**
0.022 0.033 0.006 0.052
Log(hours worked) 0.024** 0.037** 0.003 0.058**
0.009 0.015 0.003 0.024
Tenure 0.001* 0.002** 0.0002 0.003**
0.0008 0.001 0.0002 0.001
Reference group income (2) is the log of the cells average wage (cells were constructed using information of age,
schooling and geographical zone)
Analyzing the results presented in Tables 13.3, group income 1 add up to zero (Model 2), we
13.4, and 13.5 raises several interesting aspects. can evaluate the effects of increasing the income
First, it conrms the negative and statistically of all individuals on subjective well-being.
signicant effect of the reference group income The p-value of the test is 0.049, thus we reject
on job satisfaction (Tables 13.3 and 13.4). The the null hypothesis that the coefcients sum zero.
relative position is also important as can be seen Indeed we have found a negative sign for the sum
from the rank variable (Table 13.5). However, it revealing a negative effect on job satisfaction.
requires major changes in the reference group When using Model (3) and testing the null
income to affect job satisfaction in a major way. hypothesis that the coefcients of Log(wage)
and Reference group income 2 add up to zero,
we get a p-value equal to 0.842, rejecting the
13.4.4 Subjective Well-Being existence of an impact on job satisfaction.
and Economic Growth What do we learn from this exercise? That if
economic growth uniformly affects all wages in
An interesting aspect that arises in this discussion the economy, it would have a zero or negative
is the effect of economic growth on subjective effect on job satisfaction. This result is consistent
well-being of people, particularly on job satisfac- with the idea that how that growth is distributed
tion. Is economic growth a necessary and suf- in society is more important than the growth
cient condition for having higher job itself.
satisfaction? A possible answer could be Consequently, it would be interesting to
obtained from Models (2) and (3) of Table 13.2. assess whether the effect of the reference group
By testing the null hypothesis that the income on job satisfaction depends on how far
coefcients of log(wage) and Reference the individual income is from the group average,

Reference group income 3 0.098** 0.149** 0.0127 0.2349**
0.042 0.063 0.0136 0.0996
Female 0.024 0.037 0.003 0.0594
0.016 0.024 0.003 0.0381
Age 0.002 0.004 0.0003 0.0064
0.004 0.006 0.0006 0.0099
Age squared 0.00005 0.00008 0.0000 0.0001
0.00004 0.00007 0.00001 0.0001
Schooling 0.008*** 0.012*** 0.0010 0.0201***
0.003 0.004 0.0011 0.0070
Log(wage) 0.016 0.024 0.0021 0.0389
0.017 0.026 0.0032 0.0419
Self-employment 0.041* 0.062* 0.0053 0.0984*
0.023 0.033 0.0059 0.0537
Log(hours worked) 0.023** 0.035** 0.0030 0.0552**
0.009 0.014 0.0030 0.0231
Tenure 0.001** 0.002** 0.0002 0.0042
0.0008 0.001 0.0002 0.0018**
Reference group income (3) is the rank of the individual within his cell
and if it is above or below it. As Van Praag and Our results reveal an asymmetric effect of ref-
Ferrer-i-Carbonell (2008) say it may be sur- erence income on job satisfaction. In effect, the
mised that the inuence of this gap is much less coefcient associated with the below variable is
pronounced when you are on the right side, that is negative and statistically signicant which means
y > yref, than when you are on the wrong side of that people earning a wage below the median have
yref (page 161). Thus, following Ferrer-i- less job satisfaction. Nevertheless, those who earn
Carbonell (2005), we construct two new wages above the median wage of their reference
variables in order to capture a potential group are not statistically more job satised; the
asymmetry. coefcient associated with the above variable is
We dene the variable below equal to yref y positive but not statistically signicant. Our
if y < yref and 0 otherwise. On the other hand, we ndings suggest that if we are able to direct the
dene above equal to y yref if y > yref and benets of economic growth to lower-income
0 otherwise. Of course below is equal to above individuals, thus reducing the spread of income
and equal to zero in case of having yref y. inequality, then we could achieve a signicant
Therefore, we have re-estimated Model (3) impact in terms of subjective well-being. The
including variables for being below or above other variables included in the model broadly
the average wage, and excluding the log of aver- maintain their sign and statistical signicance,
age wage. Table 13.6 presents the estimation.9 although own wage is no longer statistically sig-
nicant. This can be interpreted as that peoples
own income is not as relevant as their relative
income. Again, this emphasizes the importance
9
Results do not change when we include the additive of the distribution of economic growth relative to
dummies. economic growth by itself.
Table 13.6 Determinants of job satisfaction: testing on job satisfaction. Studying the determinants of
asymmetry job satisfaction is relevant, not only for human
Variable Coefcient resource managers due to the relationship
Female 0.1496 between job satisfaction and effort, but also for
(0.1292) the entire economy since it has been reported that
Age 0.0242 job satisfaction predicts quitting, absenteeism,
(0.0349) and productivity. To what extent relative (to the
Age squared 0.0005
comparison group) wages affect job satisfaction
(0.0004)
can be related to wage inequality, is an important
Schooling 0.0821***
(0.0301)
topic, especially for a high-income inequality
Log(wage) 0.0630 developing country.
(0.2060) By constructing three different measures of
Self-employment 0.3854** relative income, we found that the income of
(0.1826) the reference group negatively affects individual
Log(hours worked) 0.1870** job satisfaction. This can be understood as the
(0.0844) comparison effect, which makes individuals less
Tenure 0.0127** satised by comparing his income to that of his
(0.0065) of peers, dominates over the information effect,
Below 0.4401** which allows individuals to predict future wages.
(0.1912)
Moreover, our results reveal an asymmetric
Above 0.2734
effect of the reference income on job satisfaction.
(0.2815)
The estimated model reveals that individuals
1 1.1673
2 2.2762
earning wages below the median wage of their
3 3.5210 reference group have less job satisfaction; never-
Pseudo R2 0.0974 theless people who earn wages higher than the
Number of observations 689 median wage of their reference group do not
Source: OPHI Survey 2008/2009 have statistically more job satisfaction. Thus we
Notes: Standard errors in parentheses can infer that if we are able to direct the benets
The specication controls for rm size, industry, and of economic growth to low-income people,
geographical zone
reducing the spread of the income distribution,
**5 % signicance level then we could achieve a signicant impact in
***1 % signicance level terms of subjective well-being. This last effect
can also be interpreted as an illustration of loss-
The asymmetry in the comparisons effects aversion suggested by Kahneman and Tversky
could reect another interesting issue. Speci- (1979), where the value function is steeper for
cally doing better than ones reference group is losses than for gains.
not as valuable in terms of job satisfaction as On the other hand, our results reveal that
doing worse than ones reference group. As it schooling, individuals wage, self employment,
was pointed out by Senik (2009), this fact can and hours worked have a positive effect on
be interpreted as an illustration of the loss- individuals job satisfaction, and that tenure has
aversion suggested by Kahneman and Tversky a negative effect.
(1979), where the value function is steeper for How can we further this eld of research? One
losses than for gains. topic where signicant progress can be made has
to do with the construction of the reference
group. In effect, in our analysis we assumed
13.5 Conclusions that reference group is exogenous. Our variables
are commonly used to constructing the reference
Using data for Chile, a developing OECD coun- group, such as age, education, and geographical
try, we have studied the effect of relative wages area. However, a more realistic scenario is one
where the reference group is endogenous. For Clark, A., & Senik, C. (2010). Who compares to whom?
instance, using data from the European Social The anatomy of income comparisons in Europe. The
Economic Journal, 120(544), 573594.
Survey (ESS) with information for 18 countries, Clark, A., Kristensen, N., & Westergard-Nielsen,
Clark and Senik (2010) found evidence N. (2007). Job satisfaction and co-worker wages:
supporting that reference groups may be endoge- Status or signal? (IZA Discussion Paper No. 3073).
nous, i.e. individuals tend to compare themselves Bonn: IZA.
Clark, A., Frijters, P., & Shields, M. (2008). Relative
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often. The mentioned survey included a question the Easterlin paradox and other puzzles. Journal of
asking the respondent who she was most likely to Economic Literature, 46(1), 95144.
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T. (2012). The evolution of opportunities for children
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Food-Deprivation and Subjective
Well-Being in Latin America 14
Jorge Guardiola and Mariano Rojas
14.1 Introduction no corroboration at all in terms of their well-

being impact. The emerging subjective well-
Being able to eat the nutritional requirements a being (SWB) approach claims for measuring
person needs is crucial for avoiding pain and peoples well-being on the basis of direct
suffering. Hunger may reduce peoples well- questions regarding peoples satisfaction with
being through many channels. If it is acute and life as well as their evaluative and affective states
continuous, it can threaten peoples physical and (Diener et al. 2010). Although there are some
mental functioning; it may also reduce peoples studies on the relationship between poverty and
productivity and learning capacity. When food SWB (Graham and Pettinato 2002; Rojas 2008,
deprivation reaches starvation levels it can quickly 2014) it is important to acknowledge that poverty
lead to health problems and even to death. is a broad and mostly academic-driven concept
Most development experts consider adequate which not necessarily reects or is associated to
nourishment as a basic human need (Streeten such a specic human experience as being
1984; Doyal and Gough 1991) Abraham hungry.
Maslows well-known pyramid places nurture Following the SWB approach, this paper stud-
at the very foundation, arguing that nourishment ies the relationship between food deprivation and
is a necessary pre-requisite to other higher uni- SWB using a large database from Latin America.
versal needs, such as afliation or self-realization The Gallup 2007 survey provides information for
(Maslow 1943) In principle, not being able of 19 Latin American countries; samples are repre-
fullling such a basic need as hunger should be sentative at the country level, with about 12,000
associated to a substantial decline in peoples observations in the whole regional survey. The
well-being. However, empirical research on the survey gathered information regarding peoples
relationship between peoples well-being and SWB (life satisfaction, life evaluation, affective
food deprivation is nil. Development experts situation) as well as information about people
have relied on convincing people about the experiencing hunger at least once during the pre-
harming consequences of food deprivation, with vious 12 months. Standard socio-demographic
and economic information is also provided by
J. Guardiola the survey. The SWB information allows for
Department of Applied Economics, Universidad de studying both cognitive and affective factors in
Granada, Granada, Spain peoples well-being: Life satisfaction provides
M. Rojas (*) an overall assessment of peoples life; life evalu-
FLACSO-Mexico and UPAEP, Mexico City, Mexico ation constitutes a cognitive-oriented assessment

220 J. Guardiola and M. Rojas
highly inuenced by social standards, and the their likelihood of becoming ill. Illnesses and
affective state is constructed on the basis of health problems tend to reduce peoples satisfac-
peoples experience of some emotions, which tion with life (Borghesi and Vercelli 2012;
are clearly associated to human condition Bryceson and Fonseca 2006). Health problems
(Diener et al. 1997; Rojas and Veenhoven 2013). may reduce satisfaction in other domains of life,
The ndings from this research provide a as people have fewer opportunities for the enjoy-
SWB-approach conrmation of what has been ment of free time.
widely presumed: in general, food deprivation Furthermore, hunger in childhood may have
is associated to people experiencing lower sub- long-run consequences (Heckman and Cunha
jective well-being. This relationship sustains 2010). Hunger in childhood affects cognitive
even when controlling by socio-demographic and physical capacities and may lead to poor
variables as well as by income. However, schooling performance, having a long-run effect
experiencing food deprivation does not sufce on people abilities to insert into the job market;
to ensure a lower SWB. It is shown that some hunger can also lead to higher dropping rates by
people may have relatively high SWB in spite of young scholars who are forced to work rather
facing food deprivation; the chapter explores the than studying. This constitutes a vicious circle
role of peoples area of residence, access to rela- because low-skilled workers are more likely of
tional goods, and spirituality in providing an experiencing hunger.
explanation to this phenomenon of being rela- There is no empirical research linking hunger
tively happy while experiencing hunger. and SWB. However, it is well-known that hunger
The remainder of the chapter is structured as is a source of pain and unrest; therefore, it is
follows: Sect. 14.2 reviews the literature that presumed that hunger reduces SWB straightfor-
provides some insight on the hunger and SWB ward. In this vein, Veenhoven (1991: 15) makes
relationship; it also discusses some research deal- an interesting reection on the link of hunger and
ing with deprivation and higher than expected SWB: Downward adjustment of needs brings
SWB. Section 14.3 explains the database and inevitable discomfort. If we renounce food and
the main variables in the analyses; it also company, the automatic alarms of hunger and
provides some descriptive statistics. Section 14.4 loneliness start ringing. These alarms keep on
explains the estimation techniques used in the ringing as long as the deprivation endures. Habit-
chapter and presents the main ndings. Sec- uation can at best dim the discomfort somewhat.
tion 14.5 makes some general conclusions. Favourable comparison does not turn off the
alarm either: we are no less hungry if our
neighbours are equally hungry or when we are
14.2 Theoretical Framework not so hungry as we had expected to be. [. . .]In
this light it is quite comprehensible that we found
14.2.1 Hunger and Subjective happiness to be lower in the poorest countries of
Well-Being the world. In these countries a large proportion of
the population is undernourished (40 % in
There are many ways in which hunger can affect Africa at that time) and hence one basic need
peoples experience of being well. There is a clearly not gratied. No doubt improved nourish-
direct and immediate effect from hunger produc- ment will raise happiness lastingly in these
ing stomach pain, headaches, irritation, and countries.
many other negative affective and sensorial Furthermore, it is assumed for hunger to be
states. Experiencing hunger may also depress closely associated to economic poverty, which is
peoples self-esteem, and produce a sense of an issue widely studied and where there is some
frustration and failure in life which is research on the relation between poverty and
exacerbated by social comparisons. SWB. However, poverty is mostly a construct
Severe hunger may affect peoples health and and requires from further assumptions in order
may weaken peoples immune system raising to associate it to negative living experiences such
14 Food-Deprivation and Subjective Well-Being in Latin America 221
as hunger and illness. On the other hand, hunger according to Veenhoven, it should detonate
is a direct experience people have, and it makes important changes in the intensity, and duration
sense to rely on peoples report to know their of affects people do experience. Lowenstein
situation. Thus, even if there is no much room (1996, 2000) argues that negative emotions are
for doubting on a negative link of hunger and more sensitive to drivers such as hunger, thirst
SWB, it might still be necessary to corroborate it and sexual desire, while positive emotions are
to better understand the nature of the relationship less sensitive. Pster and Bohm (2008) identify
as well as the impact of hunger in the evaluative four different roles in emotions concerning deci-
and affective experiences people have. sion making: To provide information on pleasure
The SWB literature sees life satisfaction as an and pain in order to build preferences, to under-
overall assessment of peoples life, and it makes take rapid choices under time pressure, to focus
a distinction between cognitive and affective attention on relevant aspects of a decision prob-
well-being experiences. Cognitive experiences lem, and to generate commitment concerning
refer to the evaluation people make of their life morality and socially signicant decisions. In
in terms of failure and achievement according to hunger, negative emotions motivate people to
their own standards; while affective experiences act as well as to focus on those actions that are
refer to positive and negative emotions (Diener crucial to survive: looking for food and eating
et al. 1997; Rojas and Veenhoven 2013). It is it. Therefore, even though negative emotions are
then of interest to study the relationship between undesirable, they do play an important role. If
hunger and life satisfaction as well as how hun- people would not experience negative emotions
ger relates to the cognitive-oriented and while experiencing hunger then they would be at
affective-oriented experiences of being well. risk of extinction.
From a cognitive-experience perspective, Negative emotions, as well as an assessment
hunger may represent the failure to attain one of of failure and guilt, do also emerge when a mem-
the most basic aims people may have: to have ber of the family or the clan- is exposed to a
enough foot at the table. A breadwinner person threat such as hunger. Positive affects, such as
may associate the presence of hunger at home to love and compassion, do also help in extending
his/her lack of competence to end up understand- peoples concerns beyond personal levels in
ing this event as a failure in his/her breadwinning order to react to a threat to the kinship.
role within the family (Ryan and Sapp 2007). In consequence, it is expected for hunger to
Access to food, as well as the kind of food at impact on peoples evaluative and affective
the table, may also play a status-marker role; for states. It is also expected for hunger to impact
example, having one meal a day, rather than two, on peoples overall assessment of how life is
may be used by people themselves to dene their going on. Hunger may be an important factor in
relative position in a neighborhood (De Botton explaining the existence of a logarithm relation-
2004; Marmot 2004). Peoples standards, ship between income and life satisfaction; at low
aspirations, and social comparisons may play an income levels it is more likely for people to
important role in relating the experience of hun- experience hunger and, in consequence, to have
ger to a persons evaluation of life. lower life satisfaction; as income raises peoples
From and affective-experience perspective, likelihood of undergoing hungry declines and
hunger is expected to impact on peoples this may end up raising life satisfaction. It is
emotions through different channels. For exam- unlikely, but not impossible, to nd people with
ple, Veenhoven (2005) and Rayo and Becker high income who are experiencing hunger (e.g.:
(2007) understand emotions as signaling the people on diet); it is more likely to nd people
existence of a threat or a prize, emotions call with low income who are not experiencing hun-
peoples attention so that people may act in ger. Thus, by studying the relationship between
avoiding threats and in taking advantage of hunger and life satisfaction it is also possible to
prizes. Hunger constitutes a threat to life and, study the impact of income net of hunger.
14.2.2 Is It Possible to Have High Well- information for the following countries:
Being in Hunger? Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia,
Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El
From an economic perspective it seems impossi- Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico,
ble to be happy while experiencing hunger. As Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and
stated above, theory suggests that people who do Uruguay.1 The survey is representative at the
not meet several material standards should enjoy country level, with about 1,000 observations per
lower SWB in comparison to people who can country. However, the empirical study is based
afford them. Basic-needs theory states that people on about 12,000 observations for which informa-
who do not have access to basic satisers are in tion in all key variables is available.
well-being deprivation. However, there are sev- The survey gathered substantial information
eral empirical studies in places such as Tibet, regarding peoples SWB, as well as some infor-
Peru, Calcutta and Mexico showing that people mation on people experiencing hunger.
may experience high SWB even under material
deprivation: These studies point out to different Life Satisfaction corresponds to the typical
factors that may imply people being happy even questions Taking everything in your life into
under adverse conditions; for example: lack of consideration, How satised are you with your
comparison to relatively rich people may imply a life? The response scale goes from 0 (completely
positive evaluation of life because norms of eval- unsatised) to 10 (completely satised)
uation and expectations are not inuenced by peo-
ple in afuence (Guillen-Royo and Velazco). Live Evaluation The survey uses the well-know
Religion and spirituality do imply access to best-worst life evaluation question. This is a
non-material ways of attaining satisfaction, as cognitive-oriented question because it asks peo-
well as different ways of facing adversity ple to compare their life to the best and to the
(Guardiola et al. 2013). Webb (2009) states that worst possible life for them. A 0 (worst) to
the Tibetans practicing of the Buddhist teaching 10 (best) ladder response scale is used.
of non-attachment and renunciation explains their
high levels of wellbeing in hardship. Biswas- Affective State Questions were asked to know
Diener and Diener (2001) suggest that social whether people frequently experienced some
connections partly explain the higher than positive emotions (well-rested, respect, liberty,
expected life satisfaction of slum dwellers in smile, pride, learning, enjoyment, and love) and
Calcutta; a similar suggestion is made by some negative emotions (pain, worry, sadness,
Guardiola et al. for the Yucatan Mayans in boredom, depression and anger) the day before.
Mexico. Rojas (2008, 2014) has shown that peo- A yes (1) or no (0) response scale was provided.
ple in income poverty may be satised with life We compute a positive-affect indicator as the
due to high satisfaction in non-economic domains ratio of all positive emotions experienced with
of life, such as family relations, health, and leisure respect to the total number of positive emotions
time. It seems that, as Veenhoven (2005) states, the survey inquired about; this indicator ranges
happiness needs no paradise. from 0 to 100. A similar procedure was used to
compute a negative-affect indicator. The affec-
tive-balance is computed as the subtraction of the
negative-emotions indicator from the positive-
14.3 Dataset, Variables emotions indicator. A value of 100 for the
and Hypothesis
The database used in this paper corresponds to 1

Unfortunately, the survey did not include the life-
the Latin American block of the Gallup World satisfaction question in Venezuela; thus, this country is
Poll 2007. This Poll includes individual excluded from the analyses.
affective balance scale indicates that the person 14.4 Estimation Strategy
experienced all positive emotions and none of the and Results
negative emotions the day before; a value of
100 corresponds to a person experiencing all 14.4.1 The Impact of Hunger
negative emotions and none of the positive ones. on Subjective Well-Being
Hunger This is a central variable in the study. The The following general specication is used to
following question was posed to people: Have estimate the impact of hunger on peoples sub-
there been times in the past 12 months when you jective well-being.
or your family have gone hungry? A yes (1) or no
(0) response scale was used. It is clear that this is a SWBi 0 1 hunger i 2 agei 3 age2i 4 womani
simple question and that it does not provide addi- 5 married i 6 jobi
tional information on the frequency or intensity of X
hunger in the family; furthermore, it does not 7 incomei c1 c countryic
18
distinguish between personal hunger and hunger i 14:1

experienced by another member of the family.
where SWBi refers to each of the three subjective
The survey also gathers the following infor- well-being measures used in this research (life
mation on the socio-demographic and economic satisfaction, life evaluation, and affective bal-
situation of the respondent: age (in years), mari- ance) for individual i. The vector countryi
tal status (married 1, otherwise 0), working denotes 18 dichotomous variables indicating the
situation ( job 1 if the person is working, oth- different countries in the study (Uruguay is the
erwise 0), and gender (woman 1). Informa- reference category).
tion on the household per capita income is Concerning imperfect collinearity, a Variance
available on the basis of a transformation of the Ination Factor (VIF) test is performed to check
original data (Gasparini et al. 2008). Income is for high correlations among the independent
handled as the logarithm of household per capita variables. In particular, a major concern is the
income, in US dollars. inuence of the variable income in the hunger
The literature has also mentioned the role of variable. The VIF does not show a problem of
relational support, spirituality, and social collinearity by introducing both variables in the
comparisons in explaining the empirical nding same regression. It is important to remember that
of some people being happy even under mate- the variable hunger refers to the scope of the past
rial deprivation. The following variables are year, while the variable income indicates the
used in order to further study the role of these current income. Nevertheless, three different
factors: Relational goods are measured on the models are estimated for each of the dependent
basis of the following question in the Gallup variables; the rst model incorporates both hun-
survey: If you were in trouble, do you have ger and income variables, while the other two
relatives or friends you can count on to help you models omit one variable. These models allow
whenever you need them? The response scale for studying the net impact of income once it is
is dichotomous: Yes 1 and no 0. The reli- controlled by hunger. An Ordinary Least Squares
gion factor is measured through the following (OLS) technique is used in the estimation of
question: Is religion an important part of your Eq. 14.1.
daily life? The response scale is dichotomous: Table 14.1 presents descriptive statistics for
Yes 1 and no 0. Furthermore, a rural var- the main variables.
iable is constructed, with a value of 1 if the It is interesting to observe in Table 14.1 that
respondent lives in a rural area and a value of Latin Americans satisfaction with life is greater
0 otherwise. that their evaluation of life. This fact shows the
Table 14.1 Descriptive statistics main variables Latin America 2007

Variable Mean/% Std. dev. Min Max
Life evaluation 5.76 2.38 0 10
Affective balance 78.3 21.7 100 100
Woman 0.56 0 1
Age 39.1 16.9 15 100
Married 0.55 0 1
Job 0.43 0 1
(Log) income 5.08 1.06 0 9.05
Hunger 0.19 0 1
Source: Gallup Poll 2007, Latin America
importance of non-cognitive factors in model 1 controls by income; while the estimated

explaining high life satisfaction in the region. It coefcient for hunger in model 3 may incorpo-
is clear that Latin Americans recognize that rate the indirect impact of low income on
their life is far beyond the (globalized) standards peoples subjective well-being. It is observed
of a good life, but they seem to attain high life that hunger has a very important net inuence
satisfaction by beneting from a relatively high in peoples affective balance. Incorporating or
affective balance. excluding income from the model makes little
Table 14.2 presents the results from the impact on the estimated hunger coefcient; this
econometric exercise. Many interesting results means that the impact of hunger on peoples
are observed in this table. affective balance originates from experiencing
First, as expected, hunger tends to reduce sub- hunger rather than from having low income.
jective well-being. The estimated coefcient is Hunger does also have considerable inuence in
always negative and statistically signicant. Hun- peoples life satisfaction. The estimated coef-
ger affects all SWB variables; thus, there are eval- cient for hunger varies the most when dealing
uative and affective impacts that end up showing with the life-evaluation variable; this means that
in the overall assessment of life (life satisfaction). a larger part of the impact of hunger in life
Second, the impact of hunger is not only sta- evaluation (as seen in model 3) corresponds to
tistically signicant but also relatively large. For hunger being associated to low income rather
example, in model 1 it is possible to compare the than to hunger itself.
impact of hunger to the impact of a rise in the Fourth, a comparison of results from models
logarithm of household per capita income. It is 2 and 1 allows studying the inuence of income
observed that in the case of life satisfaction a rise which is net of people experiencing hunger. As
of income of more than 400 % would be required expected, the estimated coefcient for income in
to compensate for people experiencing hunger. model 1 is smaller than in model 2, which
This means that greater purchasing power is not a indicates that some part of the inuence of income
good substitute for experiencing hunger; in other on peoples subjective well-being comes from its
words, this result also indicates that direct association to people experiencing hunger.
programs focused on abating hunger have a rela-
tively large impact in comparison to programs
that aim to raise peoples income. Relatively 14.4.2 What Factors Mitigate
similar results show for the life evaluation and the Impact of Hunger in Peoples
the affective balance variables. Well-Being?
Third, a comparison of results from models
3 and 1 allows studying the impact of excluding It is clear from Table 14.2 that hunger substan-
the income variable from the model. In other tially reduces peoples subjective well-being;
words, the estimated coefcient for hunger in with a relatively larger impact on peoples
14
Table 14.2 The impact of hunger on subjective well-being Latin America 2007
Life satisfaction Life evaluation Affective balance
Model Model Model Model Model Model Model Model
1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 Model 3
Hunger 0.860 *** 1.093 *** 0.839 *** 1.128 *** 9.168 *** 10.305 ***
Woman 0.087 ** 0.084 ** 0.044 0.219 *** 0.215 *** 0.165 *** 1.812 *** 1.848 *** 2.023 ***
Age 0.024 *** 0.030 *** 0.026 *** 0.057 *** 0.063 *** 0.059 *** 0.296 *** 0.358 *** 0.302 ***
Age2 0.000 ** 0.000 *** 0.000 *** 0.000 *** 0.001 *** 0.001 *** 0.003 *** 0.003 *** 0.003 ***
Married 0.047 0.067 * 0.023 0.006 0.013 0.037 1.592 *** 1.805 *** 1.471 ***
Job 0.080 ** 0.097 ** 0.195 *** 0.207 *** 0.222 *** 0.349 *** 1.398 *** 1.571 *** 1.959 ***
(Log) 0.378 *** 0.458 *** 0.468 *** 0.546 *** 1.847 *** 2.697 ***
Food-Deprivation and Subjective Well-Being in Latin America
income
N 11,992 11,992 11,992 11,992 11,992 11,992 11,992 11,992 11,992
Adjusted R2 0.167 0.144 0.138 0.182 0.165 0.147 0.070 0.046 0.064
Note: Signicance levels: *** 1 %. ** 5 %. * 10 %
Estimated coefcients for country dummies are not shown
225
Table 14.3 Subjective well-being and people in hunger descriptive statistics Latin America 2007
Variable Mean/% Std. dev. Min Max
Life_satisfactionHunger 0.37 0 1
Life_evaluationHunger 0.33 0 1
Affective_balanceHunger 0.47 0 1
Woman 0.59 0 1
Age 39.4 16.4 15 94
Married 0.55 0 1
Job 0.36 0 1
(Log) income 4.49 1.08 0 8.70
Religion 0.85 0 1
Relational goods 0.74 0 1
Rural 0.17 0 1
affective balance. However, Table 14.2 presents The descriptive statistics are shown in
general regression-to-mean results that neglect Table 14.3. The percentage of people
the fact that not all people experiencing hunger experiencing hunger and being happier than the
end up suffering in a similar way. It has been average varies from 33 % for life evaluation to
shown that the literature talks of people who are 47 % for affective state. It is clear from these
able to enjoy life even while enduring difcult descriptive data that even though hunger has a
material circumstances. strong impact on subjective well-being, it would
This section goes deeper in the study of the be very risky to attempt predicting a persons
subjective well-being situation of those who are subjective well-being on the basis of the hunger
experiencing hunger. The following empirical variable alone.
strategy is followed: A subsample is generated Because the three dependent variables are
on the basis of extracting from the general data- dichotomous, a logit specication is used in the
base all those observations who reported empirical estimation. The following general
experiencing hunger; in other words, the follow- specication is used:
ing quantitative exercise works with those people
SWBhunger, i 0 1 womani 3 married i
with a hunger-variable value equal to 1. For this
4 jobi 5 incomei 6 religioni
subsample of about 2,250 observations a vector
7 friendsi 8 rurali
of three dichotomous variables is generated on X
the basis of the following strategy: a value of 1 is c1 c countryic
18
generated if this person has a greater than aver- 14:2

age subjective well-being (life satisfaction, life
evaluation, and affective balance) with respect to where SWBhunger refers to the three different
his/her region2 and country, a value of 0 is dependent variables used in this paper: life satis-
generated otherwise. The average considered is faction, life evaluation, and affective balance.
the average in every region and every country for Results from this exercise are presented in
the whole sample, that is people experiencing Table 14.4. Concerning the hypothesis derived
and not experiencing hunger. The new variables from the literature review, all of them seem to be
are termed: Life_satisfactionHunger, life_evalua- right in explaining the probability of being rela-
tionHunger, and affective_balanceHunger. tively happy in a situation of food deprivation.
Religion, as measured by the following question:
Is religion an important part of your daily
2
The Gallup survey was implemented in four different life?, has a very strong impact in raising the
regions: (1) A rural area or on a farm, (2) a small town or subjective well-being situation of people who
village, (3) a large city and (4) the suburb of a large city.
are experiencing hunger. As stated in the litera- slightly shows up for those having a job. Income
ture: religion may inuence subjective well- is a signicant predictor of the probability of
being through many channels, such as: the values being above average, which could indicate that
people hold, by opening a new well-being there are different sorts of hunger in the sample;
generating dimension, by providing access to a as expected those who have experienced hunger
good social network, in the attitudes and resil- but do have high income tend to have above-
ience people have during hardship times, and average subjective well-being indicators.
many more.
Relational goods do also play a crucial role in
allowing for a relatively high well-being situa-
14.5 Final Discussion
tion in food-deprivation. Relational goods are
measured on the basis of the following question:
In this paper we have empirically assessed on the
If you were in trouble, do you have relatives or
basis of a large database the inuence of hunger
friends you can count on to help you whenever
in SWB. The ndings tend to corroborate most
you need them? People in hunger who have
presumptions: hunger tends to reduce peoples
access to relational goods tend to enjoy higher
well-being, even after controlling by income
subjective well-being than people who are also in
and other socio-demographic variables. It has
hunger but who do not have a good social net-
been found that hunger inuences life satisfac-
work around family and friends.
tion through evaluative and affective well-being
Other interesting result observed in Table 14.4
processes. In other words, people who experi-
shows that people in hunger who are living in
ence hunger tend to suffer (emotionally) as well
rural areas tend to have higher subjective well-
as to have a sense of failure (cognitive). It has
being indicators than people in urban areas. This
been shown that the impact of hunger in subjec-
may be a matter of social comparisons taking
tive well-being is relatively large when com-
place, but it may also reect access to
pared to the impact of income. This nding is
non-commercial food sources.
of the greatest relevance for social programs: it
Older people are more likely of being beneath
seems that there is a larger impact on peoples
their groups subjective well-being average.
well-being if social programs directly target hun-
Women in hunger tend to have a greater than
ger which is associated to concrete human
average life evaluation in comparison to men.
experiences- rather than targeting income-
Married people in hunger do enjoy a greater
poverty, which is an academic construct.
than average affective balance; a similar nding
Table 14.4 Determinants of above-average SWB for people experiencing hunger Latin America 2007
Life_satisfactionHunger Life_evaluationHunger Affective_balanceHunger
Variable Coeff. Signif. Coeff. Signif. Coeff. Signif.
Religion 0.48 *** 0.24 * 0.36 ***
Relational goods 0.51 *** 0.52 *** 0.65 ***
Rural 0.33 ** 0.48 *** 0.23 *
Woman 0.12 0.28 *** 0.19
Age 0.01 *** 0.01 *** 0.01 ***
Married 0.10 0.05 0.20 **
Job 0.04 0.03 0.16 *
(Log) income 0.33 *** 0.27 *** 0.13 ***
N 2,250 2,250 2,250
Pseudo R2 0.057 0.047 0.042
Note: Signicance levels: *** 1 %. ** 5 %. * 10 %
Estimated coefcients for country dummies are not shown
All models are statistically signicant according to the Chi squared test of global signicance
This paper has also studied the situation of Fuentes, N., & Rojas, M. (2001). Economic theory and
those who experience hunger but nevertheless subjective well-being: Mexico. Social Indicators
Research, 53, 289314.
score above-average SWB. The results show Gasparini, L., Sosa Escudero, W., Marchionni, M., &
that religion and access to relational goods play Olivieri, S. (2008). Income, deprivation, and
an important and positive role. A relative abun- perceptions in Latin America and the Caribbean:
dance of these factors in the region may contrib- New evidence from the Gallup World Poll. Buenos
Aires: CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata.
ute to explain the high subjective well-being Graham, C., & Pettinato, S. (2002). Frustrated achievers:
levels of Latin Americans, even of those who Winners, losers, and subjective well being in new
are in hunger. market economies. Journal of Development Studies,
Taking public action with hunger is in the 38, 100140.
Guardiola, J., Gonzalez-G
omez, F., Garca-Rubio, A., &
political agenda of many governments in Latin Lendechy-Grajales, A. (2013). Does higher income
America, and globally it is considered as one of equal higher levels of happiness in every society?
the objectives of the Millennium Development The case of the Mayan people. International Journal
Goals. Hunger is also a driver of lower SWB that of Social Welfare, 22(1), 3544.
Guillen-Royo, M., & Velazco, J. (2012). Happy villages
is shown to be more important than being unem- and unhappy slums? Understanding happiness
ployed. Unfortunately, considering several determinants in Peru. In H. Selin & S. G. Davey
degrees of hunger were beyond the scope of (Eds.), Happiness across cultures (pp. 253270).
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Heckman, J., & Cunha, F. (2010). Investing in our young
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Kahneman, D., Diener, E., & Schwarz, N. (2003). Well-
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Threats to Happiness: How Lower
Middle Class Households Deal 15
with Insecurity and Precariousness
William Daniel Vera Rojas, Monica Budowski,

and Christian Suter
15.1 Introduction oriented development model of the 1970s, the

neo-liberal style structural reforms of the 1980s
Together with economic, social and cultural and 1990s, and the various revisions and counter-
changes in Latin America in recent decades, the reforms that have been implemented since the
middle strata have increased in size and internal 2000s. These transformations manifest them-
heterogeneity (Franco et al. 2011; Solimano selves in the open and globalised economic
2008). Although there are differences within the development paradigm, the dualisation of the
region, we nd substantial changes at least in labour markets with winning and losing eco-
those countries with a majority of middle and nomic sectors, and residual-type social policy
lower-middle strata. In light of these changes, paradigms. Further societal changes reect in a
our research aims to analyse how households of slowly aging population, a reduction in birth
the middle and lower-middle strata provide them- rates and changes in the structure and role of
selves with well-being. On the basis of various the family.
empirical studies, as well as our own qualitative These transformation have recongured the
and comparative study in Chile and Costa Rica, regions opportunity structures, reshaping the
we aim to identify the characteristics of well-being structural context behind patterns of social
in both its material and subjective dimensions. inequality, social stratication and mobility, as
We focus on the dynamics that create the daily well as the proles of the social strata (Arriagada
conditions of well-being. We consider these to 2007; Barba 2004a, 2007; CEPAL 2008, 2009;
be contingent on the opportunity structures offered Filgueira 2007a; Jelin 2007; Klein and Tokman
by each countrys welfare regime. 2000; Larranaga and Azocar 2008; Tokman
The structural changes in Latin America are 2011). According to income and/or occupation,
particularly marked by the crisis of the inward- the middle strata has increased to comprise
around 50 and 60 % of the population (Castellani
and Parent 2011; Franco et al. 2011).
W.D. Vera Rojas M. Budowski The change in prole of the wage-earning
Division of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work,
sectors has led to greater heterogeneity amongst
University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland
e-mail: danielverarojas@gmail.com; monica. the middle strata. For some, labour conditions have
budowski@unifr.ch become more precarious in the less productive
C. Suter (*) economic sectors predominantly in the service
Department of Sociology, University of Neuchatel, sector due to the higher rates of informal, tempo-
Neuchatel, Switzerland rary, exible and outsourced work (Portes 1985;
e-mail: christian.suter@unine.ch

232 W.D. Vera Rojas et al.
Portes and Hoffman 2007; Tokman 2011), regimes and their opportunity structures. Sec-
whereas others have been able to enter more tion 15.5 contains results of our empirical study.
dynamic economic sectors (Klein and Tokman It starts with the congurations of opportunity
2000). The manualnon-manual distinction has structures that enable or provide well-being as
become less decisive for the socio-economic sta- made use of in the households daily practices.
tus. For example, the younger generations higher This is followed by the analysis of (empirically
status is characterised by more insecure and unpro- found) patterns of well-being and then by the
tected labour conditions, despite their higher levels analysis of general well-being. It nally elaborates
of education and socio-economic status the threats to and the protection of well-being by
legitimized by the correspondence of income, identifying domain-specic patterns. A summary
occupation, labour conditions and level of educa- and conclusions follow in Section 15.6.
tion. This correspondence tends to be the case only
for the upper and upper-middle strata (Barozet
2012; Franco et al. 2011). A process of elitization 15.2 Novel Conditions
of the upper and upper-middle strata has been of Socio-economic Well-Being
observed, as they have increasingly detached in the Middle
themselves from the rest of the strata in terms of and Lower-Middle Strata:
income (Perez Sainz et al. 2004). The middle strata Precariousness
have thus become more diverse and complex
regarding their economic, social and cultural Different strands of literature analyse the material
proles creating a broader range of social status conditions of the middle and lower-middle strata:
combinations. Lifestyle differences between tradi- the studies on new poverty, on social vulnera-
tional and emerging middle strata have also dimin- bility, on precariousness, on social mobility,
ished (Barozet 2012; Espinoza and Barozet 2009). on the discrepancies between the traditional
In many Latin American countries, in the 1990s indicators of social status and their impact on
social policy paradigms in general became increas- feelings of insecurity and identity. The studies
ingly designed towards targeting the poorest strata; on new poverty discuss the middle stratas
this left the middle strata to depend more and more experiences of impoverishment, particularly after
on market mechanisms and increased household restructuring processes and economic crises, as
support to satisfy their needs for support and social was the case in Argentina after the crisis at the
protection (Budowski and Suter 2009; Barba beginning of the 2000s. They highlight the pro-
2004a, 2005). Some researchers, who conceived gressive loss of labour and social rights by wage-
of the middle strata as bridging and connecting earning sectors that have produced downward
the upper and lower ones argue that the paradigm mobility dynamics, growing social vulnerability
of upward mobility of the outward-oriented devel- and impoverishment of the middle strata (Kessler
opment model has been exhausted (Kessler and Di 2003; Kessler and Di Virgilio 2008; Minujin
Virgilio 2008). In the rst decade of 2000 further 2010; Minujin and Kessler 1995; Mora y Araujo
(counter-)reforms were carried out, yet varying 2007, 2010). Another strand of literature analyses
strongly from country to country. Against this poverty dynamics aimed at identifying the factors
background, and in line with other scholars, we potentially associated with the high rates of
assume that the middle and lower-middle strata income volatility of households near the poverty
now experience novel social conditions of well- line. These studies evidence a high level of vul-
being to maintain or improve their well-being. nerability of those households situated slightly
The rest of the chapter is structured as follows: above and around the poverty line (Arzola and
Section 15.2 describes on the novel conditions of Castro 2008; Denis et al. 2007; Neilson 2004;
socio-economic well-being in the middle and Paz 2002; Slon and Zuniga 2006). Other
lower-middle strata. In Section 15.3 we present researchers maintain that the structural changes
research question, design, methods and data. Sec- in Latin America in recent decades have created
tion 15.4 species Chile and Costa Ricas welfare a threat to material well-being of the middle strata
15 Threats to Happiness: How Lower Middle Class Households Deal with. . . 233
leading to a new permanent state of social fragility to which institutions in their ensemble contribute
and a constant risk of impoverishment (Mora to protecting from or reducing insecurities. The
2008; Mora and Perez 2009) or of social vulnera- objective condition of precariousness refers to
bility (Holzmann and Jrgensen 2003; Kaztman specic opportunities and constraints related to
2000; Kaztman and Wormald 2002). These struc- structural positions and therewith links into
tural changes not only affect socio-economic social inequality research. According to the liter-
well-being, but also identities, their perception ature in Latin America, the middle and lower-
and representation (Kessler 2003, Kessler and Di middle strata experience insecure socio-
Virgilio 2008). economic well-being and a fragile social status
In line with other scholars, we argue that the (Mora 2008; Mora and Perez 2009). They do not
structural changes in Latin Americacharacterised classify themselves as poor, but consider their
in the 2000s by economic growth, a decline in material well-being and social status threatened
poverty rates, persistent rates of inequality, exi- in many ways; this induces feelings of insecurity
ble labour markets and residual-type social policy (Araujo and Martuccelli 2011). They may thus be
models (CEPAL 2008, 2009)reshape the considered to be precariously prosperous.
conditions of material well-being. The traditional Conditions of well-being, however, include
middle strata have partly experienced disquali- objective and subjective components. With few
cation, whereas parts of the poor strata have expe- exceptions, previous studies about poverty
rienced relative social improvements and upward dynamics, the risk of impoverishment in Latin
mobility. The formerly rather distinct strata now America or social vulnerability have not
share a broad intermediate zone characterised by included the subjective dimension sufciently.
precarious living conditions that do not guarantee The subjective dimension of precarious-
stable well-being in the long term (Minujin 2010; ness refers to the individuals and households
Mora 2008; Mora and Perez 2009). perceived (constrained) agency and subjective
Individuals and households opportunities well-being within given structural contexts, and
depend largely on societal institutions, their inter- allows to better understand the interplay of vari-
play, and the prevalent vertical and horizontal ous domains for well-being in everyday life
stratication. Welfare regimes structure the insti- (Rojas 2008, 2011a, b, 2012, 2013). It takes
tutional context (Esping-Andersen 2000). into account how people and households experi-
Institutions provide opportunity structures and ence and evaluate their everyday living
(re)produce well-being over time. As welfare conditions, what they do and do not do and
regimes provide differential access to social their rationales for it, and how this experience
positions, they also structure social stratication relates to their well-being. Without this subjec-
(Filgueira 2007). tive perspective, it is difcult to understand the
We conceptualize the novel socio-economic processes that inuence the conguration of
conditions of life characterising the well-being of socio-economic well-being and prosperity.
the middle and lower-middle strata in Latin Our assumption is that variations in the con-
America by means of the notion of precarious guration of socio-economic well-being are
prosperity. In a general understanding, precar- related to the specic array of welfare provision
iousness refers to conditions of insecurity and available to households in different domains.
uncertainty to maintain or improve a given level This conguration corresponds on the one hand,
of socio-economic well-being over time. This to the particular interplay of the welfare regimes
level of socio-economic well-being is not consid- institutions (labour market, State, and
ered poor yet coupled with a constrained scope households and families) in the specic domains
of agency (e.g. in contrast to the socio- of well-being. On the other hand, it is related to
economically more prosperous; Budowski the characteristics of the household itself. The
et al. 2010). The condition of precariousness latter include the households (i.e. their
in socio-economic positions between poverty members) social positions and status,
and rather secure prosperity reects the extent their capabilities, resources, trajectory, but also
their perceptions and social expectations. The to December in 2009.1 Retrospective and prospec-
link between the array of opportunities for wel- tive information was gathered concerning the
fare available in each domain and the actual household circumstances, resources and
characteristics of the households enhances assets, how the households managed everyday
and/or restricts the individual households capac- life and what their difculties, and expectations
ity for action regarding well-being. It is with and plans; further topics were the (biographical)
these analytical elements (the country-specic household trajectory and changes between the two
welfare regime, the particular array of interviews. To obtain households in precarious
opportunities in specic life domains and the prosperity, they were sampled in purposefully
households characteristics and perceptions) selected lower-middle-income neighborhoods
that we analyse the similarities and differences according to statistics available on the neighbor-
of precarious well-being when comparing the hood levels in the two cities, expert
households well-being within and between the interviews and interviews with local neighbor-
two countries (Vera Rojas 2014). hood leaders.
To ensure reasonable efciency, households
were sampled inspired by random (route) walk
(Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik 2003) in three neighborhoods
15.3 Research Question, Design,
in each city. Every xth household was interviewed
Methods and Data
as to whether it belonged to the target group
dened by an income measure and a scale of
Our research aims at understanding the novel con-
deprivations.2 To establish the nal sample from
dition of well-being of the middle and lower-
those households identied eligible with the
middle strata. In doing so it contributes to the
standardized screening questionnaire, we selected
conceptualizing the macro-meso-micro-link and
according to the diversity of household composi-
to lling the gap in research on the subjective
tion and attachment to the labour market. The
dimension. We ask how socio-economic well-
being is created and shaped in households belong-
ing to the middle and lower-middle strata. We 2
The (OECD equivalized household) income bracket was
apply a broad analytical perspective that includes located in the fourth, fth and sixth decile of the
well-being in both its objective and subjective per-capita income distribution (Solimano 2008, 11). The
dimensions. We investigate the array of objective items for the deprivation scale come from the
opportunities in different life domains that con- Euromodule, where each item is followed by the question:
Is it because you cannot afford to do it or for another
tribute to the overall socio-economic well-being, reason? The items are: Do you take at least 1 weeks
such as work, income, health, education, housing holidays away from home once a year?; do you invite
and care, and take into account the households friends round for a meal at least once a month?; do you
interpretation thereof and the subjective experi- have a meal out at a restaurant at least once a month? do
you have a car for private use (private or from your
ence of well-being. company)?; do you have a computer at home?; do you
The research is based on data from qualita- have an internet connection at home?; are you able to
tive interviews conducted in Chile and Costa afford the dentist when necessary? Non Euromodule
Rica. Per country 21 households were interviewed items were: Are you paying to any type of pension sys-
tem? Do you have a private pillar with voluntary savings
twice in Temuco (Chile) and San Jose (Costa for old age? A household is considered deprived on an
Rica) in May to June 2008 and again in October item if it cannot afford that item due to nancial reasons.
A household is considered to conform to the deprivation
criteria if it has four or more deprivations. At the time the
1
To keep formulations simple, we refer to Costa Rica research project was launched, information on specic
and Chile (instead of the two cities where the interviews quantitative and representative data regarding the items
were carried out). Due to practical reasons (one of the of the Euromodule were not available; the items and the
authors was employed at the Catholic University of threshold were therefore discussed and assessed by coun-
Temuco), the Chilean interviews were carried out in try experts and the cooperating country-based university
Temuco. partners participating in the research project.
qualitative thematic interviews were transcribed target the poor. The market increased in impor-
verbatim and indexed by a deductively elaborated tance in the allocation of resources for well-
coding scheme derived from the interview topic being.
guide and inductively by in-vivo codes. The the- Chile and Costa Rica represent two
matic framework analysis served as the method contrasting models of welfare regime. The
of analysis (Ritchie et al. 2003; Miles and Chilean model, is one of the pioneering welfare
Huberman 1994) to identify different patterns of regimes in the region and originally had corpo-
well-being within each country (i.e. diversity), and ratist and stratied features. It was transformed
similarities and differences between the two into a neo-liberal model in the 1980s (Mesa-Lago
countries (Hantrais 1999; yen 1990). 2000, 2004). According to indicators such as
social spending, coverage, distribution and level
of welfare provision, the Chilean welfare regime
is described as universal; it is characterized as
15.4 Chile and Costa Ricas Welfare
liberal regarding the management and provision
Regimes and Their
of health, education and social security, and
Opportunity Structures
residual regarding the targeted nature of social
spending (Filgueira 2007b). Rudra (2007)
In this section, we describe the opportunity
classies this regime as productivist since public
structures conceptualised as the interplay
policy is focused on promoting the development
between the institutions, i.e. the State, mar-
of the market. In comparison to other countries,
ket, community and household and family, in
the Chilean welfare regime is considered suc-
order to locate the practices of how households
cessful, at least as regards welfare given its
deal with precariousness. Each welfare regime
indicators in spending, coverage and return in
organizes social risks such as aging, unemploy-
terms of human development (Huber and
ment, illness or care differently, i.e. the inequal-
Stephen 2005) and socio-economic performance
ity of risks and opportunities depends on the
with a signicant reduction in poverty rates and
interplay between the different institutions
lower rates of informality in comparison with
(Esping-Andersen 2000, 2006).
other countries in the region, yet still with higher
Neo-liberal structural reforms in Latin Amer-
income inequality (Marcel and Rivera 2008).
ica in the 1980s and 1990s under the framework
Other researchers classify the regime as liberal-
of the so-called Washington Consensus severely
informal (Barrientos 2004) or familialist
affected the welfare regimes.. They were applied
(Martnez Franzoni 2008; Martnez Franzoni
to different degrees in the region (Suter 1999;
and Voorend 2009) due to the central role played
Suter and Stamm 2002; Barba 2004a, b, 2005,
by the family as providers of well-being and the
2007). The social security welfare paradigm3
social securitys discrimination in favour of the
typical of the import substitution model that had
traditional male provider.
focused on formal employment and the social
In contrast to the Chilean welfare regime,
rights attached to it was changed to a residual-
Costa Rica developed its social security and
type model basically providing measures to
healthcare systems later, but it was more univer-
sal and solidary and less stratied than that of
3
other countries in the region (Suter and
The concept welfare regime refers to the particular
Budowski 2001). Problems are associated
ways that specic societies involve the State, market,
family and community in the production and management with the high rates of informality on the labor
of social well-being. The welfare paradigm represents market and the limited quality and coverage of its
the values, technical selection criteria, and the regulations non-contributory systems (Filgueira 2007b;
and procedures shared by scientic communities, social
Mesa-Lago 2000, 2004). Costa Rica also experi-
agents, public ofcials and international agencies, etc.
that dene a way of understanding and promoting social enced the structural reforms with economic and
well-being (Barba 2005). social transformations, yet they did not involve a
radical change to its universal and solidary model households objective and subjective well-being
(Barba 2004a, 2007). The Costa Rican model is and their capacity for action, well-being depends
also considered successful in comparison to other on the arrays of options possible in each
Latin American countries regarding indicators domain within the country specic welfare
such as poverty, inequality, human capital, social regime in connection with characteristics of
spending and progressive allocation (Huber and each household in terms of social position and
Stephen 2005). Rudra (2007) classies this wel- status, resources, and social capabilities,
fare regime model as State-protectionist, expectations and trajectories (Vera Rojas 2014).
given the State to be crucial regarding the provi- We look at the domains of work, income, educa-
sion of healthcare, education and social security. tion, health, housing, social security and care.
Costa Rica has a lower commodication level We empirically identify the specic array of
and lower income inequalities compared to opportunity structures in each life domain that
Chile (Marcel and Rivera 2008). Like the middle and lower-middle income households
Chilean model it is familialist, but its social consider available or make use of. These arrays
security system is less male-oriented than Chiles and the households characteristics and
and womens participation rates in the labour perceptions structure their opportunities to obtain
market are higher (Franzoni 2008). Despite com- well-being. The arrays of opportunities made use
parable poverty rates between the two countries, of at a micro-social level in each country is
Costa Rica has not been quite as successful in presented per domain in Table 15.1. Embedding
lowering them as Chile has. the qualitative information from our samples
(in Table 15.1) into the larger contexts, we nd
that it coincides with aggregate data on the coun-
15.5 Results try levels regarding the two countries welfare
regime, even if it is not specied for particular
In the following we outline some of the principle income-levels.
results obtained from our analysis of the For the purpose of our analysis, the domains
interviewed households well-being and their work and income are subsumed under the same
relationship to the welfare regimes opportunity heading since the majority of Latin American
structures. Firstly, we consider the specic array households generate income through their
of opportunities that the households perceive and members participation in labour markets. The
make use of in each country sample. Secondly, sampled households in Chile made use of two
we look at the link between the households different options to obtain economic well-being:
general assessment of their well-being and their the formal labour market as the main opportunity
perceived agency. Thirdly, we compare the two for well-being and the combination of the formal
countries domain-specic well-being by focus- and informal labour markets, when more than
sing on factors that threaten or protect one member in the household works. The major-
households well-being. ity of the sampled households in Costa Rica
relied on the combination of the formal and
informal market and, to a lesser extent, the
15.5.1 Array of Opportunity Structures State (i.e. through the contributory or non-
Available for Well-Being contributory pension system). The differences
in Different Life Domains in the arrays of opportunity structures in this
domain between the two countries appear to be
In order to investigate the well-being of the related to the larger size of the informal market in
middle and lower-middle income households, Costa Rica when compared with Chile providing
we compare two distinct welfare regimes. As opportunities for the sampled households
opportunity structures enhance or restrict the (middle and lower-middle strata). Likewise, the
Table 15.1 Comparison of arrays of opportunity structures for well-being in distinct domains
Domains of well-being Chile Costa Rica
Work-income Formal market (10) Formal market/informal market/State (14)
Formal market/informal market (10) Formal market (4)
Informal market (2)
Education Market (with public subsidy) (11) State (13)
State (7)
Health State (with co-payment) (19) State (without co-payment) (19)
Private (Isapres) (2) Without health care (2)
Housing Market (with public subsidies) (14) Household-family (9)
Market (7) Market (9)
Household-family/State (3)
Social security Market (10 State (19)
Market/none (10) State/none (2)
State (1)
Care Household-family/market (5) Household-family/market (5)
Household-family (3) Household-family (4)
Source: Vera Rojas (2013)
Remarks: Based on interviews with 21 households in both Chile (Temuco) and Costa Rica (San Jose) conducted from
May to June 2008 and from October to December 2009. Numbers in brackets refer to the number of households
interviewed making use of the specic array
social security system (Caja Costarricense de Chile (data from the Fondo Nacional de Salud
Seguridad Social), i.e. the Costa Rican State Chile 2011); in Costa Rica, the insurance is the
provides opportunities for income through con- States social security system, the Caja
tributory and non-contributory pensions. In Costarricense de Seguridad Social CCSS, see
Chile, households receive pensions obtained Unger et al. 2008). However, in Chile we also
through individually funded systems managed nd households with a private insurance
by private insurance companies, thus through (Institutos de Salud Previsional, ISAPRES). In
the market. Costa Rica private health insurance has only
Further differences between both samples recently become a (costly) option. Despite the
were found in the domain of education. In similarity regarding the public provision of
Chile, households obtained education basically health care, the principles of the health insurance
through the private system, and in particular edu- systems vary: Chilean households must incur
cation in private facilities with public subsidy, private expenditure depending on the health ser-
fewer through the State system. In Costa Rica, vice they choose (a co-payment, according to
households with children in education received Chiles liberal principles of free choice) for the
education exclusively through the state system. health care provider; this is not the case in Costa
Again, this reects the basic opportunities of Rica. While in Chile the ratio of public to private
each welfare regime: in Chile educational cover- spending is 48:52, Costa Rica has a ratio of 75:25
age is divided almost equally between the public (2012) (WHO, 2013).
and the private sector, in Costa Rica, the public In Chile, the market was the main provider of
offer covers 90 % of the demand for education. housing for the sampled households, both for
It was primarily the State that provided health those who own their housing and, to a lesser
services for the households in both the Chilean extent, for those who rent. Since the 1980s
and the Costa Rican sample, again reecting the demand for State subsidies is high as these have
country situation. Around 84 % of the population lower interests than private mortgages. State
with insurance is covered by public health insur- subsidies however require savings and a relative
ance, the Fondo Nacional de Salud, FONASA, economic solvency (average income). Among
the sampled households in Costa Rica, inheri- education; the Costa Rican sample relied on pub-
tance from the family was the most important lic pre-school education only. Chiles coverage
way to obtain housing. In some instances, hous- of pre-school educaction is 85%, where as Costa
ing was obtained through the market Rica has coverage of 72% (in 2012; UNESCO,
with mortgages, or through the state, i.e. through 2013).
the housing subsidy programme (Bono Vivienda),
a demand subsidy system. Households also
acquired housing through the market itself,
15.5.2 General Well-Being
through instruments such as loans from the nan-
cial system or cooperatives. Housing subsidies in
In this second part we briey relate the
Costa Rica were not as relevant as in the Chilean
households subjective assessment of their well-
sample. This might be due to the more targeted
being to their living standard. We include to what
Costa Rican State housing policy that prioritises
extent they felt stable and secure regarding their
urban and rural low-income sectors. Conversely,
socio-economic position, they felt capable to
the Chilean model uses a demand subsidy system
manage and plan in the short, medium and long
aimed at a wider spectrum of socio-economic
term, and they had expectations for the future.
strata with higher market involvement
The empirical patterns that emerged are
(FUPROVI 2010; Simian 2010; Solano and
presented in Table 15.2. There were only minor
Madrigal 2008).
differences between the two countries. From the
In the domain of social security, Chilean
total of 21 households in the Chilean sample,
households either had individually-funded pri-
12 were satised with their present situation
vate systems provided by the market that cover
and with regards to the future; nine felt
old age, disability and widowhood when house-
unsatisifed; in the Costa Rican sample,
hold members worked in the formal market, or
11 households were satised and 10 unsatis-
when employed in the informal market, we found
ed. The Costa Rican households classied as
the co-existence of members with and without
satised were worried about the future as they
social security within the same household. The
had all experienced uncertainty, and to some
pattern in the Costa Rican sample of households
extent, a decline in living standard in the years
was similar (formal market participation and the
20082009s; some were worried about the eco-
combination of the formal and informal market
nomic crisis in 2008 and the general situation of
by individuals and members of one household)
the country. Among the satised households, ve
but the provider was different: it was the State
households in each country felt their socio-
and not the market. While it is estimated that
economic situation was stable and that they had
28 % (2009) of the Chilean population does not
an adequate capacity for action, whereas the
have social security cover, for Costa Rica this
remaining seven (Chile) and six (Costa Rica)
gure is estimated at 16.3 % (2009) (CEPALs
felt relatively stable yet limited in their capacity
data 2012).
for action. Among the households unsatised
Finally regarding care, whether for children,
with their living conditions, nine felt insecure
the ill and/or older adults, we observed similar
and very limited in their capacity for action.
arrays in both groups of households: the house-
They were also pessimistic. In Costa Rica,
hold and family were the primary source for the
among the unsatised in particular, their very
provision of well-being. Nonetheless, we
limited capacity for action stood out . Beyond
observed some differences: some of the sampled
this more summary distribution, our qualitative
Chilean households complemented care provided
data allows to identify which life domains are
by the family with the market offer for
associated with the households well-being.
pre-school (State-subsidized or non-subsidized)
Table 15.2 The households satisfaction with living standard and their capacity for action
Chile Costa Rica
Satised (total: 12) Satised (total: 11)
Stable, adequate capacity for action, optimistic (5) Stable, adequate capacity for action, worried about the
future (5)
Relatively stable, limited capacity for action and Relatively stable, limited capacity for action and
without positive expectations (7) without positive expectations (6)
Unsatised (total: 9) Unsatised (total: 10)
Insecure, very limited capacity for action and Very limited capacity for action
pessimistic
Source: Vera Rojas (2014)
Remarks: Interviews with 21 households in both Chile (Temuco) and Costa Rica (San Jose) conducted from May to
June 2008 and from October to December 2009. Numbers in brackets refer to the number of households
The satisfaction regarding the living These were related to health problems and their
conditions in the Chilean sample was associated costs, controlled indebtedness, or anticipating an
with the stability of the households labour and uncertain future due to the stage of life of the
income allowing them to meet their households household members (pension age) considered to
needs adequately. They also highlighted that be insufciently secured even by the novel social
housing was very important: all owned the political measures (the Basic Solidary Pension/
house they lived in, except one household who Pension B asica Solidaria de Vejez or the
had inherited it. House ownership allowed for Solidary Contribution to a Pension/Aporte Previ-
optimal living conditions. We observed that sional Solidario4). These households did not
some households had improved their situation expect their situation to improve in future.
in recent years: higher income, better housing, [The situation has] not changed much. Conditions
better labour conditions or the end of childrens are the same, my husband is still working in trans-
university careers. port, I am still a housewife; we cant expect much
from life because of his working conditions.
. . .So I am more stable at work, because before I (Woman, housewife, close to pension age, CL04,
was working as a temporary replacement and now, 2009)
there have been changes (...) a permanent contract
and I am more secure at work (Woman, accounting In the future, I only see myself working and trying
clerk CL08, 2009) to get a solidary pension, given the few funds that
are available. (Man, self-employed electrician,
I feel that this year, now that neither of my children CL18, 2009)
are here, I will be able to reorganise my nances,
because in the end I had some debts, some things Considering the unsatised Chilean
that I will be able to forget, because now I will households, various situations caused feelings
have less expenses. (Woman, housewife CL12,
2009) of insecurity, limited the members ability to
manage their current well-being and caused pes-
Although a majority of the households simistic expectations for the future. Households
among the satised yet with limited capacity for were unsatised when a member was unem-
action had stable jobs and own their homes, they ployed, when the work of a self-employed mem-
were not able to save money, and therefore felt ber progressively deteriorated, or when the
they could not adequately deal with health household had to incur high debts arising from
problems, educational expenses, or house
reparations or to undertake home improvements.
4
They attributed this to the labour conditions, and In Chile, people may apply for the Basic Solidary Pen-
their income that they considered insufcient. sion (Pension Basica Solidaria de Vejez) if they dont
have access to any pension scheme or to the Solidary
Apart from favourable conditions to well-being,
Pension Contribution (Aporte Previsional Solidario). In
such as stability or solidarity within the family, both cases, applicants apply for it within a given legal
less favourable ones limited capacity for action. framework.
freelance work, healthcare expenses, or mort- situation and its effects on the labour market
gage arrears. These situations created feelings and household income.
of insecurity regarding the households well- He had a better salary, he was at another business,
being. Some of these situations were temporary, but they cut costs then and it went to Cartago and
like unemployment during the economic crisis in they laid off many, many people (Woman pen-
20082009; others were structural, associated sioner CR01, 2009).
with precarious labour conditions particularly So, we lived on this and we had some savings but
among self-employed or semi-formal work, or they diminished substantially, because we had
to use our savings to keep our business going,
formal yet precarious labour conditions with too pay the employees, pay for policies and insurance.
low earnings to make ends meet. Incurring pri- (Housewife CR14, 2009)
vate debts in attempts to nance their business,
healthcare and/or the daily running of the house- The (relatively) satised felt that their capac-
hold to the point where it became unsustainable ity for action was limited and saw no
to the household budget also contributed to the opportunities to improve their situation in the
households feelings of insecurity. future. They related their level of satisfaction to
their limited income, the rising cost of living, the
You see, living conditions in the household, well, inability to save and to a reduction in the sale of
unfortunately this year, have not been very good.
Fearing that my husband will be out of work, the goods and/or services offered by self-employed
truth is that everything becomes very complicated, workers. The quality of their housing and
this complicates the whole familys life. (Woman, health also worried them. Apart from one house-
informal temporary worker, CL20, 2009) hold, they had no nancial debts. The majority
I thought that since everything was going well, I owned their home, there were various sources of
could make a good investment, but later, when it (formal and informal) work within each house-
[the nancial crisis] started going downhill, eh,
everything went downhill. (Woman, self-employed hold. In the cases with a health problem this did
seamstress, CL22, 2009) not impact on the households income situation.
So now we have already received the repossession Our biggest worry is still economic, because even
order, because the debt was already over a million, though we are a little better off, I dont want to say
a million and a half. (. . .) and it is, as you say, like we are excellent, true or not, you can have a salary
a sword hanging over our heads. (Woman, school and everything, but still have nothing left over to
bus driver without a contract, CL03, 2009) keep. (Housewife CR13, 2009)
Among the (relatively) satised Costa Rican Well yes, this year [his income] declined, quite a
bit, even though many came last year last year and
sample households many felt they were able to requested his services. This year was not the same,
manage their present and future well-being as it was quite a bit less, but thank God, since he is
they disposed over sufcient income to cover self-employed, someone else came and contracted
their needs, had their own home and their labour him to make some furniture. (Housewife CR17,
2009)
conditions were also stable. In one case the per-
son providing the main income had experienced The unsatised Costa Rican households felt
unemployment for various months and nally they disposed of a very limited capacity for
started a new job with a lower salary; two action to improve it. The household
households with self-employed workers experi- members were employed in informal labour and
enced lower sales and uncertainty regarding the their income was irregular or insufcient. When
future of the households business, despite hav- in formal work the salary was insufcient to
ing been able to reduce their debts. Although satisfy the households needs and triggered fur-
these households were still able to manage their ther problems complicating their life. Some
every day life well, did not have high debts and households had to deal with problems of housing
disposed of various sources of work or income maintenance, household members health and,
via pensions, the interviewees voiced relative yet only in one case, high debts. These
uncertainty given the countrys economic households considered their living conditions to
be limited in terms of income and/or were inse- particular to each. Most are closely related to
cure in terms of sources of labour. They basically the array of opportunity structures available to
concentrated on managing their everyday life. produce, maintain or constrain well-being. Fig-
However, if a change in members working was ure 15.1 summarises the relationship between
in view, some hope for improvement domains and elements associated with the pro-
became audible. duction of households daily well-being,
Satised, no, because of this situation. Here my allowing us to observe particularities in each
husband works with a small truck transporting sample of households.
things. A year and a half ago he had a heart attack,
and now he has to work at whatever he can,
because he cant over exert himself. (Housewife 15.5.3.1 Income and Work
CR16, 2009) The domains of income and work stand out when
Well, presently we continue the same, because my looking at the elements contributing to precari-
husbands work [he is a carpenter] is barely ousness and reducing well-being. In both
enough to make ends meet, it is just very very
samples, if the households perceived their
recently that they [their children] started working,
and they cooperate [and contribute] a bit. (House- income to be insufcient or too limited to cover
wife CR05, 2009) their basic needs and/or to have precarious labour
conditions in terms of contracts, income and
Favourable external support and intra-house-
stability, etc., they felt threatened in their well-
hold dynamics played an important role improv-
being, or on the contrary, if previously precarious
ing the households well-being: if
conditions became more stable, they felt better
relationships were supportive and cooperative
protected. Feelings of insecurity were triggered if
they enabled or enhanced the capacity for action;
income became insufcient requiring further
if there were problems in the household, for
members to ensure it.
whatever reason, capacity for action was more
limited and thus threatened economic and intra- To save is kind of most difcult (. . .) Well, getting
things and paying the bills has also been very
household well-being. difcult for us. Its like were robbing Peter to
Well, I feel, that if I would have received help from pay Paul. (Woman self-employed dress-maker
institutions to alleviate our precarious nancial CL10, 2008).
situation, we would not have suffered so much Well I, (. . .) since I work in an external company
[from domestic violence], because they caused for a supermarket (contractor), this year my boss
many problems; maybe I expected too much from contracted business for two years, and with that
him than he could offer, therefore any kind of small the supermarket may not lower the budget any-
type of nancial help could have appeased the more, because that means reducing the number of
situation. (Housewife, CR10, 2009) staff. (Man, cleaning company employee CL14,
2009)
Really, now theres more tightening [of the bud-
get]. Before, my husband paid for everything. Now
15.5.3 Threats to and Protection I have to help him because [with his income alone]
of Well-Being: Domain-Specific we just cant make ends meet, it just doesnt work
out. (Woman, convenience store worker
Patterns CR12, 2009).
The problem is that they [a security company]
By means of looking at the domain specic were bidding for a tender, but a cheaper company
elements in light of the two welfare regimes, came along, then because of the famous crisis,
we may identify some that act protective, and Intel [a large research and development centre]
conversely, some that threaten well-being, decided to reduce costs and contracted the new
company [and the interviewee lost his job]. (Son,
contributing or shaping the condition of precari- security guard CR16, 2009)
ousness. We nd some similar elements in the
samples of both countries, and others that are
Chile Costa Rica

Threats Threats
- Health: segmented and with - Housing: lack of legal
private costs Threats to well-being documents
- Education: segmented and versus protection against and poor quality of
with private costs construction material
- Finances: access to credit with precariousness - Informality of labour relations
indebtedness
Protection Protection:
- Housing: access with subsidy - Health: universal and without
and credit high private costs
Shared Factors
- Old-age: different State Threat - Education: universal and
solidarity schemes without high private costs
- Work: precariousness and informality of labour
complementing private ones relations
- Old-age: State solidarity
schemes, large proportion of
- Care: family and womens responsibility
non-contributory pensions in
Protection:
- Solidarity, stability and cooperation within the Latin American comparison
household
Fig. 15.1 Domains and elements affecting well-being in in both Chile (Temuco) and Costa Rica (San Jose)
households in precarious prosperity in Chile and Costa conducted from May to June 2008 and from October to
Rica. Remarks: Based on interviews with 21 households December 2009 (Source: elaborated in Vera Rojas 2014)
The dynamics mentioned by the interviewees of labour and social rights (Mora 2005)). This
are coherent with the structural features of the affects the living conditions of the middle and
labour markets in both Chile and Costa. The lower-middle strata with fewer socio-economic
labour market is characterised by exibility, resources to counterbalance possible events or
poor unemployment protection, workers limited declines in income.
capacity to negotiate, high levels of informality,
self-employment and precarious micro-
15.5.3.2 Care
enterprise, and a limited ability to protect
Another domain contributing to precariousness
employment in economic crises. The two
shared by both samples of households is
countries have a high level of income inequal-
associated with the domain of care for very
ity in global comparison (somewhat higher in
young children, older adults and disabled people.
Chile than in Costa Rica), highly unequal
As the familialist welfare regime in both
salaries between the workers, the concentration
countries suggests, households primarily assume
of income and economic heterogeneity, and large
this responsibility by themselves by using their
sectors linked to the low productivity service
own resources and capabilities, with women
economy (Labour Overview of the ILO in 2009,
being responsible for the majority of reproduc-
2010). In addition to this, wage-earners have a
tive work (Budowski and Schief 2014). In some
weak capacity to improve their participation in
households this responsibility of care was
income negotiations (CEPAL 2008, 2009;
assumed without causing discomfort or dissatis-
Estado de la Nacion, Costa Rica 2009). These
faction to the person who assumed it, in others it
elements form a fragile, insecure and unstable
was a signicant source of stress for the members
context for generating or maintaining well-
of the household and restricted the opportunities
being and affects workers in informal and less
to work.
dynamic economic sectors in particular. Labour
is less protected due to the processes of growing I want my children to go to nursery school, day
care, whatever, and for me to be able to work
precariousness regarding work and income (the because when you dont do much, you feel less
deregulation of labour, the reorganisation of eco- valued here at home. (Housewife CL02, 2009)
nomic production under the new development
My daughter works in houses to earn money for
model, changes to labour relations between busi- her little daughter (. . .). I look after her, send her
ness owners, the State and workers, and the loss
to nursery school (granddaughter), well, I help her mind when dealing with the provision of health
a little bit. (Housewife CR03, 2009) and education due to the impact their decisions
This elementfamilialismcontributes to the may have on their budgets.
households precariousness due to lack of It was 200 thousand pesos [in the private health
pre-school care opportunities as well as limited system]. In the [public] hospital it was like
old-age and disability/invalidity care systems 20 [thousand], but we had to wait for a year
(. . .). When, nally, we could operate her, the
and pensions (Budowski and Schief 2014). Pre- doctor told me that no, if she has a bit of a cold I
cariousness was accentuated as womens entry wont operate. (. . .) But in the end we operated on
into the labour market yielded less favourable her in a special way (Woman, school bus driver
returns: the womens conditions in the labour CL03, 2009).
market (of our two samples) were more precari- Well, since you pay for everything in this country,
ous compared with men as the former were more school, everything, we couldnt do this bit. If she
wants to go, or both want to go to university, we
often employed in the informal market. This will not be able to pay for university or school,
limited the households capacity to balance what they want to do (. . .). (Housewife CL04,
work and care and underpinned the already 2008)
unequal distribution of responsibilities between
These elements enhancing precariousness are
men and women.
closely related to the organisation of the health
As the literature shows, both welfare regimes
and education systems: they are unequally acces-
have favourable indicators in terms of gender
sible according to the economic capacity of the
equality compared to other Latin American
households. As they entailed signicant private
countries, yet problems persist regarding the
expenditure, this sometimes led households to
inequalities in the labour market and the work-
incur in nancial debt. Consequently, we
care-balance. In particular, the lack of or
observed interdependencies between the three
weak State and/or the market in this respect
domainswork, income and healththat could
contributes to precariousness when children, ill
be referred to as a chain reaction and spill-overs
or disabled people need to be cared for (Jelin
from one domain to the other. This became par-
2007). The State in Costa Rica seems to be pres-
ticularly visible when private debts were made to
ent as a possible source of support when very
cover the expenditure required to access private
young children need to be cared for by lone
healthcare and/or education.
mothers (Budowski and Schief 2014).
[the debts] it was just on account of the pharmacy,
those pharmacies, well because all these
15.5.3.3 Health and Education pharmacies like Salcobrand, like so many,
have commercial shops, and we have all the bills,
The main source of concern in the Chilean
all the cards, (. . .). (Woman, self-employed mer-
households was related to the socially segmented chant CL13, 2009)
offer for health and education in terms of quality,
and to the private expenditure arising from the As a result of their attempts to cover private
organization of health services and education. expenditure on health and education, the wide
Better quality service was usually associated range of credit on offer from the nancial market
with the private offer and required undertaking reinforced and accentuated the risks and the inse-
private expenditure to obtain it. Therefore, curity on the households well-being and in some
depending on their economic capacity, the cases destabilised it due to the high expenses
households worried about the present situation they had undertaken.
and the future if they had children or faced health The pronounced liberal and commercial way
problems. As the sampled households health services and education are organised, in
faced limitations regarding work and income, addition to the wide availability of credit, does
they did not feel adequate security and peace of not help to compensate for these households
weaknesses in terms of their income and work limits the development of human capital of the
conditions in any way. Indeed, few opportunities young people that leave school and increases the
beyond the purchasing power of the household risk of precarious working conditions. To counter
exist to enable access to the acceptable quality of this problem of dropping-out and to further edu-
services desired. This way of organising health cation, the State invests in educational grants,
services and education reinforces the stratica- such as the avancemos programme. To further
tion of the past, though not anymore through human capital the State also provides grants for
belonging to a particular corporative group, but university education. Indeed, almost all
through peoples income and purchasing power households interviewed with youth in secondary
(Filgueira 2007b). Households with problems and university education in the Costa Rican sam-
regarding health and education, perceived the ple were receiving some type of educational
liberal and commercial way of organising such grant. Education in general, and educational
important services as a threat to their well-being. credentials, in particular, have become very
Financial debts were incurred to manage health important for the entry into the formal labour
and education needs, and sometimes caused a market and the opportunity of better earnings, a
vicious circle of growing precariousness and fact recognised by the interviewed households.
impoverishment. In Daniels case, hes not missing much, I tell him
In contrast, the domains of health and educa- to take an English class, that right now is a good
tion rather protected the Costa Rican households time and that he should nish his high-school
well-being and security, since they did not put diploma and take some English or IT classes.
(Man, carpenter, CR05 2009)
economic well-being at risk. In Costa Rica,
health is predominantly provided by the public In general terms, the interviewed Costa
sector through public insurance, and does not Rican households perceived the health and edu-
involve high private expenditure on the cational services of acceptable standard and as a
households part, in particular where more com- source of stability and security for well-being.
plex care is required. Due to the tradition that the The protective welfare regime
State is the sole provider for the majority of the model emphasising universal and
population in Costa Rica and the acceptable qual- solidary elements (Marcel and Rivera 2008;
ity of these services, the interviewed households Martnez Franzoni 2008) thus alleviates to a cer-
did not feel that the education of their children or tain extent these households weaknesses in the
health problems threatened the stability of their domains of income and work.
economic well-being. Some interviewed Costa
Rican households, usually those with higher 15.5.3.4 Housing
income, made use of the private system for out- House ownership in Chile constituted an impor-
patient care and/or check-ups. tant element for some households security and
Social insurance in Costa Rica (CCSS) is used for stability. For others, over-indebtedness and pre-
serious illness, for serious operations, but it isnt carious labour conditions threatened the loss of
used for small things. (Man, micro-entrepreneur this capital through the risk of repossession or
CR18, 2009) mortgage arrears. This situation was found in
A similar situation exists in the domain of many of the Chilean households interviewed.
education. It also works predominantly through So now we have already received the repossession
a public provision model that guarantees similar order, because the debt was already over a million,
access and quality to the whole population. A a million and a half. (Woman, school bus driver,
CL03, 2009)
problem exists in this respect on the households
side: the secondary education drop-out rate in According to the statistics of house ownership
Costa Rica is high and thus poses a menace for 80 % of Chilean own their house. The provision
the future well-being of these households; it of public subsidies focused on middle and lower-
middle strata implemented in recent decades and does not necessarily mean that their position
including opportunities to improve the quality of has become more secure and stable. Rather, the
housing (Simian 2010) has enabled a large num- contemporary situation is characterized by a dif-
ber of households to acquire their own housing. ferentiation and emergence of new middle and
Housing is also an important component of lower-middle strata with higher income and bet-
the interviewed households security and stabil- ter access to goods and services, yet within a
ity in Costa Rica, however, the threatening changed societal environment regarding demog-
elements are different to those in Chile. They raphy, the concentration of wealth, labour
are due to the more informal and family-based conditions and earnings, and social protection
way of housing provision. Housing in the sample systems. The conditions of socio-economic
was often inherited from family members; the well-being today therefore differ from the situa-
property titles were not legalised due to lack of tion in previous decades.
nancial resources. This situation combined with By focusing on a same relatively-located pop-
the limited public or private sector nancing ulation belonging to the middle and lower-
available for housing (Szalachman 2008) for middle strata in Chile and Costa Rica, we asked
these strata substantially reduced their how the quality of socio-economic well-being
opportunities for accessing help or credit to varies both within one country and between the
improve the quality of their homes. The Costa two countries with differing welfare regimes.
Rican households complained about this and it Applying a qualitative and comparative research
impacts on their well-being: whatever the state of approach we analysed the dynamics of well-
their housing, they were not able to improve it. In being, how well-being is generated and to what
contrast to Chile, we found only a couple of extent the households well-being mirror the
households that feared the loss of their housing. opportunity structures of the welfare regime.
For this purpose we gathered information on the
subjective dimension of peoples well-being, the
15.6 Summary and Conclusions households material conditions, and the welfare
regimes opportunity structures that the
We presented a brief outline of the theoretical households made use of in different life domains
and empirical background to discuss the social to acquire or maintain their socio-economic well-
conditions that the middle and lower-middle being.
strata in Latin America, especially in those One of the results looks at different levels of
countries with medium-high development levels, satisfaction with the households standard of liv-
presently face. We depict these as precarious, ing: it reveals that satisfaction in both country
i.e. they experience insecurity and instability in samples is related to the households perceived
terms of social conditions and status. Although present and future capacity to act. However, sat-
the middle and lower-middle strata are not in a isfaction and expectations are somewhat lower
situation of poverty, they cannot count on secure when households have experienced effects of the
economic well-being. This situation entails economic crisis and/or changes in their economic
inconsistency regarding social position and (eco- well-being.
nomic) fragility and it makes it difcult for By comparing the array of opportunity
households to manage and deal with their socio- structures within each domain available to and
economic well-being in the medium and long accessed by the interviewed households, we were
term. Furthermore, unexpected events internal able to identify elements that threaten and/or
to the household (e.g. health) or external protect well-being. Some of these elements are
(e.g. unemployment or economic cri- common to both samples and others are different.
sis) threatened these households well-being to Households in both countries shared similar
the extent of possible impoverishment. opportunities to acquire socio-economic well-
Although during the 2000s the size of the being through work and other income. Not sur-
middle strata and heterogeneity increased, this prisingly, threats to socio-economic well-being
emerged from precarious labour conditions, to acquire housing varied. Chilean households
informality, and insufcient salaries. Almost all obtained their homes through commercialised
households mentioned these issues regardless of and formal nancing from banks. Households
their satisfaction. feared falling behind on mortgage payments
The second domain where the dynamics of and facing repossession due to events such as
socio-economic well-being were similar, is unemployment, health problems, insufcient
related to care. Households and families, or income, or high indebtedness. Inheritance was
more precisely women basically provisioned the the main way to access housing in Costa Rica,
opportunities to care for children, elderly and and freed them from indebtedness. However,
disabled members. In the context of scant help irregularities in the property titles limited the
from the State and a gendered labour market households access to credit and/or public grants
discriminating women, care issues contributed for improving their home.
to precariousness and represented a threat for In summary, we observed similarities and
the households socio-economic well-being in differences in the way in which the interviewed
both countries. They further created stress and households of middle and lower-middle strata in
frustration in some of them, as no household- Costa Rica and Chile generated their socio-
external opportunities were available to balance economic well-being and quality of life. These
work and care or were nancially accessible. dynamics depended not only on the opportunity
Differences regarding the provision of structures but also on the interrelationship
opportunities for well-being between the two between these and the peoples own experience
countries became visible in the domains of edu- of their daily living conditions, their own mate-
cation and health. In Chile, healthcare and edu- rial resources and capabilities. This interrelation-
cation are commercialised, segmented and ship created a specic array of opportunity
provided by the market. The Chilean households structures for each household that enhanced or
interviewed undertook private expenditure to restricted the households capacity to manage
obtain the quality they felt appropriate for their well-being. Breaking down macro-level opportu-
needs or that they wanted. This created many nity structures of welfare regimes to the
concerns about how to manage the households opportunities at the micro-social level allows to
resources and sometimes included undertaking identify different arrays of opportunities in the
nancial indebtedness. Although the Costa domains. This enables a more precise under-
Rican households also expressed some uncer- standing of how such opportunities relate to the
tainty about the quality of the public services, way households provide for their well-being and
they were less concerned about the social seg- thus their quality of life in these domains. It
mentation and the quality of the public facilities, further allows for highlighting differences and
felt more protected in the case of complex and similarities in mechanisms enabling well-being
expensive events, and did not have to rely on in distinct domains between the two countries.
borrowing money or taking up credit. The Costa Our results suggest that the universal, solidary,
Rican welfare regimes public, universal and less stratied Costa Rican model is more protec-
solidary management of education and tive and provides more security for the well-
health facilities offers greater protection and being of middle and lower-middle strata
security to the well-being of the Costa Rican households despite their lower living standard
households. Commercialised, stratied manage- when compared to Chile. Conversely, the univer-
ment requiring high private expenditure substan- sal, liberal, more stratied Chilean model causes
tially questioned socio-economic well-being in more feelings of insecurity and destabilisation, in
the Chilean households and made them more particular in the domains of health and education.
insecure. A nal result from our analyses refers to the
In both countries, home ownership was dynamics between the different domains that
clearly an element improving the feeling of secu- inuence the way well-being may be generated,
rity and stability of well-being. The opportunities maintained, improved or the way
it may deteriorate. Work and income are of simi- Bibliography

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Income, Sex, Pills and Relationships:
An Empirical Study for Argentina 16
Pablo Schiaffino and Martin Tetaz
16.1 Introduction main relevant points for happiness research in

Argentina: stylized facts, the Easterlin Paradox
Previous literature advocated to analyze the and other non-income determinants of happiness.
determinants of happiness using data from The rst part concentrates on the very prelimi-
Argentina is scarce. In this chapter, we aim at nary stylized facts about happiness. We nd a
recreating the big picture of happiness research strong correlation between Happiness and Life
in Argentina, covering different subjects while Satisfaction, and we analyze this second variable
at the same time and due to the lack of previous over time across different Argentinean regions
research contributing to the empirical research (Buenos Aires City, Greater Buenos Aires and the
academia with some new non-explored ndings. Rest of the Country). We nd that Argentineans are
To commit ourselves to these two goals, we happier now than in 1984, but the highest improve-
attempt to analyze the microdeterminants of hap- ment was documented in Buenos Aires City, being
piness by using two different data sets from the only region with a monotonic rise over time.
Argentina: (1) the well known World Value Sur- Both Greater Buenos Aires and the rest of the
vey, covering ve waves; and (2) the three waves country fell in 1995, and recovered later.
of Gallup-Universidad de Palermo survey (2011, Next, we discuss the classical relation
2011 and 2012). Whereas the rst data set allows between income and happiness. In 1974,
us to study the relation between many socioeco- analyzing data on happiness for 19 countries,
nomic outcomes and happiness, the latter survey Richard Easterlin found a puzzling result,
provides additional information on the perceived known since then as The Easterlin Paradox.
determinants of subjective well-being and its In a nutshell, his main nding was that although
relation to peoples use of time. Along this chap- within a country there was a positive correlation
ter, we cover three big topics which reect the between income and happiness, the association
among countries was uncertain. Moreover, for
the only country he had time series data United
P. Schiafno (*)
Facultad de Ciencias Economicas, Universidad de States higher income was not systematically
Palermo, Buenos Aires, Argentina accompanied by greater happiness. In accor-
Departamento de Economia, Universidad Torcuato Di dance with Easterlin seminal paper, we show
Tella, Buenos Aires, Argentina that improvements in happiness did not correlate
e-mail: plschiafno@gmail.com with the satisfaction of the nancial situation in
M. Tetaz households. Financial satisfaction did not rise in
CEDLAS, Univerisidad Nacional de la Plata, Buenos Buenos Aires City until the 2006 survey, fell in
Aires, Argentina

252 P. Schiaffino and M. Tetaz
Greater Buenos Aires in 1991, stayed the same at a neighbourhood level. Both quality of the
during the 1990s, but was not fully recovered in neighbourhood and income had a positive impact
2006. Only for the Rest of the Country sample, on happiness. They also found a positive correla-
data seem to support the hypothesis of a positive tion of some interesting variables, such as home
relation between income and life satisfaction. quality, satisfaction with friends, mental health
The third part analyzes other than income and emotional life. In addition, males were hap-
determinants of happiness. We nd evidence pier, on average, than women. Neither the num-
that the U shape age effects are always present, ber of children nor their age had a statistically
thus, older people felt less satised (although the signicant effect.
marginal effect diminishes as people age). To our knowledge, this is the rst paper on
Buenos Aires citizens tend to feel less happy, economics of happiness using extensive and exclu-
and education effects are neither consistent nor sive data from Argentina. Consequently, several
stable. Separated people are always worse and results are certainly new starting with the conrma-
barely had we found any gender effect (but when tion of the positive and regionally heterogeneous
present, females were happier). Social class sta- evolution of happiness over time. The rest of this
tus and income affect happiness in many but not paper is organized in the following way: Sect. 16.2
in all waves; perceived satisfaction with the presents some stylized facts. Section 16.3 discusses
nancial situation of households affects life sat- the econometric strategy. Section 16.4 explores the
isfaction indeed, but it does it less than propor- relation between happiness and the satisfaction
tionally. Children coefcients were almost never with the nancial situation of households (the
statistically signicant, but having one child was Earsterlin Hypothesis). Section 16.5 studies the
found to be detrimental for life satisfaction. relation of happiness with other non-income
Interesting as it might be, socially active variables using the World Value Survey data
Argentinean people who frequently go out were base, while Sect. 16.6 echoes the same methodol-
more satised with their lives. Particularly, reli- ogy of Sect. 16.5 through Universidad de Palermo-
gious activity and studying were important to Gallup surveys. Section 16.7 concludes with some
avoid sadness. Some new results not deeply discussions and comments.
explored by previous literature were found:
(1) having sex itself does not make any differ-
ence whatsoever, and (2) consumption of medi-
cation for mental stress or sleeping pills has no 16.2 Stylized Facts
direct impact on happiness; however, stressed
people report low levels of life satisfaction. We start by making a distinction between the two
We can only account for a few studies on the different questions the World Value Survey and
economics of happiness using data from the Gallup-Universidad de Palermo Survey have
Argentina. Giarrizzo (2008) in a tailored survey asked in order to elucidate respondents well
carried out by Centro de Economa Regional y being. The rst question, commonly referred to
Experimental (CERX) and Centro de as Life satisfaction, is: In general, taking all
Investigaciones en Epistemologa de las Ciencias in, how satised are you with your life in a
Econ omicas (CIECE) nds that although 84 % 10 point scale, where 1 is dissatised and 10 is
of the respondents evaluated their economic sit- fully satised?. The second question digs
uation as either very bad, bad or regular, straight forward into happiness, by asking: In
an overwhelming majority (73.5 %) considered general, taking all in, would you say that you are
itself happy or very happy. However, when Very Happy; Quite Happy; Not Very Happy, or
they were asked to answer what factors would Not Happy At All?.
make them happier, 81.5 % of the surveyed Table 16.1 shows the relation between both
referred to economic related aspects, such as a questions when using the information from the
higher income or a better job. Cruces et al. (2008) World Value Survey; similar results are obtained
offer an analysis of quality of life and happiness when using the information from the three waves
16 Income, Sex, Pills and Relationships: An Empirical Study for Argentina 253
Table 16.1 The relation between happiness and life satisfaction (OLS estimation)
Year 1984 Year 1991 Year 1995 Year 1999 Year 2006
Very happy 1.42 0.73 1.27 0.68 0.98
t statistic 9.33 5.80 9.52 5.66 9.04
Not very happy 2.02 1.19 1.79 1.89 2.31
t statistic 13.07 6.76 8.42 9.31 9.65
Not happy at all 4.07 3.04 4.15 3.43 3.79
t statistic 6.09 6.74 8.86 7.05 6.31
_cons 6.98 7.34 6.93 7.48 7.75
t statistic 96.84 91.00 79.24 97.12 104.91
R2 0.29 0.18 0.25 0.18 0.28
Source: Own calculations based on World Value Survey
All coefcients signicant at 1 %
8.5
7.5
6.5
1984 1991 1995 1999 2006 2011a 2011b 2012
Graph 16.1 Taking All In, How Satised Are You with Your Life? (Source: Own calculations based on World
Value Survey and Gallup-Universidad de Palermo. Bars represent 95 % condence intervals)
of the Gallup-Universidad de Palermo survey. changed over time. To start analyzing the evolu-
Life satisfaction is the dependent variable. tion of Life Satisfaction, Graph 16.1 plots the
Since happiness variables are dichotomic, the average response to the question In general,
Quite happy answer is always the omitted taking all in, how satised are you with your
response, so coefcients can be interpreted as life in a 10 point scale, where 1 is dissatised
the change in life satisfaction when the subject and 10 is fully satised? in all of the surveys. It
state changes from Quite happy to other also displays the 95 % condence intervals, so
responses (i.e. very happy, not very happy, not the reader can easily tell when there is a signi-
happy at all). All of the regressions show positive cant difference between two average values (not
and statistically signicant coefcients ranging intervals overlapping) and otherwise.
from 0.677 to 1.422 for very happy, and nega- At rst sight there seems to be no statistically
tive (and signicant) ones for not very happy signicant difference in happiness (life satisfac-
and not happy at all. The goodness of t of all tion) between 1984 and 1995, neither is there any
models (R2) goes from 0.18 in the 1999 World noticeable discrepancy between 1991 and 1999.
Value Survey to 0.43 in the rst wave of the 2011 The contrast between 2006 and 2011 depends on
Gallup survey, and 0.4 in the one of 2012. the 2011 wave taken into consideration, but the
Due to the strong correlation of Life Satisfac- ambiguity disappears when the comparison is
tion with Happiness and of its easiness of inter- made between 2006 and 2012; no statistically
pretation, we will focus now on the Life signicant difference arises. On the other hand,
satisfaction question to see whether it has there is indeed an upward trend from 1995 to
1995 1999 2006 region to account for socioeconomic differences.

.4 In addition, we control for education. Table 16.3
shows the average changes in life satisfaction in
1991, 1995 and 2006 compared to 1984, by
.3 regions within the country.
The evolution of Life Satisfaction over time
can be conrmed with a simple glimpse at
.2
Graph 16.3.
In Graph 16.3, regional averages are grouped
by year of survey. The rst 95 % condence
interval bar within each year always represents
.1
Buenos Aires City, while the second one belongs
to Greater Buenos Aires. The last one accounts
for the Rest of the Country interval. Once again
0 overlapping between two different surveys con-
1 2 3 4 5 6
dence intervals for the same region means the
Graph 16.2 Kernel distribution of education in three absence of statistically signicant differences,
different waves (Source: Own calculations based on whereas the opposite indicates otherwise.
World Value Survey)
Clearly, Buenos Aires Citys life satisfaction
jumped from 1984 to 1991, remained steady up
2001, and a similar increase between 1999 to 2006 and depending on the 2011 wave
and 2006. analyzed, either rose again or stayed about the
A closer look at the ve World Value Survey same. However, the ambiguity disappears when
waves, however, suggests differences in sam- 2012 wave is taken into consideration; no statis-
pling strategies among them, rendering simple tically signicant difference arises then, between
average comparisons problematic. 2006 and 2012. On the other hand, life satisfac-
To begin with, the weights of all three regions tion in the outskirts of Buenos Aires City (GBA)
in the sample (Buenos Aires City, Buenos Aires did not improve in 1991 (from 1984) and actually
Outskirts and Rest of the Country) were not the fell in 1995, recovered in 2006 and stayed basi-
same across waves. Since these regions do not cally the same since then. Finally, average
have the same education level, average education answers in the Rest of the Country showed a
varied accordingly. To give the reader an idea of similar path to that described for Greater Buenos
such differences, we show the kernel distribution Aires (GBA).
of education in three particular waves, as Those life satisfaction patterns are consistent
Graph 16.2 shows: with the structural changes in the Argentinean
Graph 16.2 shows that, for instance, the 2006 economy during this period of time. The over
survey was administered to a higher educated valuation of local currency during the 1990s
sample. Furthermore, the heterogeneous sam- inicted a huge damage on the industrial sector
pling strategies over time can be further con- of the country, basically located at Greater
rmed by checking out the kind of workers Buenos Aires. This sector strongly recovered
surveyed in all ve waves. Table 16.2 highlights thanks to the devaluation in 2002. The Rest of
such differences. the Country, in turn, took advantage of the bene-
Therefore, in order to get a more appropriate cial terms of trade for the last 7 years, because
picture of what actually happened from 1984 to the countryside specializes in agricultural pro-
2012, we split the data according to three differ- duction (see Gerchunoff and Llach 2003 for a
ent Argentinean regions; namely Buenos Aires detailed description of this particular period).
City, Greater Buenos Aires and the Rest of the Odd as it may seem, this is consistent with the
Country, and use sampling weights within each Easterlin Paradox. Those changes had to do more
Table 16.2 Composition of workers skills in all different samples percentages

Year 1984 Year 1991 Year 1995 Year 1999 Year 2006
Employer/manager of establishment 4 9 16 10 3
Professional worker 14 9 13 1 7
Mid-level non-manual ofce worker 0 12 0 0 0
Supervisory non-manual ofce worker 33 0 2 2 4
Junior level non-manual 0 10 0 0 0
Non-manual ofce worker 15 0 33 25 18
Foreman and supervisor 5 6 4 1 1
Skilled manual 15 15 9 20 19
Semi-skilled manual worker 12 6 4 0 8
Unskilled manual 1 8 13 16 19
Farmer (owner) 0 0 0 0 1
Agricultural worker 0 0 0 0 1
Armed forces member 0 1 1 0 1
Never had a job 0 23 2 25 16
Table 16.3 The evolution of life satisfaction over time, across different Argentinean regions (OLS estimation)
Buenos Aires City Buenos Aires outskirts (GBA) Rest of the country
Education 0.02 0.04 0.17
(t value) 0.37 0.72 2.82**
Year 1991 0.47 0.11 0.28
(t value) 2.61** 0.38 1.13
Year 1995 0.65 0.61 0.26
(t value) 3.53** 1.94* 1.33
Year 2006 0.67 0.26 0.76
(t value) 3.39** 0.83 3.97**
Constant 6.41 7.34 6.73
(t value) 38.19** 23.08** 33.43**
R2 0.019 0.023 0.045
*Signicant at 5 %; **signicant at 1 %
with oscillations in the short run, with a huge 6.7 %.We conclude that, in the long run, there
impact in terms of unemployment, rather than is no relation between per capita income and
with long term differences in per capita income. happiness (the Easterlin Paradox) but a short
Actually, per capita income rose at an annual rate run employment effect. In Sect. 16.4, we explore
of 1.68 % between 1995 and 2006, but it did so at the Easterlin Paradox in deep.
an astonishing 5.6 % per year since then. Happi-
ness, on the other hand, rose steadily between
1995 and 2006, but stayed about the same since 16.3 Determinants of Happiness,
then even when per capita income rose higher the Econometric Approach
than in the past.
Unemployment, in contrast, fell sharply Strictly speaking, the former question produces
between 1995 and 2006 (it went rst from an ordinal variable. Therefore we should esti-
16.6 % in 1995 to 20.4 in 2003 and then returned mate our model running an Ordered Probit
to 8.7 % in 2006), whereas in 2011 it was at model that assumes the underlying relation.
8.5
8.3
8.1
7.9
7.7
7.5
7.3
7.1
6.9
6.7
6.5
GBA 84
GBA 91
GBA 95
GBA 06
GBA 12
Bac 84
RoC 84
Bac 91
RoC 91
Bac 95
RoC 95
Bac 06
RoC 06
Bac 12
RoC 12
Bac 11a
GBA 11b
GBA 11a
Bac 11b
RoC11b
RoC 11a
Graph 16.3 Taking All In How Satised Are You with Your Life, by Region (Source: Own calculations based on
World Value Survey and Gallup- Universidad de Palermo. Bars represent 95 % condence intervals)
X
Y *i j X ji i 16:1 vector of j personal characteristics of subject i, as
j some sort of linear function.

Where Y* i is the unobserved life satisfaction of Pi E Y i 1=Xi j
subject i, stands for a constant, the js are X
1 m
j1 j X i j 16:2
parameters, and Xji is a vector of j personal
characteristics of subject i. As usual, i refers to Then we do the same for the other possible par-
the white noise error term. Because we can only ticular realizations of Yi and estimate (again by
observe ten possible discrete realizations of Yi maximum likelihood) the coefcients so as to
the Ordered Probit model estimates by maxi- maximise the probability of a particular realiza-
mum likelihood the coefcients that maximize tion of that dependent variable against a rival
the joint probability of the actual observed values realization, called the base outcome. The
of Yi, conditional on the observed Xj vector of resulting Multinomial Logistic model produces,
j personal characteristics. Since the interpretation therefore, coefcients that can be interpreted as
of the resulting coefcients is not straight for- the change in the relative (to the base outcome)
ward (i.e. they are not marginal effects), it may likelihood function, due to the change in the
be useful to run a simple ordinary last square independent variable of interest. Coefcients of
regression (OLS) alongside, and use those one particular category can also be compared
coefcients as an approximation of the marginal relative to other categories.
effects (simulations can be conducted, should an
interest on the exact magnitude of a particular
effect arise). 16.4 The Easterlins Hypothesis
On the other hand, the latter question presents
a bigger problem because answers provide cate- We now turn to analyze the Easterlins Hypothe-
gorical data. Normally, we start by stating the sis for Argentina. The famous paradox states that
probability of a particular realization of the cate- there should not be any effect of income on
gorical variable, conditional on the Xji observed neither life satisfaction nor happiness over time.
Effects of income on happiness may yet be pres- among other things, but since we dont have
ent at a particular moment; after all, Easterlin income variables, controlling for the level of
found indeed cross-section effects within the education and gender, we obtain a pseudo Mincer
United States and richer people systematically approximation.
reported higher levels of happiness (perhaps Denitely the satisfaction on households
due to relative income effects). nancial situation varies heterogeneously over
An impressive number of papers have tried to time, depending on the geographical region. In
explain this issue (see Powdthavee 2008; Buenos Aires City, there seems not to be any
Veenhoven and Hagerty 2006 for reviews). For improvement in the 1990s (satisfaction in 1984
instance, Clark et al. (2008) argue that if happi- is the comparison point), but there is indeed a
ness depends on relative income considerations signicant rise in the last wave (2006). In con-
and consumption, the rst effect should not show trast, the outskirts, Greater Buenos Aires, depict
up at aggregate levels, and the second should not a worsening in nancial satisfaction in 1991,
be likely to increase too much in developed lasting until 1995. In the last wave, the dependent
countries. In the same direction, Graham (2008) variable rose, but never fully recovered the levels
states that humans are on a hedonic treadmill of the 1994 wave. The Rest of the Country got
whereby happiness increases until basic needs even much worse in 1995, however, not only did
are satised, but then relative rather than abso- it completely recover the 1984 level of satisfac-
lute income matters. The explanation of why tion in 2006 but surpassed it, perhaps coupling
this effect takes place may have to do with an the effect of the devaluation of the exchange rate
adaptation effect (Frey and Stutzer 2002; Di plus the improvement of the international terms
Tella and MacCulloch 2008). Stevenson and of trade that favoured mostly the countryside.
Wolfers (2008) state that it is a matter of This is consistent with the overvaluation of
analyzing the issue with appropriate data. By the exchange rate during the last decade of the
using a broad number of countries and making previous century, because it caused a huge level
adjustments so as to make these different surveys of industrial unemployment everywhere outside
comparable, they nd income coefcients of 0.3 Buenos Aires (economy at Capital City
and 0.36 within and between countries respec- concentrates on services that actually beneted
tively (both statistically signicant). They also from the low value of foreign currencies).
obtained a positive time series effect for most Accordingly, had Easterlin been wrong, we
of the countries with the exception of the United should expect a similar pattern regarding life
States. Taken all together, they conclude that satisfaction. Table 16.5 presents the evolution
there is room for both, absolute and relative of happiness across the ve waves of the World
income effects to account for peoples happiness. Value Survey.
Powdthavee (2010) uses an instrumental variable The rst column of the previous table
approach and nds that when controlling for indicates a widening of happiness variance in
endogeneity, not only income coefcients remain Buenos Aires both in 1991 and 2006. More peo-
statistically signicant, but they actually double. ple feel very happy rather than just quite
When it comes to Argentina, regretfully, our happy in the rst wave of the 1990s, but the
data bases do not always include an income vari- number of those reporting to be not happy at all
able; however, the World Value Survey ve rose as well, being the coefcients of the latter
waves do indeed have the same questions regard- category more than threefold the size of those
ing the satisfaction on household nancial situa- belonging to the former one. On the other hand,
tion, providing a proxy for income. In Table 16.4, in the outskirts of Buenos Aires, happiness
we show the evolution of the answers to the increased unambiguously in 1995 and remained
question How satised are you with the nan- stable until 2006.
cial situation of your household? Presump- Last but not least important, fewer people
tively, such satisfaction depends on income, claimed to be not very happy in the sample of
Table 16.4 The evolution of the satisfaction of households financial situation over time, across different Argentinean
regions (OLS estimation)
Entire country Buenos Aires City Greater Buenos Aires Rest of the country
Education 0.29** 0.23** 0.31** 0.37**
Gender (male) 0.14* 0.03 0.03 0.25
Year 1991 0.15 0.25 0.83** 0.44
Year 1995 0.46** 0.01 0.90** 1.18**
Year 1999 0.14
Year 2006 1.05** 1.08** 0.44 0.66**
_cons 4.93** 4.63** 5.26** 5.47**
Table 16.5 The evolution of happiness over time, across different Argentinean regions (multinomial logit estimation)
Buenos Aires City Buenos Aires outskirts (GBA) Rest of the country
Coef z Coef z Coef z
Very happy
Education 0.02 0.17 0.05 0.7 0.03 0.43
Year 1991 0.76** 3.52 1.62** 3.78 0.78** 2.87
Year 1995 0.13 0.55 1.23** 2.9 0.62* 2.82
Year 2006 0.55* 2.31 1.22** 2.84 0.52* 2.46
_cons 1.23 5.67 1.67 3.87 1.06 4.74
Not very happy
Education 0.24* 2.51 0.2 2.2 0.26** 2.81
Year 1991 0.02 0.08 0.96* 2.43 0.24 0.74
Year 1995 0.24 0.98 0.25 0.63 0.18 0.73
Year 2006 0.2 0.8 0.3 0.74 0.71** 2.64
_cons 0.49 2.44 1.15 2.84 0.73 2.82
Not happy at all
Education 0.37 1.61 0.46* 2.37 0.2 0.74
Year 1991 2.11** 3.8 1.34 1.27 1.09 1.45
Year 1995 0.66 0.88 1.1 1.05 0.03 0.03
Year 2006 1.86** 2.85 0.91 0.84 0.84 1.02
_cons 3.39 5.74 2.91 2.75 3.21 4.23
Source: own calculations based on World Value Survey
Happinessquite happy is the base outcome
the 2006 wave, living in the rest of the country. households had dramatically fallen earlier, in
From Table 16.3 we also know that life satisfac- 1991. Finally, when it comes to the Rest of the
tion improved in Buenos Aires City during the Country data, life satisfaction improved in 2006,
1990s, but stayed roughly the same in 2006, following the recovery of the nancial satisfac-
whereas the satisfaction of the nancial situation tion of this year. Nonetheless, the former did not
in households had not shown any increase neither show any worsening during the 1990s even when
in 1991 nor in 1995, but a huge rise in 2006. the latter clearly fell in 1995, according to
As to Greater Buenos Aires samples, Table 16.2.
Table 16.3 indicated a worsening since 1995, Taking all in, Easterlin appears to be
with no reversal in 2006, but as from Table 16.4, vindicated, because there does not seem to be
it is clear that nancial satisfaction in those any relation between changes in income and
Table 16.6 The relation between changes in income and changes in happiness
Change in income Change in happiness
Buenos Aires City
Year 1991 0 Ambiguous
Year 1995 0 0
Year 2006 1.08 Ambiguous
Greater Buenos Aires
Year 1991 0.83 Ambiguous
Year 1995 0.90 Positive
Year 2006 0 Positive
Rest of the country
Year 1991 0 0
Year 1995 1.18 0
Year 2006 0.66 Positive
Source: Own calculations based on Tables 16.4 and 16.5
modications of happiness. To summarize the that pro-social behaviors increase happiness

(lack of) relation between changes in income more than money. Table 16.7 presents the
(proxy) and changes in happiness, we show in estimations of ve different ordinary least square
Table 16.6 that out of nine cases (three regions regressions; one for each wave of the World
times 3 years), there is just one (Rest of the Value Survey.
Country in 2006) where there was a joint rise in For 1984, we do not have respondents age,
both income and happiness. For 1995 there was a neither we have any variable to account for
fall in income in Greater Buenos Aires and a rise income, contenting ourselves with just an
in happiness, while in the Rest of the Country imputed value of education.1 To begin with sta-
region, there was the same fall in income but no tistically signicant results, people living in
change in happiness whatsoever. Buenos Ares City felt less satised with life
Therefore, we devote the rest of the paper to than those in the Rest o the Country (the omitted
study the (other) determinants of life satisfaction. dummy variable). Those living together reported
higher levels of satisfaction compared to married
ones. Interestingly, the same can be said for
divorced subjects. In contrast, there seems to be
16.5 Other Determinants of Life
a sadness effect for separated people. Finally,
Satisfaction
children do not make any difference.
In 1991, we have respondents age and social
In their attempts to replicate Easterlins ndings,
class, both playing a signicant role. As men-
scholars have come across other various effects,
tioned earlier, the U shape effect of age on life
such as the age effect (Blanchower and
satisfaction is a common result in existing litera-
Oswald 2004a, b); gender effects (Stevenson
ture, and not only have we found the same result
and Wolfers 2008); interaction effects between
here, but the impact is basically the same across
both of them (Easterlin and Plagnol 2008); and
all remaining survey waves, as shown in
many other socioeconomic effects (see
Graph 16.4, indicating that age has a negative
Veenhoven 1994 for a review). For example,
impact on life satisfaction until somewhere
Boyce. et al. (2013) analyzes the inuences of
changes on the Big Five personality traits,
1
coming to the conclusion that they matter even In 1984 survey, the only variable with information about
more than socioeconomic factors, while Aknin education is a question asking respondents the year they
left school. Fortunately, that variable highly correlates
et al. (2012) focus on the way money is spent with the level of education in the other waves, allowing
rather than the actual levels of income. They nd us to estimate education level based on that.
Table 16.7 Determinants of life satisfaction over time (OLS estimation)

Shadowed coefcients signicant at 5%
between 45 and 55 years of age (depending on signicantly less happy than married people,
the wave analyzed). being 1991 the only wave in which this result rose.
Regarding geographical effects, people in For the 1995 wave, the World Value Survey
Buenos Aires City remain less satised than in provides information on income deciles and the
the Rest of the Country, although the coefcient is positive and statistically signicant coefcient
just signicant at a 10 % level. As to social class, indicates a positive (though small) relation with
those belonging to the lower step (Class D) life satisfaction. In contrast to previous waves,
claimed not to be as happy as those in Class C1 there is no evidence of geographical effects.
(the omitted dummy variable for medium class). The wave also has information on education
Contrary to 1984 wave results, widowed were level. Strange as it may be, those with just
0.5
0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 age 1991
-0.5 age 1995
-1 age 1999
age 2006
-1.5
-2
-2.5
Graph 16.4 The relation between life satisfaction and age (Source: Own calculations based on World Value Survey)
primary education completed reported higher life ones, and we nd a noteworthy child negative
satisfaction than those with secondary completed effect.
(the omitted dummy variable). There were again Summing up, U shape age effects are
couples effects, although this time single, always present, Buenos Aires citizens feel less
separated and those living together were less happy, money plays a modest role, education
satised than married ones. effects are neither consistent nor stable, and
When it comes to the 1999 survey, the wave separated people always feel worse. Last but
does not have geographic information, so we not least, since Table 16.7 estimations come
cannot see whether Buenos Aires City from an OLS regression, coefcients are actually
inhabitants remain pessimistic about their lives. marginal effects measuring the change in the
On the other hand, there is now data on income dependent variable (life satisfaction) due to the
which allow us to analyze the impact of money one unit modication of any particular indepen-
on happiness. Not surprisingly, the coefcient is dent variable.
positive but not signicant at all. However, peo- It is important to notice that in order to ana-
ple having completed higher education claim lyze to what extent can money buy happiness, we
indeed to feel more satised with their lives, may further exploit the World Value Survey data
compared to those with secondary education base, taking advantage of the already mentioned
(the omitted dummy variable). In accordance question that measures satisfaction on the nan-
with the precedent wave, both single and cial situation of households. A potential concern
separated subjects felt less satised than married may be that since this information also comes
ones (the omitted dummy variable). from a subjective evaluation, it may be endoge-
Finally, the last wave presents, once again, a nous on life satisfaction. To properly address this
negative Buenos Aires City effect and a negative issue, in Table 16.8 we show the results of a
impact on life satisfaction for those with just three-stage simultaneous estimation of Life sat-
complete primary education (relative to those isfaction and Financial satisfaction.
with secondary instruction). Separated and Results on the upper panel suggest a positive
divorced people are less happy than married and (almost always) highly signicant effect of
Table 16.8 Determinants of life satisfaction over time (simultaneous equations, three-stage OLS estimation)

Table 16.9 Determinants of life satisfaction

OLS estimation Ordered Probit estimation
Coefcients t statistics Coefcients Z statistics
Age 0.04* 2.13 0.03* 2.13
Age (square) 0.00 1.73 0.00 1.74
Gender (male) 0.11 1.01 0.11 1.46
ABC1 class 0.52* 2.27 0.35 1.83
D1 class 0.04 0.33 0.01 0.11
D2E class 0.45** 2.66 0.26** 2.49
Single 0.46* 2.05 0.30* 2.14
Live together 0.25 1.69 0.15 1.42
Separated/divorced 0.29 1.20 0.17 1.08
Widowed 0.80** 2.80 0.45** 2.74
Children 0.08 0.41 0.04 0.31
Buenos Aires City 0.66** 4.75 0.48** 5.46
Greater Buenos Aires 0.25* 2.06 0.22** 2.85
_cons 9.55** 20.00
R2 0.08 0.02
Source: Own calculations based on Gallup-Universidad de Palermo
nancial satisfaction on life satisfaction. This It is clear from columns 14 that age effects
result may appear to conict with the earlier remain stable under any estimation strategy,
conrmation regarding the Easterlin effect. conrming the accordance with the international
Nevertheless, it is noteworthy to say that within usually found results. Older subjects are less
a society at any particular time there may exist satised although the effect diminishes as people
indeed an effect whereby the richer feels happier age. The extremes of social classication present
even when across different countries or a logical pattern whereby high class individuals
societies that effect is absent, as shown (ABC1) feel happier, and conversely low class
by Easterlin. The same happens when we observe respondents (D2E) are less satised with their
the same country over time. Perhaps the expla- lives. Single and widowed interviewed report
nation has to do with the relevance of lower levels of life satisfaction (relative to
relative income for happiness, over and above married ones). People living in Greater Buenos
absolute income or wealth. Notwithstanding, Aires are less satised than those in the Rest of
the coefcients are all below one, implying that the Country (the omitted dummy variable), but
the effect is less than proportional. As to age, it inhabitants of Buenos Aires City are much less
impacts the estimations on the lower panel, per- satised.
haps indicating that older people feel worse Even when we showed the above-mentioned
through a nancial satisfaction channel. To com- fact that life satisfaction and happiness highly
plete the outlook, the rest of coefcients do not correlate, it may be interesting to explore the
differ too much from those on Table 16.7. effect of some of the previous variables in a
Following up, we study other variables avail- qualitative framework. Table 16.10 shows a mul-
able in the last two 2011 and 2012 surveys run by tinomial logit regression.
Gallup and Universidad de Palermo. The table should be read considering that
We estimate Life satisfaction rst by Ordinary coefcients in column one, for example, indicate
Least Squares (columns 1 and 2) and then by to what extent a particular independent variable
Ordered Probit (columns 3 and 4). The Table 16.9 affects the chance of belonging to that column
depicts the results from the rst wave of the 2011 category, in opposition to the omitted category
survey. (being quite happy). Having said that, let us have
Table 16.10 Determinants of happiness (multinomial logit estimation)

Not happy at all Not very happy Very happy
Coef Z stat Coef Z stat Coef Z stat
Age 0.01 0.05 0.07* 1.81 0.09** 2.93
Age (square) 0.00 0.34 0 1.4 0.00** 2.68
Gender (male) 0.04 0.06 0.04 0.19 0.21 1.29
ABC1 class 0.66 0.5 1.25* 2.16 0.10 0.23
D1 class 0.50 0.44 0.71** 2.8 0.28 1.54
D2E class 1.72* 1.89 0.77** 2.63 0.15 0.67
Single 1.34 1.45 0.62 1.48 0.49 1.65
Live together 12.78** 15.71 0.241 0.66 0.17 0.77
Separated/divorced 0.71 0.63 0.034 0.08 0.14 0.47
Widowed 0.93 0.88 0.87* 2.37 1.03** 2.52
Children 0.60 0.48 0.189 0.53 0.11 0.42
Buenos Aires City 13.39** 33.05 0.53* 2.04 0.83** 3.49
Greater Buenos Aires 0.30 0.42 0.074 0.31 0.17 0.99
_cons 6.32** 2.71 3.86** 3.87 1.77** 2.53
Quite Happy is the comparison group
*signicant at 5 %; **signicant at 1 %
a look at the coefcients: age effects show the Once again, we nd the same previous age effect,
same previously found pattern, though age is not although this time it is less statistically signicant
responsible for people feeling not happy at all. (just at 10 %). Contrary to the rst wave, there is no
Social class has an expected impact. It is less statistically signicant social class effect, and neither
likely to be not very happy if someone belongs have we found geographical region effects.
to high class (ABC1), on the other hand, should a On the other hand, this particular survey asked
subject come from a low class family, it is more people how active they were in several domains,
likely that they feel either not very happy or providing us with very rich information. For
not happy at all. What the social class effect is simplication purposes, we grouped responses
saying is that a good position is useful to avoid in a dichotomy variable whereby those either
sadness, rather than to assure happiness. very active or quite active were considered
Interestingly, living together (relative to the active. The results are very interesting, since
omitted married category) represents almost a they show that those active in their family life,
full guarantee against feeling not happy at all, socially active and who frequently go out felt
while being widowed excludes anyone from the more satised with their lives.
very happy group. When it comes to geograph- Moreover, we split dating and sexual activity
ical effects, it is noteworthy that it is less likely to levels in four different groups; those active sexu-
be very happy if someone lives in Buenos Aires ally but not very active in other aspects of their
City, but belonging to the City fully protects romantic relationships, those active in their cou-
people from falling in the not happy at all ple lives, but not very active sexually, a third
group. In order to conrm our ndings for class including people active both in their
the 2011 sample, we now turn to the second relationships and sexual life, and a fourth group
wave of the Gallup-Universidad de Palermo sur- of those neither active sexually nor in any other
vey. The strategy is the same, Table 16.11 aspect of a romantic relationships (this particular
showing the determinants of life satisfaction, group was the omitted variable, so results should
and then we turn to present the multinomial hap- be interpreted as relative to be in this class of
piness study. people). As expected, the best case scenario was

OLS estimation Ordered Probit estimation
Coef t stats Coef t stats
Age 0.03 1.74 0.02 1.81
Age (square) 0.00 1.64 0.00 1.75
Gender (male) 0.13 1.21 0.13 1.69
ABC1 class 0.04 0.19 0.05 0.33
D1 class 0.02 0.21 0.01 0.17
D2E class 0.13 0.84 0.07 0.64
Active in family life 0.78** 3.58 0.53** 4.11
Active in work 0.08 0.64 0.07 0.76
Active in religion 0.14 1.15 0.11 1.25
Active in volunteering 0.26 1.76 0.17 1.61
Active in sports 0.01 0.11 0.01 0.18
Active in social life 0.43** 2.41 0.23* 1.98
Active in studying 0.11 1.05 0.08 1.00
Active in going out 0.31** 2.67 0.20* 2.38
Active in politics 0.24 1.31 0.17 1.43
Active in couple life but seldom sex 0.44** 2.70 0.30** 2.65
Active in sex life but not at couple 0.29 1.23 0.22 1.25
Active in both couple and sex lives 0.56** 3.97 0.39** 3.99
Buenos Aires City 0.20 1.31 0.12 1.13
Greater Buenos Aires 0.10 0.84 0.09 1.07
_cons 7.23 15.54
R2 0.12 0.04
Source: Own calculations based on GallupUniversidad de Palermo
being active in dating someone and having sex Over and over again, older people are signi-
frequently (0.55 more satised with their lives), cantly (though just at 5 % and 10 % levels) less
followed by just dating someone actively, though happy. Gender plays a role for the rst time. The
without a very active sexual life (0.44 additional negative coefcient in column one says that
points in life satisfaction). Kahneman males are less likely to belong to the not happy
et al. (2003) remark the importance of sexual at all group. High class subjects probability of
activity over happiness, and Blanchower being quite happy is signicantly higher than
et al. (2004) show that sex is strongly and posi- the likelihood of belonging to the not very
tively associated with happiness. However, our happy and not happy at all categories.
results here show some caveats over the Medium low class coefcient is positive in the
sex-happiness relation, stating a not yet reported not happy at all column suggesting this class is
result: surprisingly, people very active in their overrepresented in the low happiness group. An
sexual lives but not romantically involved did interesting result arises in low class individuals.
not report higher levels of life satisfaction than There is a lower likelihood of belonging to the
those neither dating nor having sex. quite happy category, relative to feeling either
Finally, in the same spirit we did it above, we worse (not very happy) or better (very happy),
now turn to a multinomial analysis of happiness. though the former state is twice likely than the
Please bear in mind that coefcients in column one latter.
of Table 16.12, for example, indicate to what extent The same puzzling result is found when it
a particular independent variable affects the chance comes to people active in their family life. More-
of belonging to that column category, in opposition over, active people overpopulate the not happy
to the omitted category (being quite happy). at all group more than other categories. In

Not happy at all Not very happy Very Happy
Coef Z stat Coef Z stat Coef Z stat
Age 0.38 1.81 0.10* 2.14 0.03 1.18
Age (square) 0.00 1.80 0.00* 2.18 0.00 0.80
Gender (male) 4.15** 3.23 0.11 0.38 0.15 0.86
ABC1 class 17.88** 8.87 2.44* 2.28 0.10 0.24
D1 class 2.22* 2.26 0.48 1.57 0.22 1.18
D2E class 1.69 1.57 1.09** 3.07 0.50* 2.12
Active in family life 2.63* 2.35 1.00** 2.92 0.56** 2.60
Active in work 0.09 0.10 0.02 0.06 0.36 1.90
Active in religion 3.43** 3.46 0.24 0.72 1.78** 3.96
Active in volunteering 1.24 1.27 0.95** 3.01 0.51** 2.58
Active in sports 1.79 1.49 0.06 0.21 0.08 0.43
Active in social life 0.37 0.38 0.37 0.94 0.06 0.28
Active in studying 12.62** 9.72 0.12 0.37 0.15 0.84
Active in going out 0.91 1.41 0.95** 3.23 0.25 0.92
Active in politics 1.15 1.33 0.47 1.52 0.47** 2.64
Active in couple life but seldom sex 3.50 1.65 0.69* 2.24 0.19 1.01
Active in sex life but not at couple 3.40** 2.62 0.17 0.33 0.43 1.52
Active in both couple and sex lives 2.25 1.60 0.17 0.46 0.50 1.91
Buenos Aires City 1.66 0.79 0.56 1.23 0.76 1.84
Greater Buenos Aires 1.93 1.28 0.48 1.32 0.75** 3.17
_cons 11.29** 2.21 2.70* 2.41 2.07** 2.87
addition we nd a noteworthy religious effect. situation, and even neighborhood and home.
Those active in their religious lives escape the We follow the same presentation strategy as
not happy at all group and overcrowd the very before, introducing rst the ordinary least square
happy category. Studying seems to be another estimates of life satisfaction, then the multino-
vaccine against extreme sadness. People active in mial logistic regression of happiness, and at the
their romantic relationships but not as active in end we address some endogeneity issues by
their sexual lives, belong mostly to the quite means of a three-stage least squared specica-
happy class, whereas those with the opposite tion. The Table 16.13 then shows the results of
pattern seem to be condemned to sadness. the OLS estimate of life satisfaction (rst two
Again, heaven is associated with people both columns) and then the Ordered Probit specica-
romantically and sexually active. tion (last two columns).
We now turn to the last wave of the Gallup In contrast with previous waves, there seems
Universidad de Palermo survey (2012). Van not to be a statistically signicant relation
Praag and Ferrer-i-Carbonell (2008) showed between age and life satisfaction. Coefcients
that life satisfaction can be decomposed in sev- have the expected sign, but are just signicant
eral domains, such as satisfaction with the eco- at 15 %. Neither is there any gender effect, nor a
nomic situation of households, satisfaction with social class one. According to the specication
family, friends, couple, etcetera. In the 2012 (just for the OProbit) there is a regional effect
wave of the Gallup- Universidad de Palermo, whereby people living in Buenos Aires City are
we tailored the survey to include specic slightly less satised with their lives, in line with
questions asking satisfaction with job conditions, our previous ndings. Family satisfaction and the
family, relationships, friends, economic satisfaction with the economic situation of the

subjects are highly signicant indicators of life Relationship satisfaction and friendship satisfac-
satisfaction. The latter effect is three times higher tion are signicant in the ordered probit model
than the former, meaning that a point increase in although the size of coefcients is modest.
satisfaction with family (measured in a 110 This survey also included some questions on
scale) rises life satisfaction by 0.20 points. mental health, the consumption of medication for

mental stress and sleeping pills, and different reduces signicantly the chances of being very
kinds of therapies. Almost none of them had happy and at the same time drastically increases
any impact on happiness, but having been the probability of feeling not happy at all,
stressed in the last 12 month reduces life satis- always in comparison with being quite happy.
faction by almost 0.30 points. We turn now to the Unfortunately, the size of the coefcients has no
analysis of happiness. Table 16.14 shows the direct interpretation, but they can be read as
multinomial logistic estimate. ratios against other coefcients. For instance,
As previously explained, each column shows the consequences of being poor in terms of hap-
the chances of belonging to that specic cate- piness may be overcome if someone has a very
gory, in contrast to the base category, in this good relationship, because the coefcient for
case being quite happy. So, for example, Class DE2 is 4.9 times higher than that of
belonging to the low class DE2 (the poor) Relationship Satisfaction, meaning that
someone from low class that sets a nine for their their own lives. But perhaps more notable is the
relationships satisfaction, can be as happy as fact that belonging to high class (in contrast to
someone from middle class (Class C2C3 is the medium class) does not provide more satisfaction
omitted variable) that gives just a four to their with the economic situation, but the opposite is
relationship status. true for those belonging to low class. This is
It is interesting to notice the different sign of consistent with previous results that show that
the coefcients of psychological and psychiatric income does not matter unless you cannot cover
therapy. Certainly people see a psychiatrist when the basics.
they have some rather serious mental issue, but Another remarkable point is that people
perhaps they just see a psychologist as a superior expecting an improvement in their income feel
consumer good. The positive coefcient on those less satised with their economic situation right
having had a panic attack in the last 12 month now, whereas those with the opposite expecta-
looks quite odd. A plausible interpretation is that tion (lower income) are more satised with their
panic attack is not randomly distributed across current economic conditions. One possible inter-
the whole population, but rather concentrated in pretation is that those with expectations of a rise
the high class subjects, who are happy perceive their income as lower than they should
nevertheless. be, and feel the current situation is somewhat
Finally, it is noteworthy to mention the strong unfair.
signicant coefcients in the third category (not
happy at all) indicating that the whole set of
variables predicts very accurately whether a sub- 16.6 Discussion and Conclusions
ject can fall (or escape) that sad condition. Since
some scholars may argue that some of the Kahnemans last book (2011) suggests that the
variables in Tables 1.13 and 1.14 are somewhat key to happiness may not be income but the
endogenous, we now show a last estimation alternative allocations of personal time. To our
based on simultaneous three-stage estimation knowledge, this is the rst broadly study on the
(Table 16.15). economics of happiness using data exclusively
Basically, what the three-stage estimation from Argentina. Therefore, several results are
does is to estimate the apparently endogenous certainly novel, starting with the conrmation
variables (family satisfaction and satisfaction of the positive and regionally heterogeneous evo-
with economic situation) in a rst stage, and lution of happiness over time. Argentineans are
then to use the predicted values to estimate the happier now than in 1984, whereas the highest
nal model (life satisfaction), as if they were improvement was documented in Buenos Aires
instruments for the endogenous variables. City, being the only region with a constant rise
We now have a (weak) age effect; no gender over time. Both Greater Buenos Aires and the
nor regional effects, and a funny alternative rest of the country fell in 1995, and recovered
therapy effect. Besides, both Family Satisfac- later.
tion and the Satisfaction with Economic Situa- In accordance with Easterlin seminal paper,
tion have a strong impact on life satisfaction. The improvements in happiness did not correlate with
coefcients are higher than in the OLS estima- the satisfaction with the nancial situation of
tion (Table 1.15) but the difference among them households. Financial satisfaction did not rise in
is smaller; id est: a 1 point increase in the satis- Buenos Aires City until the 2006 survey, fell in
faction with family raises life satisfaction by 0.50 Greater Buenos Aires in 1991, stayed the same
points, whereas the effect for the satisfaction during the 1990s, but did not fully recover in
with the economic situation is 45 % smaller. 2006. Only for the Rest of the Country sample,
Interestingly, even after controlling for data seem to support the hypothesis of a positive
subjects satisfaction with their economic situa- relation between income and life satisfaction.
tion, those who think that their parents had a In addition, by analyzing one particular wave
better economic status feel less satised with at a time, we found consistent effects in age,
Table 16.15 Determinants of life satisfaction over time (simultaneous equations, three stage OLS estimation)
Source: Own calculations based on Gallup Universidad de Palermo
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ies in 69 nations 19111994, vols. 13. Erasmus Uni- (www.worldvaluessurvey.org). Aggregate File Pro-
versity Rotterdam. Social Indicators Research, 79, ducer: ASEP/JDS, Madrid.
421436.
Using Life Satisfaction Data
to Identify Urban Problems, 17
Prioritize Local Public Expenditures
and Monitor the Quality of Urban Life
Eduardo Lora
17.1 Introduction It is hard to argue against the use of subjective

data to monitor the quality of urban life. Many
In recent decades many cities in Latin America important aspects of peoples lives do not lend
have established systems of monitoring the qual- themselves to objective measure, such as the
ity of urban life that rely extensively on opinion beauty (or lack thereof) of the urban environment,
surveys intended to capture the interests and feelings of insecurity or the quality of the relations
needs of their residents. The C omo Vamos (how among neighbors. But subjective indicators alone
are we doing) system, pioneered by Bogota in the provide and incomplete and possibly blurred view
mid- 1990s, and currently in place in dozens of of the quality of life. Cultural biases, lack of infor-
cities throughout the region, is a veritable barom- mation, habituation or aspiration factors are some
eter of public opinion on the principal aspects of of the limitations of subjective data that need to be
the urban living conditions.1 Although urban taken into account when attempting to use it to
monitoring systems are not a Latin innovation,2 inform public policy issues (as I discuss it in
the subjective approach to it certainly is.3 Chap. 31 in this book). Partly for these reasons,
international monitoring systems (including
1
See http://www.Bogotacomovamos.org/scripts/home. Eurostats Urban Audit) avoid subjective variables
php. For a list of the Latin American cities with monitor-
ing systems see www.redciudades.net.
as much as possible. This decision, though,
2
The urban monitoring system with the widest coverage amounts to throwing out the baby with the bath-
is found in Europe: the Urban Audit system of Eurostats, water. An alternative solution is to understand the
which monitors the quality of life in 357 cities with more relationship between objective and subjective
than 300 indicators. This system has the explicit (and indicators and exploit it in a complementary man-
ambitious) intention to shed light on most aspects of
quality of life, e.g. demography, housing, health, crime, ner so as to enrich the interpretation of both.
labor market, income disparity, local administration, edu- When adequately complemented and com-
cational qualications, environment, climate, travel bined with objective data, peoples opinions
patterns, information society and cultural infrastructure about their cities and their own lives can be
(Feldman 2008).
3 extremely useful to inform relevant local public
Subjective data is used only marginally in some moni-
toring systems in the developed world, such as in The policy issues, such as identify and rank the issues
Quality of Life Report of New Zealands Cities (Quality of potential importance for urban dwellers, value
of Life Project 2009). urban public goods from access to transporta-
E. Lora (*) tion and green areas to security, and establish
Center for International Development, Harvard criteria to nance local public expenditures
University, Cambridge, MA, USA through betterment levies and other taxes.
e-mail: eduardo.a.lora@gmail.com

274 E. Lora
The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the offers an introduction to the approaches and their
conceptual basis and some applications of an interrelation. A discussion of the statistical and
empirical methodology to address such empirical issues facing the application of the
questions making use of subjective and objec- methodology is left for the following section.
tive data in a coherent manner. The methodol-
ogy blends two approaches to value public
goods: the so-called hedonic price approach
17.2.1 The Hedonic Price Approach
which relies on market prices and other (mostly)
objective data, and the life satisfaction
Housing market prices (or rentals) reect the
approach where subjective data takes center
markets recognition of the characteristics or
stage, complemented with objective data. The
traits of both the dwelling itself (which are
methodology has already been applied in a
mostly private goods) and the neighborhood
handful of Latin American cities.4 Especial
where it is located (the public goods). Housing
attention will be paid to the results from
prices offer a good summary gauge of the quality
Manizales, a small Colombian city, where a
of urban life enjoyed by residents, providing
rich dataset allowed to carefully applying the
housing prices reect all of the characteristics
methodology. Discussion of the results will
of cities that impact on peoples wellbeing. This
clarify the potential uses of the methodology
so-called hedonic price approach has a long
for public policy issues, including the construc-
tradition in the urban economic literature as a
tion of quality of life indices to monitor the
method of placing monetary values on the wel-
quality of urban life.
fare impact of city amenities and public goods.
The approach was developed to obtain monetary
valuations of public goods such as recreation
17.2 Two Ways of Valuing Public areas, air quality and other urban features.6 The
Goods rationale is quite simple. Assume that, in other-
wise two identical housing condos, all houses are
The hedonic price approach and the life satisfac- identical in every respect, except that in one of
tion approach to valuing public goods are the two the two condos the houses face green areas, while
building blocks of the methodology, which uses in the other they do not. If the houses in the rst
them in a complementary manner.5 This section condo command a market price $1,000 higher
than the houses in the second condo, it follows
that $1,000 is the value of the green area per
house, and that the total value of the green
areas in the rst condo is that sum times the
4
Buenos Aires in Argentina (Cruces et al. 2010); Sao
number of houses of the condo.
Paulo in Brazil (Igliori et al. 2011); Bogota, Medelln
(Medina et al. 2010) and Manizales (Velasquez 2011) in
Colombia; San Jose in Costa Rica (Hall et al. 2010);
Guatemala City in Guatemala (Robalino and Larios
2012); Lima in Peru (Alcazar and Andrade 2010) and
Montevideo in Uruguay (Gandelman et al. 2012). 6
Pioneering work using hedonic methods to evaluate, for
5
Other alternatives to value public goods not considered example, the impact of air pollution can be found in
here include stated-preference approaches, such as con- Ridker (1967) and Ridker and Henning (1967). Chay
tingent valuation. In the context of urban public goods, and Greenstone (2005) provide a more updated treatment
Dolan and Metcalfe (2007) use contingent valuation, of the same issue. Another area were hedonic methods
along with the hedonic price and the life satisfaction have been widely used is to estimate the value of school
approaches, and conclude that each of those methods quality. Early work for US is presented in Kain and
give rise to substantially different values. For a short Quigley (1975) and Li and Brown (1980). See Black
survey of methods to value public goods see Frey (1999), Clapp and Ross (2002) and Bayer et al. (2003)
(2008), Chap. 12. for more recent estimations.
17 Using Life Satisfaction Data to Identify Urban Problems, Prioritize Local. . . 275
This idea may be formalized and extended to identical houses. Notice that 3 and 4 are not
other attributes of the houses and the coefcients, but vectors of coefcients, since H
neighborhoods where they are located.7 The stands for all the housing characteristics that may
rent per month of a specic house i located at a affect housing prices and Z i stands for a vector of
specic location (pi) will depend on a vector of other neighborhood features apart from those
characteristics of the dwelling itself, H, such already explicitly mentioned as examples.
as the size of the house, the construction The explanatory variables are hedonic
materials, the number of rooms, and whether or dimensions of the houses and their locations
not it has access to running water, electricity, etc. that cannot be bought separately in a different
The rent will also depend on a vector of market. However, for a given rent, a prospective
characteristics of the surroundings and location tenant looking for a house may choose different
of the house, Z, which will be called neighbor- combinations of those dimensions. For example,
hood characteristics for simplicity (since each she may choose between renting a house facing a
of those characteristics will be common to some green area or a house that is 50 % farther away
or all the houses in the neighborhood, such as the from downtown, since this is the ratio between
location with respect to the green areas men- the coefcients of the two characteristics or,
tioned above). Relevant neighborhood features more precisely, the market substitution ratio
include the conditions of the streets and between the two characteristics. In this way, it
sidewalks, safety, and distances to services and is possible to obtain the relative prices of any pair
amenities such as public transportation, schools, of features affecting housings rents (be them
shopping centers and downtown. housing or neighborhood features).
It therefore follows that relationships of the Equation 17.1 may be seen as a budget curve
type pi p(Hi, Z) may be posited. For instance, in the sense that it describes all houses as bundles
let Z1i be distance to downtown and let Z2i be of characteristics that can be leased at a specic
green area in front of the house. After suitable rent level p. If individuals have utility functions
transformations of the variables, a linear relation that depend on those characteristics, the ratio of
for the logarithm of the rent could be estimated as: any pair of coefcients also describe the slope of
the indifference curve that represents the subjec-
ln pi 0 1 lnZ1i 2 Z2i
tive trade-off between the corresponding pair of
i
3 H i 4 Z 17:1 characteristics.
The hedonic price approach has been applied
where 0 is a constant, and 1 and 2 are to value public goods and to assess the inuence
coefcients that measure the relative effect on of public goods on housing rents and prices in
the rents of the corresponding individual neigh- numerous studies. Useful surveys can be found in
borhood features. For instance, if 1 is 0.1, this Baranzini et al. (2008), Malpezzi (2002) and
means that a house that is twice as far from Sheppard (1999). These papers discuss the theo-
downtown than otherwise identical houses will retical and econometric issues facing the appli-
have a rent 10 % percent lower.8 In the same cation of the approach. In Latin America, there is
way, if 2 is 0.05, a house with a park in front a growing body of empirical papers, especially
will command a rent 5 % higher than otherwise for Brazil and Mexico. Vetter et al. (2012) and
Igliori et al. (2011) offer concise surveys for
Brazil. Galiani et al. (2012) present and use a
7
The explanation that follows is adapted from van Praag massive database for Mexico.
and Ferrer-i-Carbonell (2010, pp. 6870). By its nature, the hedonic price approach can
8
Since both the dependent and the explanatory variables
take into consideration all the aspects of the
are in logarithms, the corresponding coefcient is an
elasticity, meaning the relative change of the dependent quality of urban life which have a well-dened
variable divided by the relative change of the explanatory location, and refer either to the dwellings or their
variables (all other things being constant).
276 E. Lora
neighborhoods. It cannot be used to consider The validity of the approach is also question-
aspects of the quality of urban life such as the able if individuals are unable to accurately pre-
quality of social services or the quality of public dict the utility they can derive from each of the
institutions in the city, which are not dened with housing and neighborhood characteristics. The
reference to a specic location within the city. systematic mismatch between expected and
The hedonic approach is also inadequate to value experienced utility is amply documented in the
aspects of the quality of urban life which, happiness literature: while the utility derived
although having a location dimension, the utility from consumption aspects that care for intrinsic
they provide does not depend on their location needs is systematically underestimated, the util-
with respect to the places of residence of the ity that can be obtained from the characteristics
individuals. The quality of meeting places near of consumption goods that cater to extrinsic
ofces may enhance the quality of life of ofce needs are systematically overestimated.10 Intrin-
workers (and maybe ofce prices) but will not be sic needs include the need for relatedness, in
(fully)9 captured in housing prices. particular by spending time with family and
However, several more fundamental friends and by being in a social setting. Involve-
limitations of the hedonic price approach render ment in sports and in cultural and artistic
it less conclusive than it might appear at rst. The activities also cares for the needs of relatedness,
validity of the approach hinges on the underlying competence and autonomy (the three main
assumption that individuals are able to nd their aspects of intrinsic needs, according with Deci
optimum combination of housing and neighbor- and Ryan (2000)). Extrinsic attributes are those
hood characteristics that allows them to maxi- that induce people to acquire material
mize their utility. This would require the possessions and to achieve fame, status or pres-
housing market to be a free access competitive tige. As explained by Frey (2008, p. 129): The
market and to always be in equilibrium. However, main proposition is that when one is making a
perfect competition in the housing market is decision the extrinsic attributes are more salient
prevented in practice by the presence of housing than the intrinsic attributes of different options.
construction regulations and rent controls that Individuals when making a consumption choice
limit supply, and by high information and trans- therefore tend to undervalue the intrinsic
action costs (including psychological costs) that attributes relative to the extrinsic ones. This
make individuals housing choices very costly to hypothesis has been tested in housing decisions
reconsider. Equilibrium would also require that as consumers often face a tradeoff between the
attributes can change in a continuous or gradual quality of housing (which is mainly a result of its
way (such as distance to downtown or number or extrinsic attributes) and the commuting time
rooms), not in a categorical way (such as having a (which captures an important aspect of the intrin-
green area or not). Relatively small quantity sic attributes, since catering to intrinsic needs
changes are needed for the consumer to nd the demands time). Since people overestimate the
combination of quantities that allows her to nd utility from the extrinsic attributes, they opt for
the optimum. But many important housing and too much commuting as found in a large panel
neighborhood features, such as access to basic dataset for Germany: otherwise identical
services, are categorical variables. If for any of individuals, those who commute 22 min each
these reasons the equilibrium assumption does way (sample mean) would need a compensation
not hold, then market substitution rates will not equivalent to 35 % of their income to obtain the
equal subjectively perceived substitution rates. same utility as those who do not commute
(Stutzer and Frey 2007). This nding blatantly
contradicts the standard assumption that
9
It may be partially reected in housing prices to the
extent that is captured by the price of proximity to
10
downtown. See Frey (2008), Chap. 11 for a survey.
individuals are able to nd the optimum combi- Notice however that, in addition to the explana-
nation of housing attributes that maximizes their tory variables used in the hedonic price equation,
utility. Here is where the life satisfaction the life satisfaction function includes a measure
approach comes into play. of individuals income in logs (ln(Yi)), and a
vector of the characteristics of the individuals
(X i) that may affect their life satisfaction (such
as age, health status, education level, etc.). The
17.2.2 The Life Satisfaction Approach
coefcients 1 through 4 do not directly give the
to Value Public Goods
monetary values of the corresponding public
goods, but their marginal utilities. However,
The assumption of full equilibrium implied in the
these can be compared with the marginal utility
hedonic price approach requires both that the
of income (5) to obtain the income-equivalent
housing market functions smoothly and that
utility of the public good (or, in other words, the
individuals are able to predict the utility of the
subjective satisfaction trade-off between income
dwelling and neighborhood attributes. None of
and the public good). For instance, if 2 is 0.01
these assumptions are necessary in the life satis-
and 5 is 0.2, the income-equivalent utility of
faction approach, which uses as measure for util-
living in a house facing a green area would be
ity the subjective well-being reported by
2 =5 0:05, meaning that 5 % of additional
individuals in response, for instance, to the stan-
income would be needed to bring back to her
dard question known as the Cantril Self-
initial level of life satisfaction someone who
Anchoring Striving Scale.11 The marginal utility
moves from a house facing a green area to an
of a public good for an individual is simply the
otherwise identical house without that feature.
contribution of the good to her level of life satis-
This satisfaction tradeoff between any good and
faction (LSi). In a way analogous to Eq. 17.1 and
income constitutes the life satisfaction approach
with the same meaning for the explanatory
to value public goods. However, this is not the
variables already introduced:
full value of the green area. To see why we need
LSi 0 1 lnZ1i 2 Z2i 3 H i to discuss the complementarity between the
hedonic and the life satisfaction approaches.
i 5 lnY i 6 Xi
4 Z 17:2
the coefcient 1 is the effect on life satisfaction

of living in a house that is located twice as far 17.2.3 The Relationship Between
from downtown as otherwise identical houses, the Hedonic and Life Satisfaction
and the coefcient 2 is the effect of living in a Approaches
house that faces a green area compared with
identical houses without that feature, and simi- If the assumptions of the hedonic price approach
larly for 3 and 4. The ratio between any pair of held, a typical individual moving from a house
coefcients can be seen as the subjective satis- facing a green area to a house identical in every
faction trade-off between the two corresponding respect, except for that feature, would keep her
goods, and it can be represented by an indiffer- original level of satisfaction because the second
ence curve between the two goods (given the house would necessarily be cheaper by an
values of all the other explanatory variables). amount that would exactly compensate the loss
of utility. She would simply use the extra money
11 to buy something else that would put her back on
Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from
zero at the bottom to ten at the top. The top of the ladder her initial utility level. Therefore, the coefcient
represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of 2 in Eq. 17.2 would be zero (as well as the
the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On coefcients of all the other housing and neigh-
which step of the ladder would you say you personally borhood features). If it is not zero, as assumed in
feel to stand at this time?.
278 E. Lora
the previous paragraph, this would be indicative the tradeoff ratio between the additional utility of
that the standard assumptions do not hold. the housing feature and the marginal utility of
This suggests that, in general, the value of a income can be used to calculate the compensa-
public good may partly be reected in market tion that would be required to equalize the satis-
prices, and partly in the satisfaction with life of faction level of the individual in the two
its users. To formalize this we will follow the situations. The word additional refers to the fact
analysis of Van Praag and Baarsma (2005), who that part of the utility is already captured in the
were the rst to suggest the complementarity income coefcient, inasmuch as housing rents
between the two methods.12 depend on the neighborhood feature. The mone-
The level of satisfaction W can be represented tary compensation is additional to the extra
as function of income Y and housing rents p, income available to the individual if she moves
which depend on the variable facing green to the house without a green area, given its lower
area, denoted as before by Z2, which may also rent. Therefore the total value of the green area,
affect satisfaction directly: or of any other housing or neighborhood feature
(VZ), for the individual under consideration, is:
W W Y, pZ2 , Z2 17:3
VZ pZ 1 pZ 0 y 17:7
where Z2 can take the value 1 or 0. When the
hedonic price assumptions hold, the satisfaction where housing rent p depends on whether or not
levels in the two situations are necessarily equal: the neighborhood has the feature Z, and y is the
monetary compensation obtained from the sub-
W Y, pZ2 1, Z 2 1 jective tradeoff ratio of the life satisfaction
W Y, pZ 2 0, Z2 0 17:4 approach.
or, in reduced form (given that rents depend on Z2): Therefore, neither the hedonic nor the life
satisfaction approach taken separately provides
WY, Z 2 1 WY, Z2 0 17:5 an adequate measure of the value of neighbor-
hood features. The hedonic approach requires
which implies that the same level of satisfaction that markets function perfectly for the feature in
will be observed by the individual, irrespective question and that individuals are able to predict
of having green areas in front of her house utility correctly. The life satisfaction approach
or not. Therefore, if hedonic price assumptions requires that the market for the feature in ques-
held, housing and neighborhood features tion does not function at all, meaning that its
would not have any additional inuence on provision does not affect housing prices (or, in
satisfaction once income is controlled for. general, any other prices). Since the requirements
More often than not, however, neighborhood of the hedonic price approach are difcult to
features such as green areas, recreational areas, meet, it should never be considered sufcient to
or safety conditions do have an inuence on value neighborhood characteristics and not even
life satisfaction after controlling for income, the features of dwellings. By itself, the life satis-
that is: faction approach may be adequate to nd the
WY, Z 2 1 6 WY, Z2 0 17:6 value, that is the equivalent income that
would provide the same satisfaction, of things
When the standard assumptions of the hedonic that money does not buy, such as trust in others
price approach do not hold, as discussed above, or friendships (Lora 2008). Since most neighbor-
hood features and amenities do not fall clearly
into either the market or the non-market
categories, it is therefore left to empirical analy-
sis to establish their market and non-market
12
The remaining of this sub-section is adapted from Van components.
Praag and Ferrer-i-Carbonell (2010, pp. 7375).
17.3 Statistical and Econometric life satisfaction Eq. 17.2, the data in both
Issues to Implement equations should use the same sample of
the Methodology individuals. Some of that data need to be col-
lected through household surveys designed for
To implement empirically this methodology the purpose. In particular, data on life satisfaction
individual-level data are needed for all the (LS), income (Y) and personal characteristics (X)
variables included in Eqs. 17.1 and 17.2. The can only be obtained through personal
coefcients of these two equations are estimated interviews. Although public records may exist
with econometric methods, and then used to in some cities for housing features (H) and hous-
make the calculations to compute Eq. 17.7 for ing prices (p), it is much simpler to obtain this
each housing and neighborhood feature, for each information in the same household surveys
individual in the sample. Each of these steps (especially in the case of most Latin American
entails empirical difculties, the main of which cities, where unregistered dwellings are a large
are discussed in this section. The computations share of the housing stock).14 Individuals are
for Eq. 17.7 can then be used to assess who usually better informed about the rental price
benets from the provision of public goods, to than about the hypothetical market sale price of
analyze public project nance options, to priori- their dwellings. In the case of individuals
tize public investment expenditures and to calcu- inhabiting self-owned houses, the question must
late quality of life indices, among other uses, as be slightly changed to enquire not about the rent
will be illustrated and discussed in later sections. actually paid but about the rent they would
receive if they were to put the house in the
renting market. In none of the studies using the
17.3.1 Data Requirements methodology (summarized below) has there been
any difculty to obtain apparently accurate infor-
The individual and her dwelling are the joint unit mation on housing rents15 or any of the other
of observation to apply the methodology. The previous variables (however, appropriate income
sample of dwellings should be a random selec- measurement requires some adjustments to the
tion of dwellings in the whole city (or city area) income data reported by the interviewees).16
under analysis, including informal settlements Most of the information on the surroundings of
and unregistered dwellings. In order to make the dwelling, as well as some characteristics of
the sample of individuals representative of the the neighborhood that are needed to implement
whole population of the city (or city area), within
each dwelling in the sample an individual should
14
be randomly selected from the adult members of See Bouillon (2012).
15
the household (or households inhabiting the When tested, no important differences have been found
between the determinants of imputed and actual housing
dwelling).13 rents.
Since the computations of Eq. 17.7 combine 16
The relevant income variable is the income per equiva-
results from the hedonic price Eq. 17.1 and the lent adult in the household, not the interviewees income.
Children under certain age (say 14 years old) are often
considered equivalent to 0.5 adults to make the equiva-
13
As in any survey, the adequate sample size should be lent adult calculation. More complex scales, such as the
dened on the basis of a power analysis, which takes into one adopted by the OECD, assume the following weights:
consideration, among other things, the statistical signi- 1 for the rst adult, 0.5 for the second and each subsequent
cance criterion for the coefcients to be tested, the vari- person aged 14 and over, and 0.3 for each child aged
ance of the explanatory variables and the precision with under 14. Income should include not just monetary earn-
which both the dependent variables (housing rents or ings, but also income imputed to self-consumption of
prices and life satisfaction) and the explanatory variables home production and assets. In urban contexts, the rele-
are measured. Obviously, while larger sample sizes are vant adjustment in this respect is the inclusion in income
desirable, cost considerations always come into play. See of the imputed rent in the cases when the dwellers are the
Ellis (2010) and Bartlett et al. (2001). same owners of the dwelling.
280 E. Lora
the methodology (the Z variables above) such as systematic uncontrolled differences in house
the condition of the sidewalks and streets, and quality across neighborhoods. Either of these
whether the neighborhood is primarily residen- two factors would imply that the composite
tial or not can be produced by the interviewers error term across houses within the same
by direct observation without asking the sub-city area will be correlated, violating the
interviewees. Data on distances to amenities independence assumption necessary to estimate
and services school, shopping center, down- by ordinary least squares.18
town attractions are more easily obtained from Beyond the theoretical concerns regarding
detailed geo-referenced maps or satellite photos. whether the application of hedonic pricing is
However, a few neighborhood variables of inter- justied or not discussed in a previous section,
est cannot be obtained in any other way than from the empirical point of view there is the
asking the residents of the neighborhood: trust above mentioned problem of unobserved house
in neighbors and feelings of security/insecurity and neighborhood characteristics and the conse-
are subjective in nature. Inclusion of subjective quent bias produced by omitted variables. In
variables in the list of explanatory variables may practice this problem is manifested in results
entail some econometric problems, as discussed that vary across different regression
below. specications or, occasionally, in variables that
even appear to have the wrong sign. Estimation
of Eq. 17.8 is usually performed using ordinary
least squares, which requires that the explanatory
17.3.2 Estimation of Hedonic Price
variables do not depend on the dependent vari-
Equation17
able. This assumption is often violated, which
may produce biased coefcients. For instance,
The hedonic price regression to be estimated
if the provision of public infrastructure across
usually has the following form (Gyourko
neighborhoods is inuenced by the amount of
et al. 1999),
tax revenues generated by each neighborhood,
Ln pi j 0 1 Hi 2 Zi vi j , vi j and taxes depend on housing prices, it follows
that some of the Z variables will be inuenced by
j i 17:8 housing prices. The estimated coefcients will
show an upward bias, and public good valuations
where pij is the rental price of house i located in
will be overestimated. Although instrumental
neighborhood j, Hi is the vector of individual
variables are often recommended to deal with
house features (number of rooms, quality of con-
the endogeneity problem, in statistical settings
struction, access to basic domiciliary services,
such as the current one, valid instrumental
etc.), Zi is the vector of (observable) neighbor-
variables are difcult to nd. The same can be
hood features of house i (green areas, condition
said about the use of panel data, which attempts
of sidewalks and streets, distances to services,
to get around the endogeneity problem by focus-
safety), some of which may be shared with
ing on the time variation of the explanatory
other houses, and vij is the composite error term
variables for a given sample of observations.
which is a combination of a neighborhood-
specic error component, j, and a house-specic
error component, i. The neighborhood-specic 18
In particular it will imply a downwards bias to
error component is common to all houses in the OLS-based standard errors (Moulton 1986). The potential
neighborhood and represents systematic unob- problem of the presence of groups effects can be
addressed by running a xed-effects estimation (assuming
served differences in characteristics across xed effects are not correlated with any of the
neighborhoods, but it may also capture Z variables). Of course this problem will be minimized
the better the data on individual housing characteristics
and also the more data are available for neighborhood-
17
This section is based on Powell and Sanguinetti (2010). level features.
Obviously, panel data is of little use in our case Squares (OLS), the simplest econometric method
because most housing and neighborhood features to estimate coefcients, should not be used as it
are time invariant. Another common problem is may render inconsistent estimates because the
multicollinearity of the explanatory variables, dependent variable is not continuous, but rather
which renders imprecise coefcient estimates. a form of censored data of a latent continuous
The problem may be particularly acute among variable that cannot be observed. In a similar
explanatory variables that refer to the neighbor- way, if life satisfaction is measured using verbal
hood, because the different dimensions of neigh- ratings such as not satisfactory, somewhat
borhood quality may be closely correlated and unsatisfactory, satisfactory, and very satis-
the number of neighborhoods too small to esti- factory, the appropriate estimation would be
mate each coefcient with enough precision. Ordered Logit, and not OLS. Each of these
Factor analysis is often used to reduce the num- methods produces different coefcient estimates
ber of explanatory variables to their common because each one implies a different
components (for some recent applications see, cardinalization of the life satisfaction data
for instance, Bhattacharjee et al. (2011), Day (cardinalization being the conversion of an ordi-
et al. (2003), and Vetter et al. (2012)). nal variable into one with continuous values). In
practice, though, the choice of estimation method
is less critical than it appears, since each one
yields about the same gradient vectors except
17.3.3 Estimation of Life Satisfaction
for a multiplication factor (Amemiya1981;
Equation
Carbonell and Frijters 2004; van Praag and
Carbonell 2010). The important implication of
In a manner analogous to the hedonic price equa-
this is that the subjective satisfaction trade-offs
tion, the dependent variable in the life satisfac-
between pairs of goods (or between any good and
tion equation will be individual specic
income) are the same in the Logit and the OLS
(subscript i), but individuals may also be grouped
estimations, and therefore the income-equivalent
by neighborhoods (the subscript j). The equation
valuations of the goods are also the same in these
to be estimated will include as regressors the
alternative estimation methods.
same set of housing (Hi) and neighborhood
Estimation of Eq. 17.9 may face similar
variables (Zi) of the hedonic price equation,
difculties to estimating the hedonic price equa-
plus the income variable in logs (ln(Yi)) and a
tion, namely unobserved house, neighborhood
set of individual variables (X i) that, according
and individual characteristics, on the one hand,
with the happiness literature, may inuence life
and endogeneity of the explanatory variables, on
satisfaction:
the other. However, estimation problems tend to
LSi j 0 1 Hi 2 Zi 3 lnY i be more severe with the life satisfaction equa-
4 Xi wi j , wi j tion, not only because of the larger number of
j i 17:9 explanatory variables and potentially omitted
variables, but because of the discrete and cen-
As in Eq. 17.8 the error term (wij) combines a sored nature of the dependent variable (which
neighborhood-specic component j, and an implies lower variance and larger measurement
individual-specic component i (since the unit error). Inclusion of extra variables in an attempt
of observation is the individual and her dwelling, to reduce the risk of omitted variables may sub-
the subscript i refers to both the individual and stantially reduce the precision of the estimates if
her dwelling). correlation between the explanatory variables is
If life satisfaction is measured by the standard high. Endogeneity problems may be especially
Cantril ladder question, which takes values from severe in the case of explanatory variables that
0 to 10, the regression can be estimated using are subjective, because personality traits may
Ordered Logit. In principle, Ordinary Least bias the individuals responses to both the life
282 E. Lora
satisfaction question and to questions about the of Colombia.19 Income per capita is 2,786 US
quality of the neighborhood. For instance, dollars (2009 values, at the market exchange
feelings of security may be prone to endogeneity. rate), very close to the national average in the
Since income-equivalent valuations of public urban areas (2,603 dollars). The average housing
goods inversely depend on the estimated value of rent is 630 dollars per year per capita (or 52
the income coefcient, imprecise measurement dollars per month per capita). It is estimated
of the income variable will necessarily result in that 27.3 % of the population earn income
overvaluations because it will bias the income below the ofcial poverty line of 1,057.7 dollars
coefcient downward (the so-called attenuation per capita in the urban areas (the national poverty
effect). The actual importance of this potential rate in the urban areas in 2009 was 35.8 %). The
bias is as yet unknown. Gini coefcient of per capita household income
is 0.509, not far from the national Gini for the
urban areas (0.534).
17.4 The Methodology in Practice As required by the methodology, the hedonic
price and the life satisfaction equations were
The methodology has been applied in a handful estimated with the same database, assuring con-
of cities in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa sistency and comparability in the estimates and
Rica, Guatemala and Peru. Although the experi- valuations. Table 17.1 summarizes the main
mental nature of the applications and the small results. Both housing prices and life satisfaction
sample sizes of the studies represent serious are signicantly correlated with a variety of
limitations in some of the applications, the meth- dwelling and neighborhood features, as predicted
odology has been satisfactorily applied to study by theory. All the statistically signicant
the quality of urban life in Manizales, the epicen- coefcients have the right sign, and most of the
ter of the traditional coffee growing region of variables considered turn out to be signicant in
Colombia. the hedonic price regression, and only a few in
the life satisfaction regression. This implies that
housing markets are indeed sensitive to many
17.4.1 The Case of Manizales, Colombia aspects of dwellings and neighborhoods, includ-
ing many public goods. Interestingly, life satis-
With a sample size of 6,300 households in a city faction is sensitive only to aspects that also
of about 390,000 inhabitants, representativeness inuence housing market prices, which amounts
in this case is not an issue. The sample used in the to saying that there are no pure non-market
study by Velasquez (2011) is statistically repre- goods within the list of variables considered
sentative for each of the 11 sub-city areas (cultural centers are a border case since their
(comunas) and for each of the six socioeconomic signicance in the hedonic price regression is
strata ofcially used to classify the population. just 10 %). Other neighborhood features that
Data was collected through a household survey inuence life satisfaction are location in a resi-
designed by CRECE a private think tank funded dential area, immediate proximity to a park and
by the Coffee Growers Association, applied in feeling safe in neighborhood (although safety is
the second semester of 2009, and complemented measured subjectively at the individual level, the
with geo-referenced ofcial data. Located at an
average altitude of 2,200 m (7,218 ft) on the
slopes of the exuberant Central Andean mountain 19
The source of the indicators is MESEP-DANE (2013).
range, Manizales is predominantly hilly with its All values have been converted into dollars at the market
neighborhoods interspersed with green areas. exchange rate of 2,294 Colombian pesos per US dollar,
which was the average for 2009. Current values in dollars
It is an eminently middle-class city for
are substantially higher because of the currency apprecia-
Latin American standards, with indicators tion (as of early 2013 the exchange rate was below 1,800
similar to the average for the urban population pesos per dollar).
Table 17.1 The hedonic and life satisfaction approaches in practice: Manizales, Colombia
Hedonic pricesa Life satisfactionb
Implicit price Implicit price Valuationc (dollars per
A (dollars per B (dollars per month) implicit price
Coefcient month) Coefcient month) A + implicit price B
Dwelling features
House 0.056 *** 2.9 0.005 2.9
Number of 0.147 *** 7.7 0.011 *** 58.0 65.8
rooms
Floors of good 0.183 *** 9.6 0.019 *** 112.9 122.5
quality
Walls of good 0.140 *** 7.3 0.035 *** 240.8 248.1
quality
Front garden 0.068 *** 3.6 0.003 3.6
Telephone 0.114 *** 6.0 0.027 *** 172.1 178.1
service
Gas service 0.093 *** 4.9 0.020 *** 116.4 121.3
Slope of street 0.001 0.000
(ln)
Neighborhood features
Residential area 0.093 *** 4.9 0.031 *** 207.3 212.1
Paved streets 0.115 *** 6.0 0.005 6.0
Sidewalks 0.061 ** 3.2 0.005 3.2
Park besides or 0.066 ** 3.5 0.018 ** 101.3 104.8
in front
Green zone 0.018 0.005
besides or in
front
Distance to 0.005 0.002
sport facilities
(ln)
Distance to 0.031 *** 1.6 0.001 1.6
shopping (ln)
Distance to 0.017 * 0.9 0.005 ** 25.4 26.2
cultural center
(ln)
school (ln)
church (ln)
health center
(ln)
Distance to 0.019 ** 1.0 0.002 1.0
rescue/re
station (ln)
Distance to 0.020 * 1.0 0.000 1.0
public
transportation
stop (ln)
Distance to 0.057 ** 3.0 0.005 3.0
college (ln)
Distance to 0.091 *** 4.8 0.011 4.8
downtown (ln)
(continued)
284 E. Lora
Hedonic pricesa Life satisfactionb

Implicit price Implicit price Valuationc (dollars per
A (dollars per B (dollars per month) implicit price
Coefcient month) Coefcient month) A + implicit price B
Distance to bus 0.018 0.000
terminal (ln)
Distance to 0.025 *** 1.3 0.000 1.3
main street (ln)
Feels safe in 0.034 ** 1.8 0.014 ** 79.1 80.9
neighborhood
Income (ln) 0.049 ***
Source: Own calculations based on Velasquez (2011)
*p < 0.10; **p < 0.05; ***p < 0.01
Notes: aThe coefcients come from an Ordinary Least Squares regression where housing rents are measured in logs.
The regression includes dummy variables for each of the 11 sub-city areas (comunas).
b
The coefcients shown are marginal effects (for rung 8) estimated by an Ordered Logit regression where life
satisfaction is measured on a 010 scale. The regression includes dummy variables for each of the 11 sub-city areas
(comunas).
c
Only statistically signicant coefcients are taken into account.
correlation of the subjective measure with the close to a park and 79 dollars for feeling safe in
homicide rate at the sub-city level is 0.94). neighborhood. However, it must be kept in mind
Remarkably, many housing features that could that the income equivalent valuations may be
be expected to behave as pure market goods biased upwards as a result of imprecise measure-
exhibit very signicant coefcients in the life ment of the income variable, as discussed at the
satisfaction regression, lending credence to the end of the previous section.
arguments that the assumptions implicit in the The total valuations of the dwelling and
hedonic price approach are seldom met. Thus, neighborhood features presented in the last col-
the number of rooms, the quality of oors and umn of Table 17.1, consistently with Eq. 17.7
walls, and connection to telephone and gas above, correspond to the sum of the hedonic and
services inuence life satisfaction directly. life satisfaction implicit prices. The potential
The valuations of the dwelling and neighbor- uses of the estimated coefcients and the
hood features presented in the table suggest that valuations are discussed in a section below.
the monthly rental price of the average house However, for convenience of exposition, one
increases 7.7 dollars with each additional room, specic use can be described now.
9.6 dollars if oors are of good quality The implicit prices computed by individual
(as compared to bad quality), etc. The are used in the Manizales study to calculate the
corresponding life satisfaction valuations are, implicit transfers due to the provision of some
by comparison, huge: each additional room public goods accruing to the poor, the middle
improves life satisfaction of the average individ- class and the upper class of the city (whereas
ual by an amount equivalent to 58 dollars of each class is a third of the population, ranked
additional monthly income, and good quality by per capita household income). As before, the
oors by an amount equivalent to 112 dollars. implicit transfers through rents are relatively
These estimates are prima facie evidence that small in comparison to the implicit direct
hedonic prices do not reect subjective wellbeing transfers through life satisfaction (see
tradeoffs between goods. The income equivalent Table 17.2). The transfers are larger for the
valuations of the telephone and gas services are higher income groups, reecting the higher hous-
equally remarkable: 172 and 116 dollars, respec- ing prices of these groups in the transfers through
tively. For the neighborhood features the rents, and their higher incomes in the transfers
valuations are also high: 101 dollars for a house through life satisfaction. This amounts to saying
Table 17.2 Implicit transfers by household due to the provision of some public goods, Manizales, Colombia (dollars
per month)
Average Poor class Middle class Upper class
Implicit transfers through rents
Paved streets 5.4 2.6 4.1 9.3
Sidewalks 3.0 1.5 2.3 5.0
Park besides or in front 0.6 0.2 0.4 1.1
Security in neighborhood 1.5 0.7 1.1 2.6
Implicit (additional) transfers through life satisfaction
Park besides or in front 16.4 2.6 8.4 36.7
Security in neighborhood 65.0 15.9 40.9 133.3
Source: Own calculations based on Velasquez (2011)
Note: The implicit transfers are calculated for each individual in the sample based on her own housing rents and income,
using the relevant coefcients in Table 17.1. Each class contains a third of the observations, ranked by income
that any public good that inuences rents which are more sensitive to safety concerns than those
is provided to all the neighborhoods implies a in rich neighborhoods. Important differences
redistribution of actual income biased towards across social classes also occur with respect to
the rich households. For instance, if security the proximity to various services and amenities.
were assured everywhere, monthly housing Similarly, life satisfaction is more sensitive to
rents would increase 2.6 dollars in the upper safety concerns among the poor, and to proximity
class neighborhoods, but just 0.7 dollars in the to green areas, sport facilities and cultural centers
poor class neighborhoods. If the public good also among the middle class. Remarkably, however,
inuences life satisfaction directly, at universal life satisfaction is equally sensitive to income
provision brings subjective benets that have a changes in all social classes.
higher income equivalent for the rich, given their Other potential uses of the methodology and
higher base income levels. This amounts to the type of computations summarized for the
saying that if an actual income compensation case of Manizales are manifold as will be
were given to all households for not providing discussed in a separate section below.
the public good, the transfer would have to be as
concentrated as the income distribution, and its
total cost for the city would probably be much 17.4.2 A Summary of the Application
higher than the cost of providing the good. This is of the Methodology to Other
a strong rationale for universal provision of those Cities
public goods that contribute to life satisfaction.
So far it has been assumed that a single hedonic As mentioned, the methodology has been applied
price regression and a single life satisfaction to a handful of other Latin American cities. A
regression are a fair representation of the housing brief summary of the results will help to highlight
markets and the subjective wellbeing of the whole the main ndings and to illustrate some additional
city and its inhabitants. However, this may not be problems facing the estimation of the equations
a valid assumption, as discussed in the original and the interpretation and use of the results.
study for Manizales, which presents estimates by Housing rents (or prices) are sensitive to a
social class (low, middle, high) and for each of the variety of factors related to the physical infra-
11 sub-city areas (comunas). The author nds that structure close to the dwelling, the availability
the sensitivity of housing prices to some features and quality of services in the neighborhood,
(like paved streets and distance to main roads) is distances to services and amenities, security
similar across social classes, while the sensitivity issues and environmental problems (Table 17.3).
to other features varies markedly by class. For Since each study includes its own list of
instance, housing prices in poor neighborhoods variables, it is difcult in general to extract
286
Table 17.3 Neighborhood features that affect housing rents

Argentina Brazil Colombia Costa Rica Guatemala Uruguay
Guatemala
Buenos Aires Sao Paulo Bogotaa Medelln San Jose City Montevideo
Physical Steel posts, public transport Parksb, factories, Length of
infrastructure stop, leisure-related venue, transportation neighborhood
close to health facility, condition of terminalb roads
dwelling sidewalks and streets
Availability Abundant shops Hospitalb, Garbage collection, Length of Parks, Public
and quality of health telephone service, secondary museum, transportation
services in centerb, density of cultural roads; length theater
neighborhood garbage on placesb and schools of primary
streets roadsb
Distances to Park, train School, university, Cultural placeb, National parks, Parksb, sports Seaside
services and station, slum government ofce metro station, re stationb, facility promenade
amenities market placeb, riversb
university, intercity
roadb
Security issues Drug dealing Aggressive Crime rate, attacks Crime rate Safety index
driving
Environmental Noise, pollution Floods in Vulnerability to Slope, rain, Precipitation
problems neighborhood natural disasters eruption damagesb
vulnerability
Sample size 616 373 10,832 16,323 Not reported 534 609
Source Cruces et al. (2010) Igliori Medina et al. (2010) Hall Robalino and Gandelman
et al. (2011) et al. (2010) Larios (2012) et al. (2012)
Notes: Items in italics are subjective evaluations of the presence or intensity of the feature
a
The dependent variable is housing prices (cadastral values or reported by households)
b
Coefcient is signicant with the wrong sign
E. Lora
strong conclusions about the importance of any endogeneity in the studies where the rent infor-
specic variable beyond the city under analysis. mation is provided by the interviewees.
The survey implemented in selected Security issues appear as important
neighborhoods of Buenos Aires gathered very determinants of housing prices in most cities,
detailed data about the immediate surroundings but they are conspicuously absent in the case of
of the dwellings, nding that features such as Guatemala City. Although the basic hedonic
proximity to public transport stops, and regression included (subjective) victimization
sidewalks and streets in good condition were variables and murder rates (by city zone), the
associated with higher rental prices. However, variables were not signicant in this city.21 How-
given the small sample used and the subjective ever, more detailed studies for the urban areas of
nature of some of the information, the results Mexico, and for Bogota and Sao Paulo conrm
cannot be extended to the whole city, much less the strong inuence of security issues in housing
to other cities. For instance, the study for Bogota, prices. Using a massive database of nearly 1.2
which used a large sample, found that proximity million observations covering over 35,000 Mex-
to transportation terminals and to parks, as well ican localities, (Galiani et al. 2012) nd that an
as the density of cultural places in the neighbor- increase of 1 % in the homicidal rate of a locality
hood, is associated with lower housing prices,20 reduces housing prices in the locality by 1.8 %.22
suggesting that these features are bads. This The study for Bogota Gaviria et al. (2010) makes
apparent anomaly occurs in several instances in use of the same database of Medina et al. (2010)
other cities (and in some of the life satisfaction already cited, but tests the inuence of alterna-
regressions, see Table 17.4). Possible tive crime measures on housing cadastral prices
explanations for the anomaly are poor condition and rents. It strongly conrms the inuence of
of the amenities (especially in low-income crime on housing prices, and additionally nds
neighborhoods), congestion or noise in their that the impact is differentiated by socioeco-
vicinities and attraction of street vendors and nomic stratum. The study for Sao Paulo by Vetter
peddlers. However, endogeneity may be at play et al. (2012), which includes a host of variables
if, for instance, the location of public services in of perceived security, victimization and home
the city has been decided taking into account protection actions for over 40,000 households,
land cost considerations or ease of access for nds strong evidence of the inuence of security
low income users (and, again, if amenities conditions on housing prices.
located in poor neighborhoods are kept in worse A summary of the neighborhood features that
condition than those in richer areas of the city). signicantly affect subjective wellbeing
Strong colinearity with other explanatory according with the studies is presented in
variables is another possible explanation for the Table 17.4. In some cases, the dependent vari-
unexpected signs, especially when the list of able is not life satisfaction, but satisfaction with
variables is large (the hedonic regression for the neighborhood or with some aspects of the
Bogota includes 44 explanatory variables, that neighborhood. In the Buenos Aires study, the
for Medelln includes 47). life satisfaction regression is estimated in a sec-
Security issues and environmental problems ond stage regression which includes neighbor-
are often strongly associated with lower housing hood satisfaction (observed or estimated) as a
rents and prices, as expected. Since adequate regressor. These methodology variants allow to
measurement of these variables is challenging, nding a larger number of neighborhood features
some of the studies make use of subjective
evaluations, which may be a source of 21
Except for houses of the poorest income quartile, whose
prices are signicantly lower if the house has been robbed
or is located in a zone of high murder rate.
20 22
Note that housing prices rather than rents are the depen- This is the coefcient in the most stringent regression
dent variable in this case. specication, which includes the most control variables.
288
Table 17.4 Neighborhood features that affect satisfaction with life or with neighborhood
Argentina Brazil Colombia Costa Rica Guatemala Peru Uruguay
Guatemala
Buenos Aires Sao Paulo Bogota Medelln San Jose City Lima Montevideo
Dependent Neighborhood Life Satisfaction Housing
variable satisfaction satisfaction with several satisfaction and
Explanatory Life satisfaction Life Life Neighbor- aspects of neighbor-hood
variables satisfaction satisfaction hood neighbor-hoodb satisfaction
satisfactiona
Physical Parking lots, pay Street lights,
infrastructure phones, conditions of many trees
close to sidewalks and streets,
dwelling green areas
Availability and Waste Energy, Length of Market Streets cleaned Rubbish in the
quality of disposal garbage primary places, daily, clean street, public
services in problem, bus collection, roads museumc streets transportation,
neighborhood stop access telephone green areas
services
Distances to Cultural and sports Metro station Recreation and Government Fire Seaside
services and activities sports centersc, ofcec, departmentc promenade
amenities density of density of
churchesc hospitalsc,
Security issues Security during the day Victimization Safety, robbery, Presence of Victimization Victimization, Vandalism,
drug dealing gangs, presence of presence of gangs
police gangs
quality
Environmental Trafc Precipitation Pollution (air,
problems damages noise or water)
Sample size 938 ~370 12,621 1,890 671 955 548 647
Source Cruces et al. (2010) Igliori Medina et al. (2010) Hall Robalino and Alcazar and Gandelman
et al. (2011) et al. (2010) Larios (2012) Andrade (2010) et al. (2012)
Notes: Items in italics are subjective evaluations of the presence or intensity of the feature
a
Life satisfaction regression was estimated also
b
Results shown refer to satisfaction with safety and with cleaning conditions only
c
Coefcient is signicant with the wrong sign
E. Lora
that are signicant, but make the calculation of the effect tends to be the same on the vast major-
their life satisfaction income equivalents difcult ity of homes and persons, as for example with the
or impracticable. issue of air quality.24 But this may also occur
As in the case of Manizales, a smaller number with problems of which people are largely
of neighborhood features affect life (or even unaware or to which they are excessively accus-
neighborhood) satisfaction than housing rents. tomed. A potential example is poor citizen cul-
However, unlike the case of Manizales, several ture where there is a pervasive absence of respect
of the aspects that do inuence satisfaction in the for norms and standards (zones where parking is
other case studies are not signicant permitted, respect for pedestrians, facilities for
determinants of housing rents, especially those persons with disabilities, cleanliness of public
aspects that are measured subjectively (which are areas, etc.). Another example is that of moderate
more prone to endogeneity). Although this trafc problems. But it is necessary to know
suggests that housing markets may be completely which of these are characteristic of
insensitive to neighborhood features that are neighborhoods or cities if a solution through
important for the quality of urban life, the con- public policy is to be found.
clusion is warranted only for the cities where the
hedonic and the satisfaction regressions included
the same set of neighborhood features in the list 17.5 Using the Results in Urban
of regressors (the studies of Sao Paulo, Policy Decisions
Guatemala city and Montevideo do so). Security and Monitoring
issues are a case in point: while different forms of
(subjective) victimization and crime are strong As explained, the coefcients of the hedonic and
determinants of satisfaction in those three cities, life satisfaction regressions can be used to value
they do not seem to inuence housing prices.23 public goods according to their contribution to
Finally, it is important to bear in mind that housing market prices or rents and according to
there are goods and services which, even though their contribution to life satisfaction. As shown,
they may be potentially important factors in the these calculations can be used to assess which
quality of urban life, are not reected in the costs socioeconomic groups within the city benet
of housing or in life satisfaction. This can occur more from the provision of urban public goods.
for purely statistical reasons (for example, Similar calculations can be performed by neigh-
because the data on housing costs and life satis- borhood, which can be equally relevant for urban
faction are not sufciently precise to take policy purposes. In addition, several other
account of their impact) or because the problem questions of key importance for urban policies
is common to every city or group of can be addressed, such as which public invest-
neighborhoods under consideration, such that ment expenditures may be nanced through bet-
terment taxation and which through other
23
Security issues are a signicant determinant of life budgetary resources, how to prioritize public
satisfaction in all the cities included in Table 17.4, with expenditure decisions and how to regularly mon-
the conspicuous exception of Medelln. However, using itor the quality of urban life. The validity of these
the same database of the study for Medelln citied here,
uses will of course depend on the level of detail
Medina and Tamayo (2012) explored the inuence of
alternative security variables, nding a negative effect and the quality of the data. As mentioned below,
of the homicide rate on life satisfaction for the subsample public investment prioritization and monitoring
of individuals living in their current houses for at least
10 years or more. . . [and] a positive and robust effect of
24
the perception of security in the households neighbor- Another possible statistical reason is that a neighbor-
hood for the whole sample and for different sub-samples hood characteristic, such as safety, is so closely correlated
considered. Having been a victim of an offence is also to a separate trait, such as the condition of public zones,
robustly negatively related to life satisfaction, in particu- that it is not statistically possible to disaggregate the two
lar, in the cases where the offense was robbery. effects.
290 E. Lora
of the quality of urban life could be done regu- equivalent effect (including the effect through
larly on the basis of a detailed base study without housing rents) of the public good on the life
necessarily performing a complete updating satisfaction of all the citizens vis-a`-vis the cost
every time. of provision of the good. The ratio between both
The impact of public goods provision on could be interpreted as the income-equivalent
housing rents (or prices) obtained through the subjective wellbeing return of the good. Goods
hedonic price approach can be used to calculate with ratios larger than one would be in principle
the total market benets that a public good brings good candidates to be nanced through general
to the city. Assuming that the public good does taxation. The reason is simple: the reduction in
not have any other effect on market activities (average) life satisfaction resulting from the fall
(such as commerce), the total value of its market in disposable income due to the tax would be
benets is the sum of the effects on the prices of smaller than the increase in (average) life satis-
rents of all the houses.25 If this value is larger faction due to the provision of the good. How-
than the cost of provision, it will generate a net ever, neither would this be a reasonable criterion
benet to the city as a whole, whose return would to prioritize public investment expenditures
be given by the ratio between benets and costs. because it would necessarily lead to concentrate
If, as assumed, all the benets are perceived by expenditures in the richer members of society.
the owners of the dwellings then the provision of To understand this, assume that similar
the good should be nanced through betterment reductions in the crime rates of poor and rich
taxes, because the benets fully accrue to the neighborhoods have the same impact on the aver-
owners without any economic effort or initiative age life satisfaction of the poor and the rich. Then
on their part. And if the total benets value and the income-equivalent of the same crime abate-
the costs of provision of several public goods are ment effort would be higher in the richer
known, their corresponding rates of return could neighborhoods, and therefore such effort should
be compared to prioritize public investment focus on the rich neighborhoods.
expenditures. This would imply that the objec- A more equitable criterion would be to assign
tive of the local government in the provision of public investment expenditures with the objec-
public goods would be the maximization of eco- tive of maximizing the life satisfaction of all the
nomic value for the city as a whole. This criterion citizens. In this case, both rich and poor
would most likely lead to prioritize expenditures neighborhoods should receive similar attention
in high class neighborhoods, as mentioned above in the provision of any good that contributes to
with reference to Manizales, because the impact life satisfaction (assuming that its cost of provi-
of a given expenditure (say, on security efforts, sion is similar across neighborhoods). This crite-
or park construction) on housing prices would be rion is equivalent to the previous one
larger in more expensive neighborhoods. Such maximizing the income-equivalent impact of
value maximization function may be a better the expenditures only when the provision of
representation of the behavior of a private urban the public goods has the same impact on each
developer than of a local government that must social group irrespective of their income, which
respond to the entire citizenship. is a very unlikely assumption.
An alternative criterion is provided by the life If the criterion of maximizing the subjective
satisfaction approach. In this case, the relevant wellbeing of all the members of society
comparison would be the total income- irrespective of their income levels is deemed
acceptable, it follows that a quality of urban life
index (QUOLI) can be built using the results of
25
The explanation that follows is easily extendable to the the hedonic and the life satisfaction approaches.
case where there are other market benets. It would
The components of the QUOLI would be all the
require that an additional hedonic price regression is run
for the rents of the market activities that may benet from public goods that signicantly impact either
the provision of public goods. housing rents or life satisfaction or both. The
weights of the components would be the given calculate than the static (or base) QUOLI: once
by: the weights have been established only the
changes in the Z values are needed to compute
wx Y 17:10 the change in the QUOLI. Recalculating the
Where, as before, the sub-index represents the weights may be necessary with much less fre-
different public goods Z, are the coefcients quency (every 5 or 10 years, depending of the
estimated through the hedonic price regression dynamism and complexity of the city).
(Eq. 17.8), Y is the income coefcient from the The methodology can be easily extended to
life satisfaction regression (Eq. 17.9), and are consider in the QUOLI not just the public goods
the coefcients of the public goods from the that have a specic location (which can contribute
same regression. The rst term of the right hand to explain housing rents or life satisfaction, or
side is the effect on life satisfaction of the provi- both) but also other goods and services that may
sion of good that is due to housing rents, and be provided by the local government, such as
the second term is the direct effect on life health and education services, that have an inu-
satisfaction. ence either on income, on life satisfaction, or both.
Therefore the QUOLI will be computed as: For instance, years of education (one of the per-
X sonal characteristics usually included as a control
x wx Z 17:11 in the life satisfaction regression) contributes both
to income and to life satisfaction. A regression
If there is ground to believe that there are explaining labor income that includes years of
differences between the life satisfaction education as one of the explanatory variables
functions of the different social or income (so called Mincerian regression) could be used to
groups, Eq. 17.10 should be computed for each obtain the relevant coefcient and compute the
group m separately: implicit (market) return of each year of education.
The QUOLI can be expanded accordingly to
wmx m mY m 17:12
include other public goods and services.
On this basis, the total QUOLI should be Although the methodology does provide a
computed as the weighted average of the group ranking of neighborhoods within a city, it does
QUOLIs, using the shares of the groups in the not allow comparing the quality of life across
total population (sm) as weights: different cities or, consequently, ranking cities,
X X as other methodologies based on objective
m sm x wmx Z m 17:13 indicators do. The reason is very simple: if what
the people of Buenos Aires love most about their
If the QUOLI is computed regularly, it can be used city is excitement and diversity, while the people
to track the impact of the provision of public goods of Montevideo consider that the most valuable
on the quality of life of the whole population of the aspect of the city is order and uniformity, it
city. Alternatively, if the QUOLI is computed follows that the two groups have different
across neighborhoods, it allows comparing the preferences. As explained by van Praag and
impact of public goods across neighborhoods. Ferrer-i-Carbonell (2010), for now it has not
With some variations in methodology QUOLIs been settled that inhabitants in different cities or
have been computed to rank neighborhoods in neighborhoods of cities have such widely differ-
the studies for Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, Bogota, ent preferences. Frequently such differences can
Medelln, San Jose and Lima.26 Changes in the be attributed to reference effects, where one
QUOLI through time (say, yearly) are easier to neighborhood is much richer than another and
hence has much higher material standards.
26 Another cause of seemingly different preferences
The main difference being that the hedonic price term
was not included in the QUOLI but used separately to may be differences in climate such as tempera-
compute a market-value QUOLI. ture, altitude, or windiness.
292 E. Lora
Another important caveat that must be kept in The potential of the methodology to address
mind when constructing and making use of relevant local policy issues naturally depends on
QUOLIs for public policy decisions is that the quality and level of detail of the objective and
many responsibilities of local governments do subjective information available. The monitoring
not immediately inuence life satisfaction or systems of the quality of life of the population in
incomes (natural disaster prevention, environ- general, which already exist in many cities, pro-
mental protection, and so on). This means that vide most of the information needed, although
changes in the QUOLI cannot be deemed to paradoxically some of them do not collect infor-
accurately measure the overall quality of local mation on the two key variables: housing rents
government, and that contribution to the QUOLI (or prices) and satisfaction with life (or, at least,
cannot be the sole criterion to assign public satisfaction with the city).
expenditure budgets. However, the use of The empirical studies for a handful of Latin
instruments such as the proposed QUOLI will American cities surveyed in this article demon-
certainly contribute to the modern tendency of strate that it is feasible to implement a system for
public administration to be guided by outcomes, monitoring the quality of urban life that is easy to
rather than inputs. operate, has a reasonable cost, and is based on
It could be argued that instead of a QUOLI, sound concepts. Such a system, the ideal of many
life satisfaction as reported by individuals should academics and observers of urban problems, may
be the nal objective of local policies and there- not be far from becoming a reality. A successful
fore serve as measure of government quality, monitoring system will enable local
since reported life satisfaction incorporates all governments, analysts of urban problems, and
aspects of peoples wellbeing according to their the communities themselves to debate the
own assessments. The main problem with this problems of cities and their possible solutions
argument is that such assessments do not speci- in a more informed manner.
cally measure the quality of life in
neighborhoods or cities, as life satisfaction
involves many other individual factors. In order
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Part IV
Social Factors and Happiness in Latin America
Sociopolitical Dimensions
of Subjective Wellbeing: 18
The Case of Two Mexican Cities
Rene Millan
18.1 Introduction Despite the reluctance still found due to ideo-

logical or academic traditions, the understanding
The importance of subjective wellbeing (SWB) about the factors associated to SWB in Latin
analysis nowadays is unquestionable. It has been America is increasing. This is supported by a
acknowledged by international organizations considerable output that includes a substantial
(such as the OECD), and many countries have number of concerns as well: conceptual and
included it in their statistical datasets as an inu- methodological (Moyano 2010; Rojas 2007a, b;
ential factor in the denition of policies. The Yamamoto et al. 2008, Millan 2011); about
efforts to highlight it in research are substantial health (Florenzano and Dussaillant 2011;
and include a wide range of variables: economi- Moyano and Ramos 2007; Rossi et al. 2008);
cal (Deaton 2008; Diener and Oishi 2000; about economic and growth dimensions (Fuentes
Easterlin 1974; Rojas 2007a, b; Veenhoven and Rojas 2001; ); about equality and poverty
1991, 1992); related to work (Clark 2003; Di (Graham and Felton 2005; Rojas 2009); about its
Tella et al. 2001); to social equity (Alesina importance for public policy (Martinez-Bravo
et al. 2004; Rojas 2010); to health and positive 2012); about needs and services (Guardiola
feelings (Cohen and Pressman 2006; Dave et al. 2011; Guardiola and Garca Munoz 2009);
et al. 2008; Diener and Chan 2011); to human about quality of life (Lora 2008; Lora
relationships (Bartolini 2011; Bruni and Stanca et al. 2008); about the labor situation (Moyano
2008; Helliwell and Putnam 2004; Helliwell and 2010; Pages and Madrigal 2008); and about
Barrington-Leigh 2011); to the environment and human relationships (Velazquez 2011), among
quality of life (Brereton et al. 2008; Luechinger others.
2009); to marital status and family (Lucas and The knowledge amassed throughout these and
Schimmack 2006; Gardner and Oswald 2006; other studies has resulted in the identication of
Gove et al. 1983; Stutzer and Frey 2006); to variables, beyond those economic and material-
existential positions and personality (Rojas istic that are systematically associated to SWB,
2005; Diener 1999); to the possibilities of though with nuances according to specic
designing public policies (Diener et al. 2009; regions and contexts (Helliwell et al. 2012). We
Bok 2010), to name only a few. know today that, for example, the type of person-
ality (Rojas 2005), religious aspects (Wills
R. Millan (*) 2009), the level of marital satisfaction, children,
Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales, UNAM, Mexico age, the real and self-perceived health
City, Mexico conditions, the relationships with friends or
e-mail: renem@sociales.unam.mx

298 R. Millan
acquaintances the so called relational goods, 18 years of age. It was designed to establish the
social capital, equality, labor status, the quality relationship between social capital and the per-
of the living place or the environment, efciency formance of each community, and to that effect it
and trust in the government are aspects that, at was required to gather information about differ-
different levels, have an inuence on SWB. ent aspects, much of them related to the spheres I
These variables can be ordered differently and have pointed out above.
may show various levels of complementarity The cities were chosen by the contrast of their
among them, as well as acting as positive characteristics. In 2004 the closest year for
externalities to wellbeing; for example, in the which we had available data MTY registered
relation between positive feelings and relational a Human Development Index (HDI) consider-
goods. ably higher (.853) than the national average,
For the purposes of this chapter, we could with a per capita income of 14,769 dollars and
identify the following research elds related to a very low Marginality Index (MI), 1.676 in
SWB, if we take into account the individual: 20052; in contrast, CHP reached an HDI middle
(a) the personal sphere of affections and spiritual high (.789), with 5,419 dollars of income per
dimension (beliefs, values, religion, existential capita and a low MI (1.310). They show other
postures); (b) the sphere of personal differences. MTY is in the north of the country
characteristics and resources (income, education, and has traditionally been an industrial and
gender, labor and family status); (c) the bonding services development center, with more entrepre-
and interaction sphere (relational goods, social neurial and demanding values for the private
capital and its components, social cohesion and sector, with less state intervention in the forma-
segmentation); (d) the sphere of living conditions tion of the political culture; whereas CHP has a
and quality (habitat, needs and services); and very small industrial structure and is very tied to
(e) the sphere of citizenship and government agriculture activities. To a considerable extent,
(participation, rights, government performance). the political or civic culture reproduces, as used
With exception of the rst one, they are all to be the case in the pre-transition democratic
spheres that connect or relate the individual to regime, political or crony patronage patterns
specic social and political contexts. Although (known in Spanish as clientelismo) (Graham
we refer also to variables mentioned in point (b), 1990)3 between government and society, and
the present chapter has a fundamental interest in has strong social associations or unions that
testing a group of variables that we establish as have as a main interlocutor the local or federal
sociopolitical and, according to the previous authorities.
classication, would include points (c), (d) and Different tests of independence and associa-
(e). Some of the dimensions we explore, as we tion4 were made for each city. Given the number
will see, havent been consistently analyzed in of tables, and the fact that not all variables
Latin America. behave the same way in the two cities or do not
show some relevant relationship in any of them,
we show only the results we believe are relevant.
18.2 The Research
2
The research focuses in two Mexican cities: The index is built with three variables: the shortage of
education, goods and services.
Chilpancingo (CHP) and Monterrey (MTY). In 3
Clientelism in Spanish: crony patronage, exchange of
2006, a statistically signicant survey was goods for political support.
conducted1 with 1,000 individuals older than 4
The adjusted residuals were considered as well because
they give additional information about the character of
possible association. According to Agresti and Finlay
1
The survey was funded by the Science and Technology (1997), if the adjusted residual value exceeds 3 or +3,
National Council (Conacyt). it gives opposite evidence of independence.
18 Sociopolitical Dimensions of Subjective Wellbeing: The Case of Two Mexican Cities 299
Afterwards, we made a multivariate analysis for spite of this obstacle, we usually tend to consider
each city. The model was adjusted because cer- cohesion as something good, as a social state
tain variables, which in theory should be that has positive and productive effects. We
associated to SWB, didnt meet that expectation. assume that a cohesive society has, as compared
However, because of their theoretical to one that isnt so, an additional resource for
implications, some of them are reported in the solving its problems. That is our concern,
following text. The comparative study suggests although we dont always designate the same
that context is an important factor in the variables through this concept. In recent years the
related to happiness, as well as in their strength. European Committee for Social Cohesion
Heterogeneity may be due to individual and (2004), as well as the Economic Commission
social reasons. For Diener and Oishi (2000), cul- for Latin America (CEPAL) have been using it
tural and social differences are probably factors as a meta-concept which includes basically all
that explain the disparity of SWB at international the elements that allow an individual to be prop-
level. As Rojas (2010) has pointed out, erly included in its society. Thus, the notion of
conceptions of happiness differ not only across cohesion becomes an equivalent of integration,
people, but also across cultures, since the con- of social inclusion in different spheres of associ-
ception one holds is not independent of the spe- ate life (work, education, services). Cohesion,
cic personal and social context one lives and under this perspective, becomes the key concept
grew up in. For Helliwell et al. (2012), studying to assess the general performance of society. This
the individual as well as the social levels would extension has weakened the original sense of the
help to explain the differences. The strength of term. For the purpose of wellbeing it is more
specic contexts, that is, of particularized useful to go back to the original and therefore
relationships between individuals and socially to a restricted notion of the concept.
contextualized variables can be a way to show The analytical usefulness of the term social
and explain heterogeneity. The present chapter cohesion is attributed to Durkheim, in his
follows this line of thinking. renowned distinction between types of solidarity
Happiness was originally measured taking (1960). In simple societies, little differentiated
four values that, once recoded, resulted in two (mechanical) cohesion is achieved due to a
categories. In both cities there is an enormous strong and robust collective conscience which
concentration: in CHP 74.2 % declares them- dissolves tensions and conicts restraining the
selves happy while a 25.8 % reports little or no range of possible experiences in the level of
happiness; in MTY these gures are 84 % and individuality, given the scarce division of labor.
16 %, respectively. Under this codication, we In complex (organic) societies, tension must be
explore the relationship of a big group of assumed due to the notable increase of speciali-
variables with happiness. According to the clas- zation in function and spheres of experience.
sication suggested above, the following factors Tension is solved by the reinforcement of norma-
are taken into account (Table 18.1). tive aspects, which Durkheim grounds most of all
Given that the rst sphere includes control on positive law. That way, cohesion is performed
variables for the multivariate analysis, we start on the level of the relationships between
with the other spheres. individuals, but reacts and depends on the
imperatives and problems generated from the
systemic or structural spheres as well.
18.3 Dimensions of Bonding In that sense, cohesion refers markedly to the
and Interaction degree of conict in social interactions and,
therefore, also to the instances containing or
18.3.1 Social Cohesion inhibiting it. Even though conict and tension
in interactions are at the center of the concept
The polysemic character of the concept has of cohesion, at least from a certain perspective,
always been acknowledged (Ottone 2007). In other authors have shown that this is not only the
300 R. Millan
Table 18.1 Spheres of analysis. Variables under consideration

Sphere of afliation and Sphere of living Sphere of citizenship
individual resources Sphere of bonding and interaction conditions and government
Gender Cohesion (conict, social Satisfaction Civic-political
fragmentation, social interactions) regarding where one relationship
Age Social capital (reciprocity, trust, lives (Participation,
Education cooperation, networks, relation goods) citizenship, rights)
Household income
Marital status
result of structural imperatives, nor is it ruled by Frequent interactions with friends and
juridical norms, but of other kinds such as cul- neighbors are both associated with systemati-
tural, civic, etcetera (Berger 1999). Thus, cohe- cally higher assessments of subjective well-
sion refers to a wide spectrum of normative or being . . . frequent interactions with friends are
axiological interaction regulation, so that two even more important (especially in USA) than
effects are produced: that these interactions those with neighbors and family, with family
become possible and extend even more between contact being slightly more important than that
those who are different, and, obviously, that the with neighbors. For that reason, they consider
possibility of conict is reduced to the extent of that informal social capital is strongly
maintaining a certain stable horizon. Tolerance, associated to SWB.
for example, is conducive to that goal. In the cases we are concerned with, it is nota-
In that line of thought, the positive effect of ble that conict -or its absence- with relatives
social cohesion over SWB would seem evident, and with friends does not appear to have an
and it is related to particularized contexts of inuence on SWB (Table 18.2). In spite of the
individual experience. Given the importance fact that 76 % of individuals experience conict
that relational goods have, no one would be in their relationships, they declare themselves as
satised if its relationships were conictive or if happy in CHP, and 80 % in MTY; both tests of
they were limited to a predetermined number independence and regression show a nil associa-
without the opportunity of widening them tion. The data is relevant. The fact that sustaining
up. However, research ndings are surprising. conictive relationships in the closest spheres of
For social cohesion analysis we elaborated four interaction dont affect ones wellbeing could be
variables: (a) conict in individual interactions; explained by certain levels of resiliency or an
(b) criteria of reference that bring more security optimistic personality (Diener and Fujita 1995),
in relationships or promote identication; or other existential strategy (Rojas 2005). It
(c) social fragmentation; and (d) difculty to could be due also to the question itself, which
make new friendships or meeting people. doesnt distinguish between the nuclear and the
For the conict variable,5 relationships with extended family: it could happen that tensions
relatives and friends were taken on the one hand, concentrate in the latter, but that logic wouldnt
and with neighbors on the other. According to stand regarding friends.
certain literature, these three areas of experience What is surprising is the indifference to the
have an enormous importance to SWB because absence of conict. At least theoretically, some
they are immediate convivial spaces for the indi- sort of relatively rm bond with regard to
vidual. Helliwell and Putnam (2004), based on a wellbeing would be expected. Different scholars
survey, point out that for USA and Canada: have shown that none conictive dynamics in the
family are associated, for example, to less stress,
absence of depression, good communication,
5
Individuals were asked how much conict they had, freedom in affective expression and, therefore,
from 0 to 10, and a variable was built, rst of three
categories and then of two: conict-nothing of conict.
it has been linked to marital satisfaction or
Table 18.2 CHP. Results of the binary logistic regression model

Variables B Sig. S.E. Wald Exp (B)
Age of those interviewed 0.092 ** 0.032 8.215 0.912
Squared age 0.001 ** 0.000 3.987 1.001
Household income *** 30.15
More than two and less than four M. W. 0.607 ** 0.203 8.995 1.836
From four to six M. W. 1.313 *** 0.342 14.703 3.715
More than six M. W. 1.423 *** 0.309 21.178 4.148
Fragmentation index 0.666 ** 0.247 7.301 0.514
Conict with neighbors 0.697 ** 0.228 9.321 0.498
Trust in the family 0.863 *** 0.216 16.004 2.369
Reciprocity 0.427 ** 0.201 4.54 1.533
Make new relationships 0.369 * 0.209 3.107 1.446
Cooperation in collective project 0.422 ** 0.236 3.206 1.526
Satisfaction of living place ** 8.011
Regular 0.478 ** 0.195 6.023 0.620
Bad 1.010 ** 0.592 2.908 0.364
Interest in the countrys political issues ** 15.227
Interested 0.201 0.476 0.178 0.818
More or less interested 1.222 ** 0.529 5.332 0.295
Little interested 1.037 ** 0.438 5.596 0.354
Not interested 1.057 ** 0.455 5.407 0.347
Government considers peoples opinion *** 16.705
Indifferent 1.475 *** 0.377 15.321 0.229
Little or nothing 0.669 ** 0.234 8.136 0.512
Constant 3.234 *** 0.835 14.982
Signicance: * p < 0.10; **p < 0.05; ***p < 0.000 Model chi square: (189.15 19gl) Sig. .00
2loglikelihood: 781.56
happiness. It is not unwise to assume that among dissociation between happiness and actual
friends fraternal satisfaction encompasses experiences: the quality of relationships in the
some of these characteristics. Friends are a closest spheres, such as family and friends, does
prevailing factor in SWB. Other scholars have not seem to matter; not, at least, to self-reported
shown clearly that family is among the most happiness.
important variables for wellbeing, above the The interaction between neighbors presents a
rest (Rojas 2007a; Moyano and Ramos 2007; variety that shows the importance of the individ-
Garcia et al. 2006; Florenzano and Dussaillant ual particularized context. While in MTY there is
2011). What is intriguing is this: why a better no effect in the condition of being happy, in CHP
communication, expressiveness and affection, as it is a factor to consider. The association is of
well as the resulting benets that come along negative sign. Given the reference variable
with non-conicting relationships, are not valued (Table 18.2), we nd that when there is more
or considered as an important factor in the appre- conict with neighbors it is unlikely that we
ciation of ones happiness? It is not difcult to assess ourselves as happy. The difference with
observe that the answer points towards the opportunity of being so as a result of more
reafrming the well-known theory that states harmonic relationships is of 8 percentage points
that happiness, in contrast to living satisfaction, (Table 18.3)
is less reexive and related to a lesser extent to The form and weight of participation in
cognitive processes (Rojas 2005; Millan 2011). It associations could help us to clarify the disparity
shows us also that, in certain contexts, there is a between both cities. Measured in terms of annual
302 R. Millan
Table 18.3 CHP: probability of being happy (percentage)

P 1P
Variable (Happy) (Little or not happy)
Age of interviewed
Age (20 years) 87.6 12.4
Age (30 years) 82.3 17.7
Age (40 years) 78.9 21.1
Age (50 years) 78.5 21.5
Age (60 years) 81.4 18.6
Age (70 years) 86.5 13.5
Household income
Up to two minimum wages (M.W.) 75.3 24.7
More than two and less than four M.W. 84.8 15.2
From four to six M. W. 91.9 8.1
More than six M. W. 92.7 7.3
Fragmentation index
Few or any friends with different preferences 84.5 15.5
A lot of friends with different preferences 73.6 26.4
Conict with neighbors
No conict 84.8 15.2
Conict 73.5 26.5
Trust in the family
Trusts little or nothing 71.4 28.6
Trusts completely 85.6 14.4
Reciprocity
Not reciprocal 81.2 18.8
Reciprocal 86.9 13.1
Make new relationships
Difcult 78.2 21.8
Easy 83.8 16.2
Cooperation in collective project
Doesnt cooperate 77.4 22.6
Cooperates 83.9 16.1
Satisfaction in living place
Good 85.7 14.3
Regular 78.7 21.3
Bad 68.5 31.5
Interest in the countrys political issues
Very interested 91.7 8.3
Interested 90.1 9.9
More or less interested (indifferent) 76.6 23.4
Little interested 79.7 20.3
Not interested 79.4 20.6
Government considers peoples opinion
Much or somewhat 89.3 10.7
Indifferent 65.7 34.3
Little or nothing 81.1 18.9
activity, people in CHP (Gordon and Millan association of some kind (47 % against 25 %);
2009) belong to a greater extent to some that is the case also regarding civic associations,
which include those of neighbors (21 % versus relationships which include substantial contacts
6 %) and to social and political organizations with different persons from the previous
(10 % versus 2 %). We have to add to this differ- categories live in a more plural and more exible
ence a feature, that crony patronage culture, such integrated particularized social context, open at
as that prevailing in CHP, promotes association at least in the sense that certain possibilities of
the level of neighborhoods in a small scale, but experience among those who are different, and
enough to articulate neighbor groups in order to of transit between worlds, to use a phenome-
give political support in exchange of access to nological concept (Berger and Luckmann 1969),
services. Whether in this logic or in one more are present. Clearly, if a community reafrms
similar to Putnams associative model, it is clear and performs those possibilities to a great extent,
that spaces for neighbor contact in which the it increases its internal social connectivity in that
absence of conict matters are produced. Their proportion.
weight would probably be greater if it were per- That connectivity is linked to the formation of
ceived that sustaining bad relationships with bridges (Granovetter 1973) and to the increase of
neighbors increases a personal cost, since they social capital through that means (Putnam 2000).
can result in the exclusion from certain benets Social capital generates bonding when it gathers
and services. That is not the case in MTY. similar people with some common characteristic
The effect of social fragmentation in happi- (age, gender, kinship, social group) and forms
ness has been little explored, with some bridges when the networks include diverse peo-
exceptions (Hooghe 2012). It is typically ple among them (Millan and Gordon 2004). Both
included in works about inequality or poverty, in terms of social capital, but above all of frag-
particularly when socioeconomic groups or mentation, the formation of bridges is linked to a
income differences are compared (Vega and central element: at the social level the interaction
Moyano 2010; Guardiola and Garca-Nunez among those who are different, structured in a
2009; Melgar and Rossi 2011). In any case, we stable way in time, imposes certain logics of
assume it in a wider perspective, not only eco- reciprocity or of recognition as equals while
nomic. The variable was built as a social frag- respecting differences; otherwise the reciprocity
mentation index (SFI) from 7 statements, which is not produced (Putnam 2000). And this seems
explore the possibilities of interactions among to be the case in both cities.
different persons; that is, in which the difference In a more surprising way than the conict with
is established by income, education, religion, neighbors, the SFI throws contrasting results.
generational group, and by different ideas.6 The While in MTY the index does not have an effect
assumption is that those who perform in a set of in SWB, in CHP it is signicant but negative
(Table 18.2). Since the reference category is
not experiencing fragmentation, we face
6
Seven questions were made with the same format: Could indeed the disconcerting case that the more frag-
you tell me how many people are your friends . . . who mentation is lived, perceived or is actual, the
have a lot of money?; who have less money than you or
more possibilities there are of being happy
are in poverty?; who have more education than you?; who
have less education than you?; who have another reli- (Table 18.3). This counter-sense can be
gion?; who are from another generation?; who are from explained: In a study about social cohesion in
another political party or have different ideas?. The scale Belgium, Hooghe starts from one paradoxical
had four values (all, most of all, some, none). Recoding
data present in Western developed countries:
implied that All or most of all would assume a value of
1, and Some or none the value of 0. Interviewers who while certain studies show that the levels of
got one in three or more statements (that is, who have SWB increase, stay stable or do not decrease
three or more friends from different socioeconomic level, signicantly, others point out that disaffection
education, age, religion or political preference) didnt
or attitudes of discontent regarding social perfor-
experience the existence of a fragmented environment,
while those who got one in two or less of the statements mance increase. We observe specially a sense of
perceived it as such. loss of community. Thus, high levels of SWB
304 R. Millan
can be combined with a negative outlook on the the extension of those contacts towards the
society ones lives in (2012). These variables are extended family has negative effects in terms of
two different concepts and therefore measuring life satisfaction (Ellison 1991). In terms of frag-
one does not imply necessarily an assessment of mentation, it could be said that the degree of
the other. The fact that they are not linked (as we extension of contacts, and of lessening strong
may think is the case with, for example, health bonds or solid bondings, is having different
and wellbeing) does not mean that they cannot be effects according to contexts and kinds of popu-
correlated, above all by a third factor. That third lation. Under this logic, it would be comprehen-
factor is ethnocentrism. sible that while a person performs better in a
Hooghe (2012) describes it as a negative highly integrated or homogeneous environment
attitude to outsider groups that are seen as a he or she assesses his or her SWB as higher. In
potential threat to the culturally or economically fact, according to the results, the probability of
dominant position on ones own insider group being happy as one sustains relationships with
(pp. 2225). Ethnocentrism, according to the similar persons is 82.4 %, versus 73 % of having
data of the research, shows a positive relationship the opportunity of being so when most bonds are
with SWB but a negative one with the assessment with different individuals (Table 18.3).
of society in terms of community. The idea of The apparent distortion of the positive rela-
reinforcement of ones own groups and the rejec- tionship between social fragmentation and well-
tion of nonwestern foreigners implicit in this being can be due to a de facto condition as well:
reasoning makes the argument, in fact, be the perception that the way persons treat each
sustained in terms of social fragmentation: the other does not meet minimal equality codes. If
degree of persistence of ethnocentrism interpersonal distrust and lack of reciprocity in
emphasizes the level of the latter. Therefore, the the relationships is added to this perception, that
paradox makes sense. Following this line, our relationship will surely tend to deepen. As frag-
results can be explained, even though partially, mentation imposes itself as a central feature of a
by social capital as well as by the so-called rela- society, in the sense that a good number of
tional goods, most of all if we substitute ethno- factors act as barriers to sustain and spread
centrism for strong bonds or for relatively out personal relationships, it is reasonable to
encapsulated contacts. expect that those individuals shelter themselves
What SFI reveals regarding CHP society, is in more integrated and homogeneous spaces than
that it is an extremely segmented community. the general community itself. That seems to be
The informal interactions among individuals, the case in CHP; the city is characterized by a
beyond the contact required by professional or very high distrust and an unequal treatment
institutional structures, would seem to occur (Gordon and Millan 2009). We should assume
above all in spaces where equality or certain that the forms of cohesion inuence the ways
sense of community among participants is individuals mutually relate and therefore the
strongly guaranteed. This condition appeals to individuals SWB.
the idea of strong bonds and to the recreation of The above group of arguments would throw
non-instrumental links that relational goods light on the meaning that could be imputed to SFI
imply (Becchetti et al. 2009). Both have in the behavior. However, it sets out another problem:
family and in close friendships their clearest ref- in terms of interpersonal distrust, equal treat-
erence. As many others, a study based on the ment, and contact among people who are differ-
National Survey of Black American (NBSA) ent, MTY has similar features as CHP (Gordon
shows that kinship bonds and friendships are and Millan 2009).7 Why, then, the SFI is
positively associated with SWB, but this
decreases with age. Especially, the bond is deter-
mined by the frequency of contacts, which is an 7
In CHP: 35 % feels treated as equal and only 52 % thinks
indicator, as we know, of strong bonds. However, they trust people; in MTY 27 % and 32 % respectively.
indifferent to happiness in the former? To answer 18.4 Social Capital

is complicated, but we have in hand an obvious
element: the general and particularized context The references made to this capital in the previ-
of the individuals. As we will see presently, even ous section have helped to comprehend SFI
though trust in the family is relevant to happiness behavior, particularly in terms of types of bond-
in both cities, sociability is so only in MTY. For ing and bridges, or social links, but so far we
whatever reason, we may say this community havent suggested any variable to measure it. The
seems to shelter also in friends and not support was of a conceptual nature. In this sec-
only in the family. In other terms, its tion we will test its relationship with SWB. In
relationships are not substantially encapsulated general terms, there is an agreement in the
in the family but extend to other people that, for specialized literature about the solid and positive
sure, are similar in their characteristics. Given association between both. Since it is composed
the social fragmentation, the search of integrated by various elements and given that it acquires
or homogeneous spaces is likely to be played in a different forms, the notion of social capital
more exible way in MTY, and therefore it tends admits various conceptual connotations and
to favor the latter. The implicit suggestion that in nuances within the same perspective regarding
CHP integrated spaces are more important, is the indicators used to measure it. Besides, in
reinforced by the indifferent character of conict itself it has had an enormous popularity in the
in the family: if it is really built as a space where last two decades which has been attributed to a
constriction and motives for integrating are good number of virtuous, positive effects: in
strong, that integration will appear as uncondi- social and economic performance (Putnam
tional, regardless the quality of relationships. et al. 1994), in the administration of common
A last variable explored as part of social cohe- goods (Ostrom and Ahn 2003), in school perfor-
sion is the ease in making new relationships. mance (Coleman 19881989), in health
SWB is discretely but signicantly associated (Cambell et al. 1999), in governance and civic
(Table 18.2) with those who experience that engagement (Putnam et al. 1994; Cohen 1999),
community offers opportunities to increase their in public policy design (Dhesi 2000) and in many
social bonds. The difference between those who other elds (Field 2006). By the complexity of its
believe that it is difcult to widen their own composition and the natural extension of themes
circles and those who do not, is of 5 percentage with which it correlates, the concept admits a
points (Table 18.3). It is notable that in MTY the considerable degree of exibility.
variable wasnt relevant to the logistic regression In disciplinary terms, I believe there are three
model, but in terms of association and indepen- main perspectives. The well-known denition of
dence tests, it was signicantly linked to happi- Coleman establishes that Unlike other forms of
ness. We may suggest that, in a community capital, social capital inheres in the structure of
where informal relationships are embedded in relations between persons and among persons. It
familial spheres, to extend ones own network is lodged neither in individuals nor in physical
has more importance than in a community in implements of production. Social capital is,
which, for whatever reason, sociability is more then, a quality that falls within the structure of
focused on friends and is more open. If that is not relationships or interactions. And that quality can
the case, the difference between the two cities be given by a variety of elements and as such has
would show that, to a certain extent, social frag- a singular effect: facilitates certain actions of
mentation has an inuence in general and individuals who are within the structure (1990).
particularized contexts, which give a different In other words, social capital is a resource that
tone and weight to the variables associated facilitates the coordination of actions or
to SWB.
306 R. Millan
cooperation. And there lies the function which For Putnam, dense social networks have a
denes it: it is a generic concept that designates fundamental role in the formation of social capi-
the existence of certain relationships or tal. Density refers here to the frequency of
interactions, which in their performance or struc- contacts. In this sense, networks are not of inter-
turing as such carry on elements for cooperation. est just or mainly as an exchange franc zone.
This quality can be given by norms which struc- They are relevant because they entail bonds and
ture reciprocal obligations and expectations are schools for learning norms of reciprocity
between the actors in the interaction, particularly and forms of collaboration. These virtues are
trust and reciprocity; by different elements which emphasized in civic and voluntary networks
structure authority relationships such as institu- because they articulate themselves through hori-
tional or charismatic factors; by the appropriate- zontal relationships and, precisely because of
ness of social organization such as certain kinds that, induce reciprocity and a better accom-
of associations that help pursuing different types plished formation of social capital. Vertical or
of goals, including voluntary service; or by the patronage networks, instead, keep reciprocal
way in which the closure of a set of obligations but in an asymmetrical way: vertical
relationships is achieved, because it generates a bonds undermine trust and the generalized char-
structure which brings cohesion as it reinforces acter of reciprocity (Putnam et al. 1994). Of
common norms and expectations (Coleman course, for the positive externality of dense
1990; Millan and Gordon 2004). If we think of networks to spill over society, as they tend to be
a queue for a movie where contacts are formed as strong bonds, they have to occur in a
delimited by the person in front and behind or social structure that facilitates connectivity
of a triangle of friends or a family where every- through weak bonds or bridges (Putnam and
body has mutual relationships, we will under- Goss 2002).
stand the power of the closure. Over a set of On the other hand, E. Ostrom assumes as social
relational closures and of elements such as capital a wide range of aspects that favor voluntary
the ones pointed out, among others, social capital cooperation to meet common problems (Ostrom
acquires diverse forms and intensities. and Ahn 2003). That is why she also conceives it as
Concurring with Colemans perspective, embodied in diverse social forms more than as a
Putnam essentially emphasizes norms of trust concept that articulates different components.
and reciprocity. That way, the quality of social Among them, she distinguishes three: (a) norms
bonds is underlined, rather than the structure. of trust and reciprocity; (b) networks and forms of
These bonds have a notable value for cooperation with civic participation; and (c) rules
communities and individuals, and constitute an or formal and informal institutions. Conceptually,
asset both for individual and social production. the strength of this perspective lies both in the
The asset is established by two conditions: social inclusion of institutions as well as in the impor-
capital increases the possibilities of cooperation tance attributed to the relationship between the
and it does so most of all when bonds or three forms of social capital. From a perspective
relationships between individuals are organized similar to that of Putnam, Ostrom considers trust to
in networks. Clearly, relationships ruled by inter- be the core concept but, unlike him, she doesnt
personal trust and reciprocity, condensed in for- identify a lineal relationship with civic networks.
mal and informal associations, can increase According to their quality and type, these can
social connectivity, and thus increase possible modulate, as much as institutions, the positive
contacts and opportunities to coordinate actions effect of trust in the success of collective actions.
for certain goals (Putnam et al. 1994). But the That way, trust and reciprocity result not only
way in which they form those networks from, lets say, a repetitive interaction but |rely
inuences that connectivity and possibilities also on more general institutional contexts.
as well. In other terms, they are subjects to be observed as
dependent variables of forms of social organiza- trust, reciprocity, participation in associations

tion, of rules and the institutions that govern there. and cooperation. Within the restrictive one,
Taken together, the different notions of social we will take two variables: trust in the family
capital reviewed here involve aspects of social and sociability. In terms of the international lit-
cooperation, trust, norms of reciprocity, civic erature, regardless the way chosen to measure it,
participation and institutions, among others. For the level of association attributed to social capital
the purpose of this chapter, we will identify these with SWB is usually high (Helliwell and Putnam
conceptions with one wide idea of social capi- 2004). We advance that in this research the result
tal. In this respect, it is Ostrom who has been is, for the two cities, more contrasting and het-
more reluctant to emphasize the interactive erogeneous. Such contrast is, above all, deter-
dimension implicit in that concept, favoring mined by the distinction just made: the wide
instead the specied context that modulates the perspective of social capital doesnt have the
rules and particular institutions of a social envi- weight of the restrictive notion, but for both the
ronment. This aspect takes on a vital importance. results are heterogeneous.
If, on the contrary, we assume a perspective
centered on interpersonal relationships, it is
easy to subsume social capital in the quantity 18.4.1 Social Capital: Generalizable
and quality of interpersonal relationships and, Bonds?
following that line, to identify the relational
goods as part of it. Given that they do not contra- To show the above-mentioned contrast and het-
dict each other as such, and given that they can be erogeneity in the results, it is convenient to group
used methodologically in a different way the variables of trust and reciprocity and wonder
according to certain purposes, we will call this whether if they are generalized. In the spectrum
perspective, by simple contrast, restrictive of social capital components, trust is the most
(and we will go back to this notion in further relevant element and the one that carries impor-
detail). In a well-known article, J. F. Helliwell tant consequences for societies and for the
and R. Putnam identify social capital in order to relationships sustained by individuals. A set of
establish its association with SWB, basically as virtues is attributable to it. Among others, it has
networks of diverse type: marriage, family been shown that it facilitates exchanges and
members, close friends and condants, friendly reduces the costs of transactions (D. North
neighbors, and supportive coworkers (2004). 1993); that it constitutes itself as a key factor
All these connections, generated by those for social development; for Kenneth Arrow
networks, are capable they say of sustaining (1972) for instance, a backward economic state
a better wellbeing in the face of health, loneliness is explained broadly by its absence, since there
and low self-esteem problems. In that way, social isnt any transaction in which it is not required or
capital focuses on a reserve of connections rich implied. A similar logic is sustained by other
in company, mutual acknowledge, and affection. authors (Fukuyama 1995; Torsvik 2000). We
They are interactions ruled by a marked sociabil- also know that it tunes institutional performance
ity logic which reminds us above all bonding or (Putnam et al. 1994) and the good maintenance
strong bonds. There lies the possibility to liken it of common goods since it reduces free rider
to relational goods (Becchetti et al. 2008). strategies (Kollock 1998). On an individual
The above brief excursus allows us to sustain level, its effect isnt minor and has deep effects
that there are different conceptions of social cap- on the macro level, as we have just pointed out: it
ital and nuances within a single perspective, with sustains bonds between people because it favors
diverse methodological possibilities. For the the predictability of the others behavior; that is,
same reason, it can be measured in different it coordinates better the expectations of recipro-
ways and with different variables. Within the cal behavior (Hardin 2001). Without such calcu-
wide notion, we will analyze four variables: lation, it wouldnt be possible to stabilize
308 R. Millan
reciprocal structures, nor to sustain reciprocal According to the standard question,9 we have
relationships. Trust is consubstantial to recipro- measured interpersonal trust and, under the light
cal interactions. Whoever acts according to of the discussion about cohesion and types of
norms of reciprocity appears as trustworthy, and social capital, the result should not surprise
if those norms are relatively disseminated in us. In neither city the relationship with SWB is
society or in a community, we can reasonably signicant (Tables 18.2 and 18.4). In
presume that an important proportion of percentages, people who trust is happy in a
individuals are trustworthy as well (Ostrom and 73 % for CHP, and in 84 % to MTY. But the
Ahn 2003). singular data is that 77 % of those who dont
Trust and reciprocity, whereas conceptually report themselves to be in a state of wellbeing
differentiated, work together. For whoever who in the rst city, and in an equal percentage in the
sustains a relationship, if someone is not recipro- second. Only 44 % of happy people have trust in
cal, the relationship is not trustworthy. In a sense, CHP and 70 % in MTY. These percentages show,
one is the face of the other, and the way in which in whatever scale they are, a difference between
one is generalized presupposes the way in which the two communities. Given the dissociation
the other is so too. Putnam et al. (1994) between trust and SWB, the percentages show
distinguishes between specic and general reci- that the specied context of persons matters.
procity. The rst one is formed by immediate That dissociation, in whatever way it is
exchanges, face to face, or within a close net- explained, contradicts most of the international
work. Bartering implies values more or less results that have found a positive relationship
equivalent: a favor for another, a small monetary between trust and SWB (Guven 2009).
loan for a service with a similar cost. Generalized In contrast with trust, reciprocity is in both
reciprocity instead tends to balance the values of cities positively associated to happiness
exchange in time, not in each concrete operation, (Tables 18.2 and 18.4). If reciprocity is
and usually develops in an indirect way, beyond appreciated, the probability of being happy is,
a network or an immediate interaction between in CHP, of 87 % against 81 % if not. There are
the people involved: for example, when a citizen only 6 percentage points of difference. In MTY
doesnt park his car in front of my garage the difference is less, just ve points: 90 %
because he knows I will respect his place in the against 85 %. The narrowness of the range, as it
queue for buying tickets at the cinema (Millan is below the mean of the differences registered
and Gordon 2004). When that happens, we, in by the other variables in both cases, could be part
fact, are talking of a norm of generalized reci- of the explanation of the dissociation of behavior
procity. We would have trust, in other terms, in between reciprocity and trust. Anyway, the
certain standardized behaviors of citizens explanation is clearly more complex. We will
according to those norms. It is in that sense that try one. The question about whether if people
generalized reciprocity should correspond to treat each other as equals was used to measure
general trust, and, by counter-logic, to a limited reciprocity. An egalitarian treatment is obvi-
trust encapsulated in groups and networks8 ously a reciprocity norm with social, civic and
(Fukuyama 1995). However, as we will see, political dimensions. It implies rights and
that theoretical coherence it is not met in dimensions of respect to the identity and dignity
either case. of persons. Such equality, once institutionalized,
operates as a collective good (Ostrom 2005), as
most norms of reciprocity do. What matters is to
9
In general, do you think that most people can be trusted,
8
It is along these lines that we talk, in another dimension, or alternatively that you cant be too careful in dealing
about the dark side of social capital, such as in the maa with people? (this question was lightly adjusted to the
and other similar groups (Portes 1996). Mexican sense: being careful or watching your back.
Table 18.4 MTY. Results of the binary logistic regression model

Variables B Sig. S.E. Wald Exp (B)
Age of interviewed 0.372 * 0.201 3.425 0.689
Household income ** 13.326
More than two and less than four minimum wages (M W.) 0.114 0.260 0.192 1.121
From four to six M. W. 0.839 ** 0.384 4.774 2.314
More than six M. W. 0.858 ** 0.306 7.866 2.359
Trust in the family 0.513 * 0.268 3.655 1.670
Reciprocity 0.423 * 0.241 3.085 1.527
Index of contacts with friends 0.603 ** 0.237 6.495 1.828
Satisfaction of living place *** 29.649
Regular 1.040 *** 0.209 24.634 0.354
Bad 1.461 *** 0.417 12.298 0.232
Respect of their rights ** 9.244
No 0.407 * 0.232 3.073 0.666
Some yes, others no 0.351 0.280 1.565 1.420
Constant 0.903 ** 0.429 4.427 2.467
Signicance: * p < 0.10; **p < 0.05; ***p < 0.000 Model chi square: 100.245 (11gl) Sig. .000
2loglikelihood: 686.958
elucidate how this good is brought up without nd themselves in the middle of the night in a
trust and in contexts of pronounced social frag- lost station and they behave appropriately before
mentation. An explanation obviously provi- the local individuals and expect something simi-
sional can be found if we put the variables in lar in return. In certain circumstances, reciprocity
a different analytical order and we take precisely as a strict parameter of interaction is, in itself, in
those contexts seriously. terms of game theory, an equilibrium that doesnt
In highly fragmented communities, where encourage coordinated actions (Ahn 2000). As it
contact with others, with strangers, is not carried has been said: The quality of a rule, an institu-
out in a framework dened by guidelines of tion or a statute, as a form of social capital,
mutual trustworthiness, maybe the best way to depends not only on its content but, more criti-
establish a communication without risks, even if cally, on how it is applied in reality (Ostrom and
accidental, would be through certain codes of Ahn 2003: 184).
respect and cordiality that, though limited, The World Happiness Report (Helliwell
would be enough to make viable some et al. 2012) measures reciprocity also as equality:
interactions in the public sphere. If that happens In a well-functioning society it states there is
and is institutionalized, it makes mutual respect a high degree of mutual respect between its
become a collective good precisely and therefore members. Can such a situation be achieved if
raises the quality of life to some extent or, at there are massive gaps of income between the
least, reduces contingency. However, the incen- rich and the poor in a society?. We should ask
tive structure, that seems to prevail in the the same in communities that have no social
described interaction situations (distrust), and cohesion and are highly fragmented. But other
from which that good is built,10 more than pro- issues are also relevant. We can name at least
moting a wide connectivity or a generalized four: First, it is impossible not to conclude that
exchange, seems to have a restrictive effect. mutual respect is a collective good associated
A similar situation happens when two tourists to SWB, even if it is not linked to generalized
trust and the latter is maintained in small groups
as we will see now. Second, in fragmented
10
For the relationship between interaction dilemma and societies and with a low cohesion, it is
incentives for collective goods, see Kollock (1998).
310 R. Millan
convenient to measure reciprocity and trust sep- considered: religious, charity, recreational/
arately, and to analyze its mechanisms of gener- sports, parents, cultural, ecological, unions,
alization. Third, the capability to be happy, in feminists or retired. The percentages are reveal-
spite of its enormous exibility (even related to ing. To CHP: 76 % of people that do participate
individual existential strategies), nds limits or feels happy against 73 % who doesnt but feels
minimal conditions, at least in communities with the same. Only 48 % of those happy do partici-
a certain complexity, and among them reciproc- pate. In MTY: 89 % of those who have activity in
ity is more important than generalized trust. And these networks manifested a high SWB against
fourth, the whole picture points out that the 83 % who dont have it. But 74 % of those happy
individuals particularized contexts, again, really dont participate.
matter in the determination of SWB and in its The few studies that we know that analyze the
associations at community level. relationship between SWB and civic participa-
tion offer different results, but in general they
register a positive connection. Religious
18.4.2 Participation in Civic-Voluntary associations are strongly connected to a high
Associations SWB in the international literature (Palomar
and Victorio 2010; Wills 2009). Excluding
An additional proof that this is not a typically these, a positive relationship between it and par-
generalized reciprocity for our two cities is found ticipation and the number of memberships has
in the behavior of this variable. Participation in also been found. In a work paper based on three
this kind of associations is another of the funda- waves of World Values Survey, Helliwell (2002)
mental elements of social capital; it is so because nds that individuals who are involved in more
they represent also the integration of society voluntary associations report higher average sat-
members in networks. The character of civic isfaction with their lives . . . someone with addi-
networks, in theoretical standard terms and tional voluntary group membership. . .. has a
according to what has been proved by a number wellbeing that is higher by 0.05, about tenth as
of empirical studies (Hooghe and Stolle 2003), much as marriage (1314). Consequently, it is a
gives it a valuable set of attributions: strong bond. Various studies have underlined the
(a) particularly horizontal networks, since nding that participation in civic associations is
repetitive contacts give enough information not only positively linked to SWB but also to a
about a persons trustworthiness and with that, clear sense of community, reciprocity we
they incentive that kind of behavior; (b) they would say generalized and encourages a
reafrm the importance of that trustworthiness pro-social behavior (Thoits and Hewitt 2001;
and reciprocal behavior; (c) in regard to the two Meier and Stutzer 2004; Guven 2009), as well
points above, they encourage cooperation and as trust, in a circular play with all the above
coordination of actions (Millan and Gordon along the lines of Putnams thesis (1994).
2004; Ostrom and Ahn 2003; Putnam 2000). In The previous coherence between variables is
short, participation in civic associations has a not present in our two cities cases. As we
kind of didactic effect in society and pointed out, if civic associations arent sources
Tocqueville saw it that way (1987). For the social of trust they cannot be linked to a generalized
capitals perspective, associations promote reciprocity. Consequently, it is very likely that
generalized reciprocity. reciprocity and trust in those associations remain
When crossing participation in at least one contained within specic groups and dont
association with happiness we nd that there is spread out within the whole association. Axelrod
no link, that the former is completely indepen- (1984) has shown that when agents in spheres of
dent from the latter in both cities (Tables 18.2 likely reciprocity choose Tic-for-Tat strategies,
and 18.4). The result is relevant because exchange remains in small groups that, however,
a spectrum of 20 types of associations was can impose themselves upon the members of a
wider community because these desert or dont but never depending on the context. Cooperation
cooperate among themselves. The plausibility of is not easy to measure and there are not
the assumption that this is how it works in the standardized questions; in the survey used for
two cities is reinforced as we recall that various this study, we measure the intent to do it, more
authors have shown that an effect of participation that doing it in fact. The question was: if a neigh-
in associations over the formation of trust borhood project wouldnt benet you directly but
(Brehm and Rahn 1997) doesnt exist always or would be benecial to other neighbors, would
automatically, or, when it is developed, this you collaborate or not to carry the project out?
remains limited within the group framework In CHP, the intent to cooperate without immedi-
without being further generalized (Stolle 2001). ate self-benet is positively linked to SWB
It is therefore inaccurate to assume that every (Table 18.2). The probability of being happy
network implicitly exports or expands social cooperating is 84 % against 77 % of not doing
trust or that this is equally distributed among its so. The difference is considerable (Table 18.3).
members. In contrast, MTY doesnt report any signicant
In regard to SWB, the previous point shows association (Table 18.4). What is the difference
that, methodologically, it is convenient to sepa- between both cities based on? Even though our
rate the measure of trust, reciprocity and partici- survey doesnt allow to measure them, an answer
pation in networks, and not to give that bond for could be the altruistic attitudes implicit in the
granted. Theoretically, its a powerful reminder question and to assume that in MTY they are
that the real weight of the variables associated to frankly minor. That answer, whether if correct or
SWB depends on the general context and on the not, would be outside the analytical framework of
specic context in which the individual this work. Another one, more suitable for the
performs; for example, the degree of social cohe- latter, would be this: the positive association of
sion, the type of bonds prevailing, or the way in cooperation is in line with the importance that the
which trust and reciprocity are generalized or conict with neighbors in the determination of
not. This point is relevant because in a different SWB has in CHP, and correspondingly with the
context to the one described, similar to the one indifference that this variable shows in MTY.
outlined by the international literature, happiness Contextually, then, the weight of neighbors is
could be more linked to greater levels of connec- greater in one city than in the other. Colemans
tivity and social performance. concept of closure points out that while the
more connections exist between the group
components limited by different factors, ideologi-
18.4.3 Cooperation cal or territorial, the more articulated and closed
the relationships will be, and with more weight
The analysis of the bonds between social cooper- upon each individual. Reasoning thus we could
ation and SWB is practically non-existent. It is say that the neighborhood relationship in CHP has
implicit, I believe, in the analysis of social capital higher levels of closure and, because of that, supe-
as we assume the theoretical-conceptual chain rior indexes of social capital than in MTY. In that
that makes it up, as if the presence of one element sense, cooperation with neighbors is also a strat-
reassured that of the other: trust, reciprocity, egy for not confronting possible conicts. But
networks, institutions generalized cooperation. how does this happen in a community that is, in
We have seen that it is not prudent to assume general, highly fragmented? Let us recall that the
without questioning those causal connections degree of patronage-style state intervention is
and that it is necessary to consider the context. more pronounced in CHP and that that
The behavior of this variable regarding trust, and clientelismo has exclusion costs. Again, the differ-
in reference to happiness is, again, contrasting. ence between cities is relevant to the implementa-
Its result can be a strong sign that reciprocity, tion of policies that attempt to link SWB to social
even if grounded on altruism, is linked to SWB performance.
312 R. Millan
18.4.4 Relational Goods good affects its availability for the consumption
of others. A public good has a high difculty of
This kind of goods represents a zone that we exclusion and a low subtractability because in
could name, as others have (Becchetti principle it is innite (like the air). A common
et al. 2008), limited social capital. In the last good is dened because the two following
years they have been a reference for SWB and characteristics are high: it is difcult to exclude
their literature has already an undeniable consis- and relatively easy to exhaust the good. In club or
tency. In general, it has been registered that they toll goods the two dimensions are low. They
raise considerably the possibilities of being exclude and are exhausted relatively easy with
happy (Becchetti et al. 2009). Just as social capi- regards to other goods (like the air).
tal, the idea of these relational goods sprung from With the previous classication we could say
the fact that even in markets people communi- it is possible to modify the original denition of
cate, meet, have interactions and these are impor- relational goods. To do that, let us take into
tant for the former. It is not surprising, then, that consideration that in the rst place, they are
the original concept emerged as it revealed goods because they produce a certain enjoy-
dimensions of certain sociability implied in ratio- ment and affectivity utility (Becchetti
nal spheres, such as in the economy or political et al. 2008). Second, individual relationships
participation, apparently highly instrumental. arent organized as a homogeneous and universal
They are understood as a type of particular network (there are structural holes), but as lim-
local public goods (Gui 1987; Ulhaner 1989). ited networks. Third, relationships can have a
They are public because they can only be non rival structure because none of them is the
enjoyed as a whole and not in an isolated same as others and for that reason they are
way; they are local public because their con- specic; however, in another sense, relationships
sumption is made by a limited group of rational- are able to rival and exclude depending on the
ity or professionalization zones. They are spheres of experience: it is difcult to maintain
specic because they have a non rival structure: two simultaneous loving relationships, at least
its nature is to be shared (Becchetti et al. 2008). more than maintaining two friends, and these
We can immediately appreciate that the de- can rival in terms of time and attention, with
nition (attributed to Gui and Ulhamer) is in a the family. Fourth and last, relationships can be
certain way imprecise though illustrative. Rigor- exhausted or wear out. If we assume these
ously, according to Olson (1965), a public good characteristics, relational goods are similar to
fullls three conditions: its availability doesnt common goods and, most of all, to those
diminish by its consumption; its production is pertaining to clubs. This clarication is important
collective and pertains to no one; and, very in terms of results in regard to what follows.
importantly, nobody can be excluded from its For these and other considerations, some
usufruct or enjoyment. Hardin (1991) has authors on the treatment of relational goods
shown the great difculties to nd pure have emphasized the difference between the
referents of public goods starting from these instrumental-affective/expressive dimensions,
three characteristics (the air runs out by pollution more than the type of good. And that perspective
levels); for that reason, he proposes to call them gives, from my point of view, more precision
collective goods. Ostrom (2005) denes four than that of local goods. Becchetti et al. (2008)
types of goods arising from the concepts of understand for relational goods an affective/
exclusion and subtractability: toll (or club), pri- expressive, non-instrumental, side of interper-
vate, public and common-pool. The exclusion sonal relationships. And they add (p. 4): Rela-
refers to a difculty to restrain those who benet tional goods include companionship, emotional
from goods and services; subtractability to the support, social approval, solidarity, a sense of
effect that the individuals consumption of a belonging and of experiencing ones history, the
Table 18.5 Sociability, CHP (chi-square tests)

Value df Asymptotic signicance (2-tailed)
Pearson chi-square 12.477 1 0.000
Likelihood ratio 11.837 1 0.001
N of valid cases 1,070
0 cells (.0 %) have expected count less than 5. The minimum expected count is 51.33
desire to be loved or recognized by others, etc. Those who made at least one activity were
These goods are, on a smaller scale, produced by assigned the value 1 yes, those who didnt
family relationships or friendships and, on a made any, 0 no. As it can be appreciated, the
larger scale, by many kinds of social events ICF doesnt imply a particularly intense activity,
(club or association meetings, live sport events). however, its result is surprising. In MTY the
In other words, affection embodied in certain relationship with happiness is strong and positive
patterns of sociability. To analyze them, we (Table 18.4). The probability to report a high
have taken two variables: trust in family and SWB if one has contact with friends is 87 %
sociability with friends. against 79 %, a difference of 8 percentage points.
That is considerable. However, in CHP even
though there is a signicant relationship in the
association tests (Table 18.5), it doesnt have any
18.4.5 Trust in the Family
weight in the model. In it, it is a not weighty
variable in the determination of SWB.
Contrary to interpersonal trust, trust in the family
This result is consistent with the familism
is an important factor in the determinants of
expressed in the argumentation about SFI, and it
happiness in both cities (Tables 18.2 and 18.4).
draws attention to two things: rst, the level of
In particular, in CHP it represents one of the most
fragmentation may inuence the weight such
signicant variables of the model, while its
consistent variables, such as relational goods,
weight is lighter in MTY. The probability that a
have on SWB. Second, depending on the specic
person who trusts in his or her family manifests a
contexts of individual experience, sociability
high SWB is 86 % against 71 % of those who
can be organized in different forms: as a complex
dont maintain trustworthy relationships with
of circles widening gradually, similar to those
their relatives. It is therefore, an enormous dif-
produced by a stone thrown in water. The exten-
ference (15 percentage points), present in CHP in
sion of the vibration effect depends on the
terms of the variables weight to predict happi-
connectivity possibilities prevailing in a commu-
ness. In MTY the difference is equally 1 of
nity. In other terms, depending on the conditions
15 points. The homogeneity of the difference is
of SFI, relational goods tend to be encapsulated
absolutely illustrative of the role family plays
in the family or to be extended to friends; they
in SWB.
tend to be more similar to club or common
goods.
18.4.6 Sociability with Friends
An index of contacts with friends (ICF) was 18.5 Civic-Political Relationships

created for this variable, with three principles
related to the last 3 months of activity: participa- Although associations between activities or
tion in games (table games, cards, etc.); visits to civic-political interest and SWB have not been
someones house or having friends at ones own studied consistently, in general there is an agree-
home; meeting with friends out or at home. ment about a positive and virtuous bond between
314 R. Millan
both conditions. From a theoretical perspective, it show any association between them. The inter-
the bond makes sense immediately. There is no est to inuence the governments ideological
doubt that the performance of government and direction proved to be a completely indifferent
public institutions refers also to a civic culture, variable with regards to happiness. In CHP the
which promotes the formation of a communitar- percentage of those who didnt vote and declared
ian subculture that, in turn, inuences the themselves happy is higher than those that are so
individuals particularized contexts, the without having participated (78 % against 73 %
opportunities they perceive, and the behaviors respectively). In MTY the logic is inverse but the
they see as adequate. But we can reach the difference is very low (85 % versus 83 %).
bond, analytically and empirically, in many Clearly, in our two cities political identication
ways. Jan Ott (2010) shows in a comparative has no inuence over SWB. It doesnt matter
study of 131 countries with different levels of either to that end whether if ones own political
development that there is an enormous difference identity corresponds to the governments
between the highest average and the lowest in a identity.
scale of 10 (Togo, 2; Denmark, 8). His conclu-
sion is that differences in happiness are related to
the quality of government intervention.
C. Guven (2009), in a study based on the 18.5.2 Interest in the Countrys Political
German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) with Issues
1,500 cases, nds in a line similar to that of
Putnam that happier people are found to have In contrast, an interest on national public issues
a higher respect for law and order, to have more proves to be a factor that inuences peoples
memberships, and also importantly, to have a happiness, but only in CHP (Table 18.2). The
higher desire to vote and participate more in . . . answer to the question admitted ve values, out
local politics . . .. In another research made in of which we took as a reference variable very
Latin America, Weitz-Shapiro and Winters interested. In relation to this variable, the others
(2008) nd a signicant relationship between are of negative sign: interested (0.202); more or
political participation and SWB, in the sense less interested (1.222**); little interested
that those happier vote more. Martnez-Bravo (1.3037**), and not interested at all (1.057**).
(2012) nds also in Latin America that when The less indifference is shown towards the
the ruling party wins there are light but sustained nations political issues, the more the probability
higher averages of happiness. An analysis made of being happy increases: from not interested at
about MTY, Garca et al. (2006), shows that all to very interested the range goes from 79 to
values have an inuence on SWB, among those 92 % (Table 18.3); that is, 13 percentage points.
interested in politics or in a social cause such as The interest in public matters is clearly an indica-
the environment. In our case, to measure the tor of civic engagement. The result contrasts with
effect of political relationships on SWB we the lack of interest in voting, which could be due
have considered four variables: electoral partici- to the fact that at the moment of the survey the
pation; interest in the countrys political issues, possibilities of electoral rotation werent still
inuence in the governments decisions and assumed as an effective expectation, given the
respect for rights. long period of one ruling party undergone by the
country. In any case, it is important to point out
that civic engagement is more diminished in
MTY, a city less clientelista, with less public
18.5.1 Electoral Participation
intervention, and with a culture that gives more
weight to the individual. This feature is expressed
In none of the two cities having voted or not in
in the following variable.
the last elections has an effect on SWB, nor does
18.5.3 Respect to Rights To measure the variable we asked for a self-

assessment of the place where individuals lived
Whether individual rights are or not respected in taking three values: good, regular and bad. Since
CHP, it is not a variable affecting SWB. An the rst one was the reference variable, the other
enormous variety of studies have shown how two showed a negative association with SWB in
the corporate and patronage logics that prevailed the two cities (Tables 18.2 and 18.4). The values
massively in the country and in regions as CHP are for CHP and MTY, respectively: regular
tend to emphasize organizations rights and (0.478**, 1.040***), bad (1.010**,
diminish the importance of those of individuals 1.461***). The probability of being happy
(Millan 2008). It is something similar to what diminishes considerably if one perceives the
Putnam describes as a not civic community, place where one lives as not good. The
that he identies with societies in south Italy probabilities for CHP are: good, 85 %; regular
(Putnam et al. 1994). In contrast, in MTY 79 % and bad 69 %. In this order, for MTY:
(Table 18.4) this is associated with SWB even 90 %, 76 % and 68 %. In the rst case we have
though with certain weakness. Perceiving that a difference of 16 percentage points and in the
rights are respected and being happy have a second 22 (Tables 18.3 and 18.6). The habitabil-
probability of 86 % against 81 % if it is believed ity conditions are, in fact, one of the variables
that they dont have them (Table 18.6). There- that have more social weight in
fore, there is a light but clear accent on the determining SWB.
conditions in which a persons individuality
unfolds: in CHP in a more diluted way, in MTY
more marked. They are two different
18.7 Individual Adscription
particularized contexts.
Variables: Socio-demographic
Very briey, we analyze the most signicant

18.6 Quality of Life: Habitability variables at this level. However, we need to
make a call for attention here, because the results
The importance of a particularized context, expe- were surprising regarding the general consensus.
rienced by the individual in relation to his physi- Originally it was considered ve variables: age,
cal and social environment, is shown clearly in sex, marital status, income and education, which
this dimension. There is a huge number of works were used also as control factors. Sex and marital
associating quality of life and SWB (Lora 2008; status were signicant in terms of bivariate anal-
Lora et al. 2008). Veenhoven 2000 distinguishes, ysis but lost weight in the multivariate analysis
lucidly, between two dimensions of that quality: model. We are, of course, well aware of the fact
that one referred to livability of the environment that this contradicts a great number of studies,
and one which has to do with life-ability of the which have established, in Latin America and
person to perform in that environment. In regard other developed countries, marriage as one of
to this variable were interested in the rst the main determinants of SWB (Rojas 2006),
dimension. Yamamoto and Feijoo (2007), in a well above that of cohabitation, divorce or sin-
study made in Peru, nd that habitability gleness. In our research no status takes on weight
conditions of the place where one lives have a when it is controlled by age, neither in CHP, nor
determinant effect over wellbeing; that is, that a in MTY. This result is likely to be one of the
better place to live raises the possibilities of most surprising ndings of the research.
being happy. It is the same result we found in our Age, instead, results signicant in both cities
research for the two cities, even if it is stronger as it is predicted by the literature about SWB.
in MTY. In CHP we have a U shape, as we can see in
316 R. Millan
Table 18.6 MTY: probability of being happy (percentage)

P 1P
Variable (Happy) (Little or not happy)
Age of interviewed
39 years or less 88.3 11.7
More than 39 years 83.9 16.1
Household income
Up to two minimum wages (M. W.) 80.7 19.3
More than two and less than four M. W. 82.4 17.6
From four to six M. W. 90.6 9.4
More than six M. W. 90.8 9.2
Trust in the family
Trusts little or nothing 79.9 20.1
Trusts completely 86.9 13.1
Persons are treated as equals
Are not treated reciprocally 84.7 15.3
Are treated reciprocally 89.4 10.6
Index of contacts with friends
Doesnt carry out activities with friends 79.1 20.9
Carries out at least one activity 87.4 12.6
Satisfaction of living place
Good 90.0 10.0
Regular 76.0 24.0
Bad 67.5
Respect of their rights
Yes 86.2 13.8
No 80.6 19.4
Some yes, others no 89.9 10.1
Graph 18.1. If we group age by decades, we get two cities, and this last variable functioned better
that from 20 years of age it starts to decline in the model. According to certain literature the
slightly and from the age of 70 it starts to rise. latter shows a strong positive association with
The range 3959 concentrates the phase of less SWB. However, according also to certain litera-
happiness. The fact that this corresponds, with ture, it stabilizes or its utility decreases in terms
certain imprecision, to the period of accumula- of wellbeing. This aspect has been known since
tion, expenses in family investments, and the Easterlin 1974 paradox. The variable was
supporting children, whether adolescents or measured as family income and in minimum
adults, is relevant. That is to say, it corresponds wages (Tables 18.3 and 18.4).11 In both cities,
to an intense period of responsibilities. In MTY the probability of being happy increases consis-
(Graph 18.2) the section is different and doesnt tently as income increases. For CHP: up to two
have a U shape. There, being younger entails wages 75 %; from two to four, 85 %; from four to
more probabilities of being happy, without the six, 92 %; and from more than six wages, 93 %.
possibility of recovering the original SWB. The For MTY, respectively: 81 %; 82 %; 91 % and
section is made from 39 years of age. The differ- 91 % (Tables 18.3 and 18.6). As we can appreci-
ence in the probability of being happy ate, in the rst city as wage increases the differ-
(Table 18.6) between ages is of four percentage ence between immediate wages decreases; in
points (88 % against 84 %).
Finally, education was not considered because 11
For 2004, year of the survey, the minimum wage was
it resulted highly correlated with income in the 45 Mexican pesos; 4 current American dollars.
89
87
85
83
81
79
77
75
24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 42 44 46 48 50 52 54 56 58 60 62 64 66 68 70
Age of interviewed
Graph 18.1 CHP: probability of being happy according to interviewed age (percentage)
89
88
87
86
85
84
83
82
81
39 or less years More than 39 years
Graph 18.2 MTY: probability of being happy according to age group (percentage)
MTY we appreciate the same logic but with a a minimum economic foundation is absolutely
clear leap: between four and six wages. Even needed to be happy. And even if income looses
though it could be stratied in another way efcacy in terms of SWB, nothing tells us it
(adding blocks of wages), the results show that produces more unhappiness.
318 R. Millan
18.8 Findings and Future Research designing SWB public policies. For exam-
ple, it would be feasible to invest in widen-
We will now point out what we consider to be the ing the possibilities of sociability, but the
main ndings as well as some issues for future design of that investment will depend on
discussion: the form relational goods assume or the
type of persisting bonds. Otherwise, it may
1. The comparative analysis between the two become an attempt against cohesion or lead
cities gave enough evidence that sociopolit- to useless investment.
ical contexts are an important factor in the 7. Equally important for policies and analysis is
denition of the variables related to SWB, to keep in mind the type of state intervention
and in the strength of that association. in social and public life, as well as the forms
2. The heterogeneity revealed in our work has of political arrangement. This is not indiffer-
individual and social grounds. According to ent to SWB.
that logic, heterogeneity can be explained 8. Even when departing from very compact
based on singular relationships between theories such as social capital it seems
individualized contexts those referring to convenient, given the importance of
the individual experience and contextual- individualized contexts, not to assume the
ized social variables. These aspects should causality chain these theories establish.
be considered if public policies about SWB Empirical verication is required and, there-
are to be formulated. fore, better indicators of association with
3. Heterogeneity doesnt imply the absence of SWB must be produced.
common variables to both cities or to 9. When relating social capital to SWB, for the
contexts that have a relationship with SWB. purposes of designing analytical and public
They deserve further analysis. policies, it is wise to verify whether if trust
4. Social cohesion appears as a variable of and reciprocity tend to be generalized. If this
great importance in SWBs logic of is the case, it seems to have positive effects
contextualization. on the behavior of other variables that
5. The type of social fragmentation modulates inuence SWB.
the behavior of the relationship between 10. The same caution regarding the causality
SWB and diverse variables. It seems to do chain of supporting theories should be
so particularly with the type of bonds, socia- kept regarding the premises that may create
bility and the way in which they take on the a SWB theory, as well as variables that seem
character of relational goods. Social frag- unquestionable. A clear example is marital
mentation seems to regulate the quality of status which, in the present work, was not
relationships and, in part, the individualized signicant. It is necessary to verify whether
contexts of action (as in the case of conict if the impact of those variables is direct or
with neighbors). And for that reason, it has a mediated.
direct and indirect impact on SWB.
6. The type of social fragmentation, or its
absence, should be a reference point for
Appendix
CHP. Reference variables

Dependent Description Values
variables
Interviewed self perception regarding their actual Dichotomous variable with values:
situation in terms of happiness 1 happy and 0 little or not happy
Independent Description Values
variables
Control variables
Age of interviewed Age at the moment of the survey Scale variable which can take values
from 18 to 95
Squared age Squared age, since happiness changes along with Squared scale variable
life (U form inverted)
Household income Monthly level of income classied in terms of Categorical variable with values: 1 up
minimum wages to two minimum wages (MW)a, 2
More than two and less than four MW,
3 From four to six MW, 4 More than
six MW
Social cohesion
Social An Index was created with 7 statements: Could Dichotomous variable with values:
fragmentation you tell me how much people that is your friend: 1 Has a lot of friends with 3 or more
index (a) have a good business or a lot of money?, preferences different than his/hers, and
(b) have less money than you or are in poverty?, 0 Has few friends o doesnt have any
(c) have less education than you?, (d) have more with differenta preferences
education than you?, (e) have a different
religion?, (f) belong to another generation?,
(g) are from another political party?
Conict with Answer to the question about how much conict Dichotomous variable with values:
neighbors the interviewed has with his neighbors 1 Conict, and 0 No conicta
Social capital
Trust in the family Answer to the question about how much he/she Dichotomous variable with values:
trusts his/her family, friends 1 Trusts completely, and 0 Trusts
little or nothinga
Reciprocity Answer to the question: In this city, people treat Dichotomous variable with values:
each other as equals? 1 Yes, and 0 Noa
Make new Answer to the question: In the environment you Dichotomous variable with values:
relationships move, how easy or difcult is it for you to make 1 Easy, and 0 Difculta
new relationships, to meet people or make
friends?
Cooperation Answer to the question: if a neighborhood project Dichotomous variable with values:
doesnt benet you directly but it does benet 1 Yes, and 0 Noa
other neighbors, would you collaborate?
Quality of life
Satisfaction of Answer to the question: In general terms, how Categorical variable with values:
living place would you assess the place where you live? 1 Gooda, 2 Regular, and 3 Bad
Civic-political relationships
Interest in the Answer to the question about how much interest Categorical variable with values:
countrys political the interviewed has in the countrys political 1 Very interesteda, 2 Interested,
issues issues 3 More or less interested, 4 Little
interested, 5 Not interested
Citizenship Answer to the question: How much do you believe Categorical variable with values:
the citys government takes into account the 1 Much or somea, 2 Indifferent, and
opinion of people like you in order to make 3 Little or nothing
decisions?
Valid case number considered in the nal model: 879
a
Reference category in the model
320 R. Millan
MTY. Reference variables

Dependent variables Description Values
Happiness Interviewed self-perception regarding their Dichotomous variable with values:
actual situation in terms of happiness 1 Happy, and 0 Little or not
happy
Independent variables Description Values
Control variables
Age of interviewed Age of interviewed classied in two categories Dichotomous variable with values:
1 More than 39 years, and
0 39 or less yearsa
Household income Monthly level of income classied in terms of Categorical variable with values:
minimum wages (M.W.) 1 Up to two minimum wages
(M.W.)a, 2 More than two and less
than four M.W., 3 From 4 to 6 M.
W., and 4 More than 6 M.W.
Social capital
Trust in the family Answer to the question about how much he/she Dichotomous variable with values:
trusts in their family, friends 1 Trusts completely, and
0 Little or no trusta
Reciprocity Answer to the question: In this city, are people Dichotomous variable with values:
treated as equals? 1 Yes, and 0 Noa
Social contacts
Index of contacts with An Index of contacts with friends was created Dichotomous variable with values:
friends from 3 statements regarding the activities carried 1 Carries out at least one activity,
out in the last 3 months and 0 Doesnt carry out anya
Quality of life
Satisfaction of living Answer to the question: In general terms, how Categorical variable with values:
place would you assess the place where you live? 1 Gooda, 2 Regular, and
3 Bad
Citizenship
Respect of their rights Answer to the question: Do you think your rights Categorical variable with values:
are respected or not respected in this city? 1 Yesa, 2 No, and 3 Some yes
and others no
Valid case number considered in the nal model: 873
a
Reference category in the model
S. Bartolini (Ed.), Policies for happiness. Oxford:

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Does Migration Cause Unhappiness
or Does Unhappiness Cause 19
Migration? Some Initial Evidence
from Latin America
Carol Graham
19.1 Introduction success in terms of income, but who report low

satisfaction with their economic gains) and they
There is a nascent body of literature examining are less happy than average. These ndings pro-
the impact of migration and income on happi- vide support for the reasoning speculated in the
ness. Several studies show that Latin American literature explaining lower happiness levels
emigrants, in addition to immigrants generally, among Latin American migrants.
demonstrate lower happiness levels than natives We also report some initial ndings of a sec-
in their destination country. In trying to explain ond stage of the research which compares the
this nding, researchers have asked whether well-being levels of those who intend to migrate
unhappiness drives migration or whether the with matched cohorts (non-natives from the same
results of migrating make people unhappy? A countries with similar socio-demographic traits)
major challenge in answering this question is after they have migrated, and also compares the
the shortage of longitudinal data that follows well-being levels of the matched migrants with
individuals before and after the migration natives with similar socio-demographic traits in
process. the destination locations.
This paper seeks to provide additional insight
into the relationship between migration and
unhappiness. In lieu of longitudinal data, we 19.2 Background: Literature
utilize a survey question from the on Happiness, Income
Latinobarometro survey on the intent to migrate, and Migration
to identify attitudes and aspirations prior to
migration. Through this analysis, we are taking Attempting to create new linkages outside the
an initial step to answer to larger theoretical happiness economics discipline, researchers
question: is unhappiness necessary to drive prog- began applying a subjective well-being or happi-
ress and major change in a society? Our results ness framework of analysis to the eld of migra-
suggest this is the case: those that intend to tion. Traditional economic approaches would
migrate demonstrate the qualities of frustrated predict that migrants would have higher, or at
achievers (e.g. respondents with high objective least not lower than average, utility levels, as
people surely would have not made the decision
C. Graham (*) to sacrice the pleasure of living among their
Global Economy and Development Program, Brookings family, friends and country to do something that
Institution, Washington, DC, USA would make them unhappy.
e-mail: cgraham@brookings.edu

326 C. Graham
A wide body of research in happiness eco- hypothesize, is an unexpected decline in happi-

nomics has demonstrated that income and happiness. The authors also hypothesize and provide
ness do not always increase in a linear manner, some support that immigrants do not anticipate
although there is signicant debate about this, their reference group will adjust to include
even today (Easterlin 2001; Graham 2011a). natives, resulting in lower happiness. Wright
Challenges to the assumption that immigrants (2010) found some support that potential
are necessarily better off rose from this assump- immigrants do not anticipate or appreciate how
tion (Bartram 2010). Indeed, research has consis- poor their living conditions will be in the new
tently demonstrated that immigrants report lower country and how this will affect them. As is
levels of well-being (happiness and life satisfac- described in Easterlin (2001), people project
tion are used inter-changeably throughout this they will be happier in the future, when they are
paper as measures of evaluative well-being) making more money, but in fact, as they make
compared to natives in their destination country.1 more money their aspirations adjust upward and
This nding has held for immigrants across dif- they are less happy.
ferent originating countries. Outside of Easterlins framework, Bartram
Bobowik (2011) analyzed happiness levels of (2011) provides some evidence that while, on
immigrants in Europe and found lower happiness average, happiness does not increase with
across the diverse immigrant population. Knight income, economic immigrants may be a special
et al. (2010) looked at internal migration in China case: they derive more happiness from marginal
and found that rural to urban migrants report income than do people in general. He posits this
lower happiness than both rural and urban special association between income and happi-
households. Sa (2010) demonstrated that the ness for certain people may explain why they
disparity in happiness levels between immigrants would immigrate. This nding did not, however,
and natives persisted even after individuals had explain why immigrants then still have lower
spent 20 years in their destination country, and happiness levels overall; Bartram shows that dis-
that the lower happiness levels carried over into satisfaction with ones nancial situation largely
second generation immigrants. Finally, Bartram explained this phenomenon. He also reveals a
(2011) conrmed Sas ndings, demonstrating paradox: immigrants gain greater than average
that immigrants to the U.S. similarly display happiness from increased income, and then, per-
lower happiness levels than natives. haps as a result, they are less happy than average
In light of these ndings, the literature has because they are frustrated with their income
generally been optimistic in suggesting that it is situation.
not that potential immigrants are necessarily It is generally agreed that across countries, the
nave or irrational in choosing to embark in very poorest citizens are least likely to migrate
something to make that ultimately makes them (Pelligrino 2004). Migrating abroad requires a
unhappy, but rather there are other forces at threshold of nancial resources that the very
work. Knight et al. (2010) and Bartram (2011) poorest individuals cannot afford. Additionally,
posit that when deciding to migrate, potential there is consensus that migration trends vary
immigrants miscalculate how their happiness across countries; although, patterns that relate
levels will be affected they do not anticipate the trends from one country to another are
their aspirations will rise once they make more contested. Connor and Massey (2010) use survey
money in their new country. The result of this data of immigrants in Spain and the U.S. to
adaptation of aspirations, the authors understand the relationship between income and
migration. They found that Latin American
immigrants to Spain are more likely to have
1 originated from South America with middle
For a review of the various terms used in the literature to
describe happiness or well-being, and the substantive class origins, while immigrants in the U.S. are
differences across them, see Graham (2011b). more likely to be from Central America and
19 Does Migration Cause Unhappiness or Does Unhappiness Cause Migration? Some. . . 327
Mexico (hereafter referred to as Central Amer- deprivation. Additionally, Wood et al. (2010)
ica) and come from a lower income class. researched the impact of being a crime victim
Pelligrino (2000) similarly reports that on the intent to migrate using multivariate regres-
immigrants from Central America that cross to sion analysis. The author reported opposing
bordering countries demonstrate lower educa- effects of objective versus subjective income,
tional attainment than the average in the destina- but he did not offer an explanation as to why
tion countries and in their country of origin, but this was the case or why he chose to include
that South American immigrants typically have both income measures.
had higher educational levels compared to their This chapter builds on that literature by
peers. Nevertheless, the massive wave of migra- attempting to answer the question of whether
tion from Latin America to the U.S. has resulted unhappiness, particularly unhappiness derived
in greater diversication of the prole of Latin from dissatisfaction with ones nancial situa-
American immigrants; for example, Mexican tion, drives migration, or, if the experience of
emigrants make up the largest immigrant class migrating leads to the lower happiness levels
in the U.S., with many coming from low income reported by migrants. In answering this question,
backgrounds, but with many also coming from we additionally consider a nal hypothesis pos-
professional ones. ited but then refuted by several authors: that
A 2007 OECD report asserted that immigrants lower unhappiness levels among immigrants
from low income countries are primarily high- can be explained by a disposition that is gener-
skilled while emigrants from middle income ally less happy, and that immigrants would have
countries tend to be lower skilled. In contrast, been just as unhappy had they remained in their
Connor and Massey posit that low-income home country. We use several methods to try to
countries, such as those in Central America, are answer this question of endogeneity regarding
more likely to export low income, low-skilled happiness and disposition, but without longitudi-
labor, while middle income countries, mostly nal data, or at least data that assess the prole of
found in South America, are more likely to immigrants prior to moving, the results have
export moderate to highly-skilled, middle class been inconclusive. We attempt to shed light on
labor. this question by looking at those who have yet to
Using a happiness economics framework, sev- move but intend to migrate. A second stage of the
eral authors have begin reconciling conicting research which is still very much in progress
ndings related to income and migration, by not compares the happiness of migrants and locals in
looking at income generally and undened, but the destination countries, using both simple
rather by breaking down income into absolute regression analysis and then matching
and relative income measures and exploring the techniques.
differential effects of these facets of income on
happiness. In his 2011 work, Bartram built on the
assumption that although immigrants may make
19.3 Data and Methods
more absolute income in their destination coun-
try, they are likely to report lower relative
19.3.1 Data
income levels, as their reference group shifts
to include residents of their destination country.
Our initial analysis utilizes the Latinobarometro
Valencia (2008) similarly found that the will-
attitudinal survey, which is administered annu-
ingness to migrate is inuenced by both relative
ally in 18 countries in Latin America.2 The work
deprivation as well as family income, especially
is primarily limited to the surveys given in the
the interaction between these two variables.
Valencia reported that those families who are
most willing to migrate were those who stood 2
Graham has worked with the survey team for years, and
to gain the greatest decreases in relative therefore has advance access to the data.
328 C. Graham
years 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009, as the level of respondents. Thus, in order to measure
variables of interest to this investigation overlap absolute income the analysis relies on a compos-
then. The intent to migrate serves as a proxy for ite wealth index developed by Wood
actual migration trends, with the advantage that it et al. (2010). The index is a 03 score based on
allows for the assessment of attitudes prior to three household goods: the presence of hot run-
migration. ning water in the respondents home, ownership
Intent to migrate is measured with the ques- of a washing machine and the ownership of a
tion: Have you and your family ever seriously home telephone. This measure is referred to as
considered moving abroad? This variable is wealth.
labeled intent. This question presents several Subjective wealth or economic status is
challenges in analyzing actual migration, as measured three ways. First, relative wealth com-
well as intent. First, those who answer this ques- pared to others is assessed using an economic
tion have not migrated, and they may never move ladder scale (ELS) question: Imagine a 10 step
abroad. This creates a selection problem, in that ladder, where in 1 stand the poorest people and
those individuals who have actually migrated in 10 stand the richest people. Where would
abroad are not included in the survey. The inclu- you stand? This measure is aggregated into
sion of the word seriously is meant to counter three wealth groups: poor for ELS scores of
this in order to better gauge those who are most 13, middle for ELS scores of 46, and rich for
likely to move or consider moving, but it is ELS scores of 710. This allows greater attention
obviously an imperfect proxy. This limits the to be focused on the middle class, a population
conclusions that can be drawn about our ndings with attitudes that have been under scrutiny as
to those in the sample who have not moved yet, the literature argues they are a driver of develop-
although their direction and consistency ment (see Frank et al. 2011).
(discussed below) suggests that they may be The analysis attempts to measure nancial
helpful in explaining the differential levels in satisfaction, by considering how respondents
happiness between migrants and non-migrants compare their economic situation to personal
in the destination countries. expectations for themselves, based on their past
Additionally, because of the modier you personal economic experiences and their per-
and your family, those individuals who have sonal aspirations. We attempt to disentangle the
considered moving abroad alone, especially sin- different inuences of past assessments and
gle people, may answer this question in the neg- future aspirations on responses, recognizing that
ative (Wood et al. 2010). This is could also result they likely have inter-acting effects.
in error, as it is common for single people, rather Economic status relative to ones aspirations
than entire families, to migrate abroad. Finally, is measured using the question: In general, how
another issue is that the very poorest respondents would you describe your personal economic sit-
in Central America that have to migrate illegally uation and that of your family: very good, good,
are probably less likely to honestly report their average, bad, or very bad? This variable is
intent. These potential sources of error suggest labeled econ_aspirations. Economic status rela-
caution when drawing conclusions. Neverthe- tive to past experiences is measured with a ques-
less, the question has been productively used by tion related to recent mobility: Do you consider
other authors to analyze migration trends and can your economic situation and that of your family
offer unique insights into attitudes toward migra- to be much better, a little better, about the same, a
tion (Wood et al. 2010; Cardenas 2009). little worse or much worse than 12 months ago?
Several survey questions are used to assess This variable is referred to as econ_experience.
income and nancial satisfaction and their Finally, subjective well-being is measured with
impact on the intent to migrate. The the open-ended, ordinal scale question: Gener-
Latinobarometro does not include a question ally speaking, would you say that you are: not at
that directly measures the monetary income all happy, not very happy, quite happy, or very
happy?, which is a question which measures the work in progress, we report our initial (sugges-
evaluative dimension of well-being (as opposed tive) results below.
to the daily experience or hedonic dimension).
This variable is labeled happy.
There is an additional question in the
19.3.3 Methods
Latinobarometro for select years that provides
further insight into our analysis. The 20022004
We rst present descriptive statistics on migra-
questionnaires include a follow-up to intent, with
tion levels, general wealth and happiness levels,
the question: To those who answered yes
and wealth and happiness levels for those who
[my family and I have considered going to live
expressed intent to migrate compared to those
abroad], to which country would you consider
who have not. In addition, given the differential
moving? This question helps in assessing the
trends in Central America versus South America
effectiveness of using intent to migrate as a
demonstrated by Connor and Massey (2010),
proxy for actual migration.
these statistics will be broken down by region.
We then supplement these descriptive statistics
with econometric analysis, using a probit model
19.3.2 Data: Stage 2 reporting marginal effects to measure the likeli-
hood that, yes, the respondent and his or her
Our second stage analysis which is just under- family have considered migrating or, no, they
way and thus any results are preliminary relies have not considered migrating.4
on data from the Gallup World Poll (GWP) for The complete regression model will include
the years 20082011 and on similar if not identi- all economic status measures to estimate their
cal questions about intent to migrate. The GWP interaction effects, that is, to measure the
polls approximately 1,000 respondents per coun- change in the relationship between subjective
try in 140 or so countries around the world wealth and the intent to migrate when objective
(depending on the year).3 We have 1,116 wealth is held constant and vice versa. Like other
respondents from 20 Latin American and Carib- well-being regressions models, we incorporate
bean countries from the rst wave (20082009) controls for happiness and other socio-
who report to plan to migrate, and then a post- demographic variables.
migration sample in 30 destination countries in As a rst step in assessing the relationship
wave two (20102011) of 819 respondents between intent to migrate and actual migration,
identied as recent migrants from those same we compare intent tabulations to expectations
countries in LAC. In addition to well-being in based on empirical evidence. Connor and
the evaluative dimension (in this case life satis- Massey (2010) argue that the United States loca-
faction as measured by the Cantril best possible tion in the Western Hemisphere reduces the costs
life ladder), we have measures of hedonic or
experienced well-being (in this case we focus
4
on anger and worry) in the Gallup World Poll. Probit models assess the probability of a respondent
This allows us to explore whether trends in the being in a particular binary, ordinal category rather than
attempting to impose a cardinal order. Probit models are
life satisfaction of migrants are consistent with deemed appropriate in this case, because the dependent
their daily experiences. While this analysis is variable, intent to migrate, reports only two categorical
values: the respondent has considered migrating abroad or
the respondent has not considered migrating abroad, with
no differential cardinal values attached to either of the
3
The polls are nationally representative and are categories. The coefcients are reported as marginal
interviews are by telephone in countries where land-line effects, that is the change in the probability of intent to
coverage is extensive, and in person in the rest. Graham is migrate that comes from moving from one category to the
an academic advisor to the poll and, in that capacity, next of the independent variables (such as from being
receives access to the data. married to unmarried).
330 C. Graham
of movement to that destination compared to a Researchers assume there are consistent and high
country like Spain. In contrast, because Spain levels of association between how individuals
shares colonial and cultural history with Latin answer survey questions on intent to migrate
America, it offers a closer social proximity for and actual migration trends. The reality may be
Latin Americans compared to the U.S., espe- that the intent to migrate is a reection more of
cially in terms of language. life satisfaction, or other variables, rather than of
Aspiring migrants from South America face actual migration trends. We attempt to provide
signicant physical distances (and thus high insight into the relationship between intent and
costs) whether they choose to migrate to the actual migration trends, although further research
U.S. or Spain. Thus South Americans emigrating is needed.
out of Latin America will largely choose to go to
Spain, as the physical costs will be great in either
case, but the social costs will be less there. Fur-
19.3.4 Methods: Stage 2
ther, those who migrate from South America tend
to be at least from the middle class in order to
Our aim in this stage of the research is to com-
afford the costs. Connor and Massey support this
pare the well-being levels of migrants in their
argument with evidence that Latin Americans
destination countries with their levels ex ante to
surveyed in Spain tend to be from South Amer-
migrating, as well as to the well-being levels of
ica, and they are from middle class origins with
native-born respondents with similar socio-
at least a secondary education and an ability to
economic and demographic traits in the destina-
get a job in the service sector. In contrast, the
tion countries. In the absence of panel data, this
costs for Central Americans to migrate to the
by denition requires some heroic assumptions
U.S. are lower, thus, permitting lower class
and quasi-experimental approaches, but given
residents from Central America to move there.
the detail in the GWP, we are cautiously
These ndings are reinforced by the work of
optimistic that our strategies can yield credible
Padilla and Peixoto (2007), Kyle and Goldstein
results.
(2011), who in particular shed light on the
The rst stage of this research is the simplest
Ecuadorian migration boom to Spain which
(and is now complete). This simply entails
faded out in the early 2000s, and Terrazas
regressions on the pre-migration Latin America
et al. (2011).
sample in the GWP to see if those respondents
Our analysis considers the extent to which
who intend to migrate display similar traits to the
intentions to migrate follow this pattern, by ask-
intend to migrate sample in the Latinobarometro.
ing the question: are those individuals consider-
We use both our willing to migrate and plan to
ing moving to Spain more likely to be from South
migrate variables as our dependent variables
America and be of middle class status, while
(respectively) in probit regressions with the
those considering moving to the U.S. are more
usual socio-economic and demographic controls
likely to be from Central America and of lower
and then life satisfaction, anger, and worry as our
economic class status?
independent well-being variables (again in
The sample size of this question is consider-
respective separate regressions). We then use
ably smaller than our full sample, narrowed rst
our destination country sample and use our sub-
by the fraction of people who do answer yes to
jective well-being variables as the dependent
intent, and then the fraction that consider moving
variables (life satisfaction, anger, and worry,
to each specic country. Yet it sheds light on
respectively), the usual socio-economic controls
whether the data conforms to expectations and
and include a dummy for whether or not the
on the disparity or similarities between actual
respondent is a local (born in country versus
migration trends and the intent to migrate. This
a migrant). We use ordered probit and probit
disparity is an important one that is often
regressions (the hedonic variables are binary) to
neglected in the propensity to migrate literature.
test for differences in well-being (across the var- 25 % during the period 20042009, with intent to
ious dimensions) between locals and migrants. migrate dropping to its lowest value during the
A next stage of this research, which is under- period, 18 %, in 2009. Table 19.1 shows that, in
way but incomplete, uses propensity matching general, those expressing intent to migrate report
(PSM) techniques to match individuals in the higher objective wealth values and rank them-
pre- and post-migration samples along key selves higher on the economic ladder scale (ELS)
covariates at the same time (creating a pseudo compared to those without intent to migrate.
panel). This group is the treatment group. We However, those with intent to migrate assess
will then identify two counterfactual groups their present economic situation, measured by
(e.g., locals in the destination countries in years econ_aspirations and econ_experience, lower
20082009 versus 20102011 and locals in the relative to those who do not express interest in
origin countries in years 20082009 versus migrating.
20102011). We will use our pseudo panel to Further Table 19.2 demonstrates that potential
perform a difference in difference analysis to immigrants also report lower happiness levels
compare life satisfaction changes over the period generally compared to non-immigrants. These
in both the treatment and comparison groups, and ndings hold across both South and Central
to tease out the effect of migration. America.
The difference in difference estimator here Without controlling for other variables, these
will be the difference in average life satisfaction ndings suggests that only those with a certain
in the treatment group (migrants) before and after level of wealth are able or willing to consider
migration minus the difference in average life migrating, and that the likelihood of migrating
satisfaction in the comparison group before and increases with your absolute wealth, on average,
after the migration year cutoff. In other words, across Latin America. The ELS responses mirror
the DD estimate will compare migrants and this nding: the wealthier you are compared to
non-migrants in terms of changes in the life sat- others, the more likely you are to consider
isfaction from the ex-ante to ex-post migration migrating. However, measures of economic sta-
time periods. tus relative to ones expectations of self reveal an
opposing trend. The more respondents eco-
nomic status matches or exceeds their
expectations of themselves based on past
19.4 Findings
experiences or aspirations, the less likely they
are to migrate. The lower their economic status
19.4.1 Descriptive Statistics
relative to their expectations, the more likely
they are to consider migrating. This nding
Descriptive statistics related to migration,
follows Grahams (2009) frustrated achievers
wealth, happiness and region are depicted in
theory: individuals, who, in an objective sense
Tables 19.1 and 19.2. Across Latin America,
are wealthy, but perceive themselves to be less
the intent to migrate uctuated between 22 and
successful than others, leading to dissatisfaction
Table 19.1 Wealth by migration intentions

Economic status measures Intent to migrate: Yes Intent to migrate: No
Objective wealth
Wealth 1.32 1.22
Subjective wealth: relative to others
ELS 4.37 4.24
Subjective wealth: relative to expectations of self
Econ_aspirations 3.01 3.06
Econ_experience 3.03 3.09
332 C. Graham
Table 19.2 Happiness across different migration intentions and region

Migration intentions: considering migrating? Mean happiness
Region Yes/No level
Across sample (Central and South Yes 2.92
Americans)
Across sample (Central and South No 2.98
Americans)
South Americans Yes 2.81
South Americans No 2.89
Central Americans Yes 3.04
Central Americans No 3.10
Table 19.3 Raw wealth of potential immigrants by region economic status measures
Central America Central America South America South America
Intent to migrate: Intent to migrate: Intent to migrate: Intent to migrate:
Yes No Yes No
Overall migration 24 % 76 % 20 % 80 %
rates
Obj. wealth
Wealth 1.22 1.05 1.42 1.28
Sub. wealth: relative to others
ELS 4.09 3.91 4.36 4.26
Sub. wealth: relative to expectations of self
Econ_aspirations 2.90 2.93 3.09 3.13
Econ_experience 2.96 2.98 3.07 3.14
Table 19.4 Standardized wealth of potential immigrants by region economic status measures
Intent to migrate: Intent to migrate: Intent to migrate: Intent to migrate:
Yes No Yes No
Overall migration 24 % 76 % 20 % 80 %
rates
Obj. wealth
Wealth .06 0.02 0.12 0.03
Sub. wealth: relative to others
ELS .07 .02 0.05 0.01
Sub. wealth: relative to expectations of self
Econ_aspirations 0.03 0.01 0.05 0.01
Econ_experience 0.02 0.01 0.06 0.01
or lower happiness levels. The lower happiness America versus South America. In raw numbers,
levels provide some conrmation of this to be the South Americans considering migrating have
case. The theory of frustrated achievers builds higher wealth levels across all measures com-
into happiness economics, in that, happiness does pared to Central Americans. However, South
not increase linearly with income/wealth. Americans in general report higher wealth levels
Tables 19.3 and 19.4 assess wealth levels of than Central Americans, as would be expected
those considering emigrating from Central given the generally higher levels of development
Table 19.5 Migration destination by region of origin percentages

Destination Overall Central Americans South Americans
2002 23.7 22.8 24.2
U.S. 13.7 6.6
Spain .56 5.2
Costa Rica 1.9 .08
Argentina .11 1.6
2003 23.4 21.2 24.8
U.S. 12.5 6.8
Spain .95 6.8
Costa Rica 1.8 .09
Argentina .07 1.4
2004 24.6 23.1 25.5
U.S. 65.0 29.1
Spain 4.4 30.8
Costa Rica 8.5 0.4
Argentina .06 7.00
Table 19.6 Wealth of migrants by region of origin

Intends to migrate to U. Intends to migrate to U. Intends to migrate to U. Intends to migrate to U.
S.: Yes S.: No S.: Yes S.: No
Wealth 1.10 1.10 1.50 1.40
Intends to migrate to Intends to migrate to Intends to migrate to Intends to migrate to
Spain: Yes Spain: No Spain: Yes Spain: No
Wealth 1.83 1.09 1.57 1.39
in South American compared, on average, to are objectively wealthier than the Central
Central America. Thus, we converted the wealth Americans considering migration, but they per-
measures to standardized scores in order to com- ceive themselves to be less wealthy compared to
pare between South and Central Americans. others and to their own expectations of
The standardized scores were calculated as themselves.
such: z (Xi mean)/standard deviation Table 19.5 shows that Central Americans are
(Table 19.4). Using these calculations, South overwhelmingly likely to intend to migrate to the
Americans who have considered migrating have U.S., as predicted, while South Americans are
higher wealth levels relative to their peers (other about equally as likely to migrate to the U.S. or
South Americans) than do Central Americans Spain and are, at least, more likely to consider
relative to their peers (other Central Americans), migrating to Spain compared to Central
conrming Connor and Masseys (2010) theory Americans. Table 19.6 measures the wealth of
that there are greater barriers to exit (migration) respondents and shows that in Central America,
for South Americans compared to Central the wealthier than average are signicantly more
Americans. However, Central Americans consid- likely to go to Spain, while the rest are equally
ering migration have higher ELS scores, and likely to go to the U.S. or to not migrate at all,
higher econ_aspirations and econ_experience largely conrming Connor and Masseys nding
than do South Americans. This prole suggests that there are lower barriers for middle class and
that the South Americans considering migration less wealthy people to migrate from Central
334 C. Graham
America (and/or that the poorest that have to to be associated with the intent to migrate. The
migrate illegally do not report intent). From socio-demographic correlates with intent to
South America, similar to Central America, the migrate are explained in Table 19.7. The base
wealthiest are most likely to migrate to Spain, model thus can be summarized as follows:
middle income respondents are more likely to
Intent to migrate age gender married
migrate to the U.S., and the poor are the least
education capital
likely to migrate. The distance respondents are
crime victim
willing to travel increases with wealth, and these
fear of unemployment
differences are statistically signicant. Because
happiness epsilon
Connors and Massey argue that the nancial cost
of traveling to the U.S. and Spain are both high We also include but do not report controls for
while the social costs are lower in Spain, we country and year. The results of our analysis of
would expect that wealthier respondents would the base model, by specications, which control
go to Spain, and that less wealthy respondents for objective and subjective wealth, are reported
from South America will go to the US. For the in Table 19.8.
most part, this holds up in our data and provides We nd that the descriptive trends related to
some conrmation of validity of intent to migrate wealth, happiness and intent to migrate hold even
as a proxy for actual migration. when controlling for other signicant drivers of
immigration, such as being young, living in a
capital city, being a crime victim, and fearing
19.4.2 Regression Analysis unemployment. Increasing absolute wealth is
associated with increased intent to migrate.
The following analysis uses a probit regression Wealth relative to others, measured using the
with marginal effects. The base model controls ELS-based poor and rich, shows that the self-
for several socio-demographic variables shown identied rich more likely to consider migrat-
ing than the self-identied middle and poor
Table 19.7 Correlates with intent to migrate

Drivers of intent to
migrate Supporting literature
Being under 40 years Studies have shown that older people are less likely to migrate (Pelligrino 2004). For
old those under 40, reports have given contradictory trends. Wood et al. (2010) show that
migration decreases (linearly) with age, while others report a curvilinear effect related to
age (Connor and Massey 2010)
Being male Traditionally men were the most likely to migrate (and thus presumably most likely to
consider migrating) (Wood et al. 2010); however, more recently there has been
documentation of a feminization of migration from Latin America. This trend has been
followed by increased male migration, as family members follow the wives, mothers,
girlfriends, etc. (Pelligrino 2004). These ebb and ows in regards to gender may explain
the not completely conclusive relationship between gender and intent to migrate
Increased education The more educated endure lower risks when migrating as they can more easily acquire
employment and enjoy higher returns on their migration compared to the less educated
(Pelligrino 2004; Connor and Massey 2010; Wood et al. 2010; Defoort 2008)
Living in a capital city It is presumed that those who live in the capital are more likely to consider migrating
because they have greater access to information, lowering the risks of migrating to a new
country (Wood et al. 2010)
Being a crime victim Wood et al. (2010) used the Latinobarometro to demonstrate the clear relationship
between being a crime victim and reporting increased intentions to migrate
Increased fear of Those with lower economic prospects, especially an increased likelihood of
unemployment unemployment, report higher levels of immigration (Horton 2008; Briquets 1983)
19
Table 19.8 Base probit model analyzing impact of happiness and wealth on intent
Young: 1829 (omit over 40) 0.0799*** (0.0035) 0.0851*** (0.0035) 0.0850*** (0.0036) 0.0872*** (0.0040)
Middle-aged: 3039 (omit over 40) 0.0667*** (0.0040) 0.0705*** (0.0040) 0.0702*** (0.0041) 0.0718*** (0.0045)
Gender: 1male 0female 0.0110*** (0.0028) 0.0105*** (0.0028) 0.0105*** (0.0028) 0.0117*** (0.0031)
Married: 1yes 0no 0.0116*** (0.0029) 0.0100*** (0.0029) 0.0101*** (0.0029) 0.0118*** (0.0032)
Education 0.0101*** (0.0003) 0.0086*** (0.0003) 0.0086*** (0.0004) 0.0089*** (0.0004)
Lives in capital city 1yes 0no 0.0575*** (0.0040) 0.0494*** (0.0041) 0.0492*** (0.0041) 0.0544*** (0.0045)
You/your family crime victim in last 12 months 1yes 0no 0.0625*** (0.0029) 0.0618*** (0.0029) 0.0621*** (0.0030) 0.0609*** (0.0033)
Fear of unemployment: 1no fear to 4 much fear 0.0207*** (0.0011) 0.0215*** (0.0011) 0.0214*** (0.0011) 0.0204*** (0.0012)
Happy 1very unhappy to 4very happy 0.0193*** (0.0016) 0.0213*** (0.0017) 0.0214*** (0.0017) 0.0180*** (0.0019)
Objective wealth
Wealth (index) 0.0205*** (0.0016) 0.0201*** (0.0016) 0.0216*** (0.0018)
Subjective wealth: relative to others
ELS-Poor (omit middle) 0.0004 (0.0033) 0.0001 (0.0036)
ELS-Rich (omit middle) 0.0100** (0.0048) 0.0126** (0.0056)
Subject wealth: to personal expectations
Econ_aspirations 0.0120*** (0.0023)
1very bad to 5very good
Econ_experience 0.0048*** (0.0019)
1very bad to 5very good
Observations 96,011 94,142 93,031 73,856
Does Migration Cause Unhappiness or Does Unhappiness Cause Migration? Some. . .
Pseudo R-squared 0.0872 0.0881 0.0879 0.0890

Outcome Variable: Have you and your family seriously considered moving abroad? Yes 1 No 0
Note: Probit regression reporting marginal effects. *** denotes sig. at 1% **denotes sig. at 5% *denotes sig. at 10%. Standard errors in parenthesis. Year and country controls
not showncoefcients available from authors at request
335
336 C. Graham
(there is no signicant difference between the situation. Yet, these ndings do not give conclu-
latter two). sive support to the question of whether unhappi-
Subjective wealth measures that compare the ness drives migration or whether migration
respondents wealth relative to their expectations makes people unhappy. At the least, it
for themselves reveal a contrasting relationship demonstrates that people were already frustrated
between economic status and the intent to and unhappy prior to migrating. The lower hap-
migrate. As people become more satised with piness levels that are observed in migrants in the
their economic situation, they are less likely to new countries could be a continuation of these
consider migrating. attitudes.
Finally, above and beyond the effects of satis- Alternatively, these ndings could signal that
faction with wealth, people that intend to migrate potential migrants are frustrated and thus more
are less happy than the average population. In demanding for improvements in their situation
particular, the results report that the explanatory through migration, setting them up for the
power of happy doubles when we include false expectations described above. We obvi-
controls for objective wealth, but then goes ously need longitudinal data to disentangle the
back to original levels when controls for subjec- two potential channels: do immigrants begin
tive wealth are included. This suggests that the more frustrated than the average, as observed
inuence of happiness on the decision to migrate here, or do they arrive in their new country with
is signicantly inuenced by ones satisfaction average initial happiness levels, but then soon
with their nancial situation, as shown by thereafter experience a drop after expectations
Bartram (2011). are unfullled?
These trends give support to the role of the Sas (2010) analysis of immigrants in
frustrated achiever in driving migration, which Europe suggest the latter may be the case, as
may, in turn, explain conicted associations satisfaction decreases the longer immigrants are
between income and intent to migrate recorded in the new country, and then begins increasing
in the migration literature. The coefcients dem- again after 10 years. Nevertheless, he nds that
onstrate that increased absolute wealth is immigrants are still signicantly less happy than
associated with increased propensity to migrate, natives even after living in the new country for
although the trend is not consistent across the 20 years.
entire sample. While being objectively wealthy
increases the propensity to migrate, being
satised with the wealth level opposes this pro- 19.4.3 Second Stage Research
pensity, decreasing the likelihood of migrating. in Progress: Initial Results
In contrast, if one is objectively wealthy but she
is still unsatised with her economic situation, At this juncture in the research, we have only
then she will feel additional pressure to migrate. completed the two simple, regression based
These opposing trends may, in part, explain why comparisons, where rst compare the traits of
associations between income and migration are our intend to migrate respondents in the GWP
often inconsistent. for Latin America with those in the
These ndings potentially give support to the Latinobarometro poll, and then compare the
hypotheses of false expectations held by poten- well-being levels of migrants and locals in the
tial immigrants. The image of the frustrated destination countries. We have not yet completed
achiever supports Bartrams (2011) nding that the propensity score matching and difference in
income gains or losses have a greater impact on difference stage. Still, our initial ndings are
the happiness of immigrants compared to other suggestive and also complement our ndings in
people. In particular, the extent that unhappiness stage one. This gives us cautious optimism that
pushes people to consider migrating is mediated we can learn more from the PSM stage of the
by their satisfaction with their economic research.
Table 19.9 Second-stage research gallup world poll data for post-migration matching
Pre-migration sample Post-migration sample
Years 2008 & 2009 (Gallup waves 3 & 4) Years 2010 & 2011 (Gallup waves 5 & 6)
20 Latin American & Caribbean countriesa 30 Destination countriesb
9531 respondents identied as willing to migrate 4,382 respondents identied as migrants
1116 respondents identied as planning to migrate 819 respondents identied as recent migrants (included in Z)
30 Destination countries of preference identied Origin countries identied
Information about covariates to match on availablec Information about same covariates to match on availablec
a
Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala,
Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Trinidad & Tobago, Uruguay and Venezuela
b
United States, Egypt, Pakistan, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Sweden,
Greece, Japan, China, India, Venezuela, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Russia, Costa Rica, Argentina, Chile,
Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras
c
Gender, marital status, income (household income quintile), health, age, education (others could be considered as
well). Employment was not consistently asked
The description of the World Poll sample and For the pre-migration regressions, we rst
the 20 countries that the respondents are from used an ordered probit with plan to migrate as
and the 30 that they migrate to is in Table 19.9. the dependent variable, and life satisfaction as
Our outcome variables of interest in this rst set measured by the Cantril ladder question (which
of regressions are life satisfaction, anger, and asks respondents to compare their life to the best
worry among respondents who intend to migrate possible life they can imagine on a ladder run-
compared to those who do not in the GWP Latin ning from 0 to 10) as the dependent variable. We
America sample prior to migration. In the second included the usual socio-demographic and eco-
set of regression we use the same well-being nomic controls (house-hold income, age, age
variables to compare migrants and native-born squared, gender, education, health satisfaction,
respondents in the destination countries. and employed except for 2008, when it was not
In the pre-migration sample, respondents are asked) and country dummies. As in the case of
asked whether they would be willing to migrate our Latinobarometro results above, we nd that
in the next year and if they plan to migrate in the those respondents who are planning to migrate
next year. The latter set of respondents is smaller have lower levels of life satisfaction but higher
(roughly 1,000 versus 9,000 respondents), as the levels of income and education (they are more
plan question is a more serious gauge of intent, in likely to be college educated) than those who
our view, and we primarily focus our analysis on were not planning to migrate. Those planning to
that question. In the post-migration sample, there migrate were also less likely to be married, more
are a handful of questions that allow us to tease likely to be men, and more likely to have been
out who is a local and who is a migrant. People assaulted in the past year. In general, they t the
were asked: (1) whether they were born in the same frustrated achiever traits as those
country where they are being surveyed; (2) if not, respondents that intend to migrate in our
country where they were born; (3) if not born in Latinobarometro sample.
country, have they moved to the country in the We also explored negative hedonic
last 5 years. The number of people who answered experiences via two variables: did you experi-
not to have been born in the country (4,382) is ence anger yesterday and did you experience
larger than the number of recent migrants (819) worry yesterday, with possible answers being
as there are respondents who are migrants, but yes or no. We run probit models for each of
who have been in the destination country for these variables respectively (as they are binary),
more than 5 years. (For summary statistics see with the same socio-demographic and economic
Table 19.9). controls and country dummies as above. We nd
338 C. Graham
Table 19.10 Second stage research life satisfaction, worry, and anger among plan to migrate sample in the gallup
world poll for latin America
1 2 3 4
Age 0.013** 0.014*** 0.013** 0.015***
Age squared 0.000*** 0.000*** 0.000*** 0.000***
Gender 1 female 0 male 0.151*** 0.160*** 0.158*** 0.157***
Married 1 Yes 0 No 0.151*** 0.155*** 0.152*** 0.150***
College education 1 beyond HS 0 no 0.105** 0.105** 0.095** 0.108**
Household income quintile (within country) 0.029** 0.027** 0.028** 0.029**
Life today (on 010 Cntril ladder of life scale) 0.011
Health condition 1 satised 0 not satised 0.006
Assaulted in last 1 year 1 yes 0 no 0.217*** 0.208*** 0.205*** 0.207***
Born in this country 1 yes 0 no 0.441***
Family member moved abroad 1 yes o no 0.480*** 0.474*** 0.480*** 0.479***
Experienced anger yesterday 1 yes 0 no 0.173***
Experienced anger worry 1 yes 0 no 0.146***
Experienced happiness yesterday 1 yes 0 no 0.085**
Year 1 2008 0 2009 0.118*** 0.122*** 0.126*** 0.116***
Constant 1.881*** 2.378*** 2.400*** 2.293***
Country dummy variables included Yes Yes Yes Yes
Observations 31,136 31,227 31,262 31,057
Pseudo R-squared 0.11 0.11 0.11 0.11
Source: Gallup World Poll Latin America
**signicant at 5 %
***signicant at 1 %
that those respondents who planned to migrate well as country dummies. Our main independent
were more likely to have experienced both anger variable was local, which is a one if one was
and worry the day before (Table 19.10). Finally, born in the country, and a zero of the respondent
we re-ran both sets of regressions on the larger is a migrant. We nd that locals are consistently
sample of those who report to be willing to more satised with their lives than migrants. In
migrate in the next year, and got essentially the fact the size of the coefcient on local is almost
same results. (These results are available upon as large as that on household income (as these are
request.). probits and not OLS we cannot robustly compare
We next compared the reported well-being the size of the coefcients, but the results are
(both evaluative well-being life satisfaction suggestive nevertheless). Locals were also less
based on the Cantril ladder question and nega- likely to have experienced either worry and/or
tive experienced well-being experiencing anger anger the day before (Table 19.11).
and/or worry the day before) of locals versus Our results at this stage are preliminary, as we
migrants in the destination countries. We have not yet completed the matching exercise.
included only the countries where a reasonable Yet we clearly nd lower well-being levels of
number from the pre-migration sample (only migrants both pre- and post-migrating, measured
Latinos) reported to be planning to migrate (See both in evaluative (life satisfaction) dimensions,
Table 19.10). and experienced/hedonic dimensions (anger,
We used ordered probits when the Cantril worry). These results suggest that lower levels
ladder life satisfaction question was the depen- of well-being and higher aspirations (and income
dent variable, and probits for the binary anger and education) pre-migration may be drivers of
and worry variables, and included for the usual migration, but that migrating per se does not raise
socio-demographic and economic variables as well-being levels to those of natives. Our PSM
Table 19.11 Life satisfaction, worry, and anger among locals vs. migrants in the destination countries in the gallup
world poll
Life todas (on a Experienced worry Experienced anger
010 Cantril scale) yesterday (1 yes 0 no) yesterday (1 yes 0 no)
Ordered probit Probit Probit
Age 0.29*** 0.031*** 0.008***
Age squared 0.000*** 0.000*** 0.000***
Gender 1 female 0 male 0.133*** 0.082*** 0.064***
Married 1 yes 0 no 0.052*** 0.038*** 0.001
College education 1 beyond 0.164*** 0.007 0.072***
HS 0 no
Household income quintile 0.146*** 0.059*** 0.031***
(within country)
Health condition 1 satised 0.417*** 0.545*** 0.313***
0 not satised
Born in this country 1 yes 0.129*** 0.106*** 0.075*
0 no
Employed 1 yes 0 no 0.038*** 0.01 0.002
Assaulted in last 1 year 1 0.031* 0.179*** 0.192***
yes 0 no
Overall city condition 1 0.281*** 0.323*** 0.306***
Satised 0 not satised
Year dummy variables Yes Yes Yes
included (Control year 2012)
Country variables included Yes Yes Yes
Observations 48,848 48,948 48,912
Pseudo R-squared 0.07 0.07 0.05
Source: Authors calculations using Gallup World Poll surveys for years 20122012
Note: Locals are those born in the country (1); migrants are those who are not (0)
*signicant at 10 %
***signicant at 1 %
matching exercise will test the extent to which Our analysis supports the hypothesis that
migration resulted in any increase at all in the unhappiness drives migration, while not
well-being levels of our pre-migration frustrated disproving that migration also creates unhappi-
achievers, even if their levels are still lower, on ness; it is likely that these factors are not mutu-
average, than those of locals. ally exclusive and more likely that they reinforce
one another. The prole of Latin American
emigrants provided suggests they are unhappy
with their current situation prior to migrating,
19.5 Conclusions
above and beyond considerations of wealth
level, fears of unemployment, and feelings of
These ndings are a rst step in bridging the link
insecurity (such as being a crime victim).
in immigrant experiences and attitudes
Complementing this, Latin American emigrants
pre-departure and post-migration, and in particu-
are frustrated with their economic situation in
lar highlight the role of frustration in driving
particular. This frustration is not derived from
migration. They continue to suggest the need
low economic achievement they objectively
for longitudinal data to better understand well-
and subjectively rate themselves as attaining
being before, during, and after the migration
high wealth levels relative to others but rather
process, and the extent to which it plays a causal
from the expectations they impose on themselves
role in migration decisions.
340 C. Graham
derived from their past experiences and who are satised with their economic situation
aspirations. regardless of their actual income level, are not
Our second stage analysis, based on a differ- willing to undergo the major change that migra-
ent pre-migration sample from Latin America in tion entails. This is not to say that they are
the Gallup World Poll, nds similar levels of opposed to other major changes, but they are
unhappiness, worry, and anger co-existing with not considering a common solution utilized in
higher levels of objective income and education; the Latin American context today.
in short, frustrated achievers again. We also com- Further research is needed to identify other
pared similar respondents/migrants in the desti- changes, comparable in impact to migration,
nation countries that they reported to plan to that could be undertaken to improve ones situa-
migrate to (ex ante) with locals with similar traits tion; and, second, whether those changes are
in those countries, and found that the migrants being made by those happier people who do not
were, in comparison, less satised with their report considerations to migrate; and third,
lives, and more likely to have experienced whether those changes have a similar negative
anger or worry. These results again highlight impact on happiness as migration does is
that unhappiness seems to be a driver of migra- migration making people better or worse off
tion and that likely persists after migration. What compared to the alternatives? Better answers to
we do not yet know is if migration per se changes these questions, in turn, could help us understand
the well-being levels of our frustrated achiever the relationship between well-being and societal
migrants. change, especially economic development.
Our initial results suggest that that these frus-
trated achievers likely continue to project high
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Socioeconomic Disparities
in Subjective Well-being in Colombia 20
David A. Hurtado
20.1 Introduction whereby some individuals might have higher or

lower stock of this attribute.
Colombia has reported high levels of subjective Investigating the social determinants of SWB
well-being (SWB) in international and national in Colombia and other Latin American countries
surveys during the last decade. For instance, is relevant for international social and well-
according to the World Database of Happiness being research because these high levels of
(Veenhoven 2013), Colombias life satisfaction SWB often challenge the explanatory role
scores from 1995 to 2009 have uctuated in a of objective social and economic indicators
range of 6.7 (2001) to 8 points (2010) (in a (e.g. GDP, GNP, literacy rate, homicide rate,
10-point scale), with a pooled average of 7.7 and income inequality, among others) (Graham
points. Colombias aggregated average of life 2005; Easterlin and Sawangfa 2009; Graham and
satisfaction is 0.8 points below Costa Rica -the Lora 2009). In Colombia, objective socioeco-
nation leading the regional ranking-, and it is nomic indicators are not necessarily optimistic:
higher than the cumulative average of bordering the 20102011 poverty rate was 34.1 % (The
nations. Likewise, according to the World Values World Bank 2013), with a the median income
Survey (wave 2005), around two thirds of per capita was $US 6070. The income inequality
Colombians reported being rather happy or very Gini index for 2011 was 0.56 (OECD 2013). The
happy, and the country ranked in the top unemployment rate was 11 %, with labor infor-
20 happiest nations (Leigh and Wolfers 2006). mality in about half of the workforce (DANE
Colombias high level of SBW, often referenced 2013). Nonetheless, Colombia SWB scores in
in international and national mass media the last decade have been higher than several
(Caracol Radio 2009; The Hufngton Post high-income countries. While the between-coun-
2013), then, might be considered one of the try comparison might leave Colombia in a top
nations most important public goods (Diener position in SWB international rankings, less is
2009). Nevertheless, it is pertinent to inquire known, however, of the within-country dis-
whether this public good is equally available or tribution of SWB by individual features, namely
distributed among all Colombians, or if levels of socioeconomic status. Cross-national, ecological
SWB depend on personal characteristics, comparisons regarding the interrelationship
between socioeconomic indicators (e.g. income)
D.A. Hurtado (*) and health and well-being outcomes could be
Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard biased not only by measurement issues
T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA (e.g. different indicators or procedures), but also
e-mail: dhurtado@mail.harvard.edu

344 D.A. Hurtado
by different distributions of socioeconomic and resources of a society (Krieger 2008).

indicators or by unmeasured compositional Individuals SES has traditionally been inferred
characteristics of the members of each nation through measures of education, income, and
(Subramanian and Kawachi 2004). In other occupation (Adler and Newman 2002). Educa-
words, the same level of educational attainment tional attainment equips individuals with cogni-
(e.g. high school completion) might have tive and intellectual skills that might help them
different implications for SWB in a society with to process and access information and social
high prevalence of high school completion opportunities (e.g. access to labor market)
compared with another society with lower that may enhance their SWB. In addition, higher
prevalence. In light of this, a within-nation exam- educational attainment increases the exposure
ination might provide insight of the ranks and to social networks and other opportunities
relative social standings of individuals within (e.g. nutrition, environmental exposures,
their societies which could also pattern recreation) that altogether might increase
their health and well-being (Wilkinson and individuals SWB (Chandola et al. 2006). In
Pickett 2009). For example, the inuential, but turn, higher income could be a proxy for access
not less controversial, work of Wilkinson and or higher stock of material resources, including
Pickett has shown a stark contrast regarding the purchasing power and better access to resources
between-and-within nation associations of socio- or services like nutrition, housing, health insur-
economic indicators with several social and ance, schooling and recreation, which have been
health outcomes; while at the national level linked to well-being (Kawachi and Kennedy
there are weak or inexistent correlations 1999; Cummins 2000; Lynch et al. 2004). Like-
between OECD nations GDP and health wise, nancial status and other forms of high
outcomes, at the individual level, the relationship SES have been linked with higher sense of con-
between income and well-being outcomes trol and autonomy and better social integration
follows a gradient pattern (Wilkinson and support, factors also linked with higher
et al. 2011). Thus, if SWB ought to be considered SWB (Marmot 2004). Finally, employment
a relevant and desired public good in Colombia, and occupation status not only indicate expo-
then it is important to examine whether it is sure to physical and psychosocial job factors
rather equally distributed among Colombians, (Schnall et al. 2009), but also provide informa-
or whether levels of SWB vary by individuals tion related to rank and prestige, but also about
socioeconomic status (SES). social security and protection and job benets
(Bambra 2011).
Research on the association between SES and
20.2 Socio-economic Status SWB has produced mixed ndings. The within-
and Subjective Well-Being nation distribution or even individual changes in
education and income indicators are weakly
A full analysis and interpretation of socioeco- associated (correlations below 0.2) with SWB
nomic status (SES) is beyond the scope of this (Diener et al. 1999). Nevertheless, a wide array
chapter. In short, socioeconomic status (SES) of epidemiologic studies have documented an
refers to the factors that inuence the position inverse gradient in the association between
an individual holds within the structure of his or higher SES with multiple health outcomes
her society (Lynch and Kaplan 2000). SES (Adler and Snibbe 2003; Marmot 2004), includ-
includes objective and subjective assessments ing happiness (Subramanian et al. 2005). How-
of material (e.g. money) and non-material ever, most of this evidence is from high-income
conditions (e.g. prestige, power) (Krieger nations, thus it is important to investigate
et al. 1997), as well as developmental, cumula- whether such conclusions also extend to settings
tive life-course individual trajectories (Berkman like Latin American low/middle-income
2009), and historical distribution of hierarchies countries (Dolan et al. 2008).
20 Socioeconomic Disparities in Subjective Well-being in Colombia 345
Comparative studies across Latin American of the Colombian economic situation (Cummins
nations have also pointed out how individuals et al. 2003) alone explained a sixth of SWB of
educational level, income or employment sample of individuals in Bogota, hence showing
conditions are positively associated with SWB the importance of economic factors in the content
(Graham and Felton 2006; Gerstenbluth of personal evaluations of well-being (Wills
et al. 2010). However, these studies have not et al. 2009). The work of Cardenas and
made emphasis on the gaps or disparities in colleagues based on the Gallup World Poll of
levels of SWB by SES. Assessing socioeconomic 2007 showed that about one in ve workers in
disparities, that is systematic differences in levels Colombia and other Latin American countries
of SWB could be relevant to monitor not only the experienced low job security, meaning they per-
level of this outcome but also to identify which ceived they could lose their job in the next
socioeconomic groups are behind relative to 6 months, and that higher job insecurity was
other members of their societies. Such an exami- associated with 0.22 points of life satisfaction
nation could also offer insights to public (Cardenas et al. 2009).
interventions to reduce unnecessary, avoidable The aim of this chapter, thus, is to examine the
and unfair/unjust conditions that may cause distribution of SWB by individual-level features
such differences (WHO Commission on Social of SES, such as educational attainment, house-
Determinants of Health 2008; Diener 2009; Koh hold income, and employment status using a
et al. 2011). nationally representative survey of Colombia
In Colombia, the inquiry of the distribution of of 2011 (n 2988) (Hurtado et al. 2013).
SWB by individual SES has been studied before We test the hypotheses that SWB is not uni-
with nationally representative surveys like the formly distributed, but that there are system-
World Values Survey (Silva-Colmenares 2008; atic disparities in SWB according to
Sudarsky 2008), the Latin-barometer or the individuals SES. Though high levels of SWB
Gallup Global Barometer Survey (Consorcio of Colombia are a relevant public good, the
Iberoamericano de Investigaciones de Mercado rationale for this within-nation of the SWB dis-
y de Asesoramiento CIMA 2012). However, tribution is to reveal which groups are behind in
studies based on these surveys have not the stocks of this public good, to quantify the gap
unpacked the national distribution of SWB by in SWB, and to provide insights for future
individual SES indicators, not showing the gaps research and public policy interventions.
in the distribution of SWB. Some researchers,
nonetheless, have investigated the link between
SES and SWB in Colombia. For example, 20.3 Methods
Londono Velez examined determinants of social
mobility and SWB in Colombias major cities Cross-sectional study-design; trained
(Bogota, Medellin, Cali, and Barranquilla) interviewers administered face-to-face structured
(Londono 2011a). Her study revealed systematic interviews in May and June 2011, applying the
disparities in the probabilities of individuals Barometer of Social Capital (BARCAS in Span-
reporting being very happy or very satised ish), an instrument previously validated in
with their lives according to their education or Colombia (Sudarsky 2001, 2008; Hurtado
income. Subjects with college education had et al. 2013). Data were collected on a nationally
15 % higher covariate-adjusted probabilities of representative sample of Colombia, covering
being very happy, compared with subjects with 27 of 32 departments of Colombia and Bogota,
only elementary education. In addition, Capital District. Subjects were included in the
participants in the richest income quintile had sample if they were Colombian nationals, literate
25 % higher probabilities of being very happy, and if they consented to participate. Each
relative to Colombian in the lowest quintiles. In departmental capital, major cities and other
turn, Wills and colleagues found that appraisals towns selected at random were included in the
346 D.A. Hurtado
sample. Municipalities with less than 5000 centered at the national mean, where higher
inhabitants or located in less accessible regions values reected higher SWB.
like the Amazonia or the San Andres Island were
excluded. Once towns and cities were identied,
a two-staged sampling strategy was applied; rst, 20.4.2 Socioeconomic Status Indicators
a simple random sampling of blocks was
conducted at each city/town, and secondly, Three categorical and self-reported indicators of
participants within blocks were recruited follow- socio-economic status (SES) were assessed: (1)
ing Colombia National Census quotas of age, educational attainment, measured with the fol-
sex and urban/rural residence for each town. lowing question: which is your highest level of
The Colombian territory was divided into educational attainment?, and coded in four
14 regions), following a scheme previously categories: none or less than Elementary School
applied proven to show regional differences in [reference category], Elementary school, High
other social indicators like social capital and School, Technical education/college or higher;
political participation (Sudarsky 2001, 2008). A (2) Household Income; participants were shown
total of 3028 participants at 56 municipalities income quintile brackets and then were asked the
were surveyed. We removed participants with following question: after accounting for all
missing information for happiness and life satis- monthly earnings and income by members of
faction (n 40, 1.3 %), yielding an analytic your household, including salaries, pension and
sample size of 2988 Colombians. other earnings, please let us know in which
bracket your household should be located.
Income, thus, was not dened in absolute levels
(i.e., amount of money or earnings in a given
20.4 Measures
currency), but categorized by quintiles dened
by the National Administrative Department of
20.4.1 Subjective Well-Being
Statistics (DANE) [lowest set as reference];
(3) Occupational/Employment Status;
Two measures of Subjective Well-being (SWB)
participants were asked a set of questions:
were considered: (1) happiness, which was
(a) are you currently working in a paid job?;
measured with the following question: taking
(b) if so, are you afliated to a pension/retire-
all things together, would you say you are?
ment/disability fund?, and (c) if you are not
and was coded with a 4-point scale (very happy,
working, what is your occupation?, coded with
rather happy, not very happy, not happy at all),
the following options: retired, homemaker, stu-
and (2) life satisfaction, which was measured
dent or unemployed. Employment status, there-
with the following question: all things consid-
fore, was coded as unemployed [reference], not
ered, how satised are you with your life as a
in the workforce (e.g. student, retired, home-
whole these days? coded with a 10-point Likert
maker), informal employment (i.e. paid job but
scale from 1 (completely dissatised) to
not afliated or saving in a retirement or pension
10 (completely satised). A SWB index was
fund), and formal employment (i.e. paid job and
created with a Principal Component Analysis
saving in a pension/retirement/disability fund).
(PCA) including these two variables to have a
more robust and unied outcome measure. The
SWB component had an Eigenvalue of 1.29, and
20.4.3 Covariates
explained 61.5 % of the total variance of both
measures. Happiness and satisfaction had factor
Socio-demographic individual-level information
loadings above 0.6. The SWB component was
was collected for (1) age (measured in years, and
modeled as a standardized continuous variable
modeled as a quadratic and continuous score
(mean zero and standard deviation of one),
showing average changes per decades, centered
at the mean value), (2), gender (female vs. male between each level of SES relative to the reference
[reference]), (3) marital status (married or living category. Gradients were tested tting linear trends
with partner vs. other [reference]), (4) race/eth- for each SES indicator to show the average differ-
nicity (minority indigenous or Black vs. other ence in SWB associated with increasing levels of
[reference]), and (5) setting (urban [reference] each SES indicator. All statistical analyses were
vs. rural). There were also included 14 indicator two-tailed, with a 0.05 level of signicance and
variables for Region modeled as xed effects-, 95 % condence intervals (95 % CI).
where Bogota was set as the reference category.
In addition, participants were asked whether they
were afliated to the General Social Security
20.5 Results
System (Health Insurance) [no set as
reference].
20.5.1 Subjective Well-Being
by Socioeconomic Status
in Colombia
20.4.4 Analysis Plan
Participants reported high levels of SWB
Univariate and bivariate statistics of the SWB (Graph 20.1), where 86.6 % of the national sam-
index and the SES variables were rst conducted. ple declared they were very happy or rather
Then the hypothesis that SWB is positively and happy. Likewise, the average of life satisfaction
gradually associated with higher SES was tested was 8.46 points in a 10-point scale, with a stan-
with a General Linear Model, simulta- dard deviation (SD) of 1.91. The distribution of
neously including the three SES indicators, and life satisfaction was negatively skewed (20.1),
controlling for socio-demographic and regional with a median value of 9, and mode of 10 points.
covariates. Standard errors (SE) accounted for the In fact, 42 % of the sample reported being
clustering of individuals into towns. We calculated completely satised.
the Relative Difference (RD), that is, the average Average age was 37.6 years, and half of the
gap in standard deviations (SD) of the SWB index sample was female. About 5 % of the sample
51%
50%
42%
40%
36%
30%
19%
20%
16%
12%
9%
10%
4% 5%
1% 2% 1% 1% 1%
0%
Not Not Rather Very 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
happy very happy happy
at all happy
Happiness Life Satisfaction (1: completely dissatisfied - 10: completely satisfied)
Graph 20.1 Distribution of happiness and life satisfaction in Colombia, 2011 (n 2988)]
348 D.A. Hurtado
self-reported as ethnic/racial minority, and 30 % RD in the prevalence of happiness between

were living in rural settings. About 47.5 % were those who completed up to Elementary school
married or living with partner. One in ten sur- compared with those who did not was 6.4 per-
veyed participants (10.7 %) lacked health insur- centage points, which was the same gap between
ance. Table 20.1 displays descriptive statistics those with college/technical education and those
for socioeconomic status (SES). About a third who completed up to high school. Life satisfac-
of the participants had educational attainment tion scores were also differently distributed
up to high school. Most respondents (68 %) across educational levels, though the highest
were located in the poorest two quintiles of unadjusted RD was mostly found between the
household income. Unemployment was preva- two lowest levels, with small increments upon
lent in 14.3 % of the sample, and about 40 % high school completion. The SWB index which
were working in the informal sector that is, a paid combines happiness and life satisfaction
job without making contributions in a pension/ increased linearly with educational attainment.
retirement fund. Socioeconomic indicators were Table 20.1 also shows the SWB scores by educa-
positively inter-correlated. Individuals with tional level, where each educational level is
higher educational attainment also reported separated with the subsequent in about 0.2 stan-
higher household income ( p 0.34, dard deviations (SD).
p < 0.001) and more formal jobs ( p 0.14, The gradient in SWB by education persists
p < 0.001). Household income was also after adjusting for other covariates (Table 20.2).
associated with formal jobs ( 0.19, In average, an increment in educational level was
p < 0.0001). Household income and employ- associated with higher SWB (RD 0.10. 95 %
ment status, however, were not equally CI 0.06, 0.14, p < 0.001). However, the magni-
distributed by gender (Graph 20.2). More tude of the differences was notably attenuated
women than men were allocated in the poorest after controlling for socio-demographic regional
income quintile (9 % gender difference), and covariates. While the unadjusted difference
more women were not part of the paid workforce between the highest and the lowest educational
(29 % gender difference). Nonetheless, men were level was 0.6, the adjusted RD was 0.37
more likely to be unemployed (6 % gender dif- (Table 20.2). This gradient was found in both
ference), but men were also more likely to work men and women; however, men experienced sta-
in the formal (11 % gender difference). Educa- tistically signicant higher SWB compared with
tion was not differentially distributed by gender. women, within each level of education
(Graph 20.3).
20.5.2 Disparities in Subjective Well-

Being by Education 20.5.3 Disparities in Subjective Well-
Being by Income
Table 20.1 shows the prevalence of happiness
(i.e., the proportion who reported being rather The prevalence of happiness was the lowest in
happy or very happy) and life satisfaction scores the poorest household income quintile, with an
by educational attainment. Even though the prev- 8.4 percentage point unadjusted relative differ-
alence of happiness among Colombians with the ence (RD) with the second poorest quintile
lowest educational attainment (i.e. less than Ele- (Table 20.1). The unadjusted RD between Quin-
mentary school) was 72.7 %, the unadjusted Rel- tile 2 (the second poorest) and Quintile 3 was 2.2
ative Difference (RD) with the highest percentage points of happiness, with no further
educational level (i.e., complete college/techni- increments at higher quintiles. The richest and
cal education) is 22 percentage points. Moreover, poorest income quintiles were separated by 12.5
the prevalence of happiness increased with each happiness percentage points. Life satisfaction, on
subsequent level of education. The unadjusted the other hand, increased gradually with higher
20
Table 20.1 Distribution of subjective well-being measures by socioeconomic indicators in Colombia, 2011
National sample Happiness prevalence (rather Life satisfaction Subjective well-being index
(n 2988) happy/very happy) (110) (Z-scores)
n % n % P M SD P M SD P
Highest educational attainment None 132 4.4 36 72.7 <0.001 7.9 2.3 <0.001 0.42 1.30 <0.001
Elementary 762 25.5 159 79.1 8.4 2.0 0.17 1.14
High school 1471 49.2 174 88.2 8.5 1.9 0.04 0.96
Some college or more 622 20.8 33 94.7 8.6 1.7 0.20 0.75
Household income Quintile 1 989 36.5 192 80.5 <0.001 8.2 2.1 <0.001 0.19 1.16 <0.001
Quintile 2 870 32.1 97 88.9 8.5 1.8 0.06 0.92
Quintile 3 480 17.7 43 91.1 8.6 1.7 0.13 0.86
Quintile 4 221 8.2 20 91 8.7 1.6 0.16 0.85
Socioeconomic Disparities in Subjective Well-being in Colombia
Quintile 5 148 5.5 11 92.7 8.9 1.7 0.23 0.77
Employment status Not in the workforce 761 28.5 671 88.2 <0.001 8.5 1.9 <0.001 0.01 1.01 <0.001
Unemployed 381 14.3 312 81.9 8.1 2.2 0.22 1.21
Informal sector 1037 38.9 887 85.5 8.5 1.8 0.03 1.01
Formal sector 487 18.3 455 93.4 8.7 1.5 0.20 0.72
349
350 D.A. Hurtado
Female (n=1436) Male (n=1461)

50%
50% 49%
45% 44%
45% 41%
40%
32% 33%
35% 31% 32%
30% 27%
25%
25% 22% 23%
20% 19%
20% 16% 16% 17%
15% 11% 12%
9%
10% 7% 7%
5% 4% 4%
5%
0%
Not in the workforce
Formal sector
Informal sector
High School
Unemployed
Elementary
Quintile 1
Quintile 2
Quintile 3
Quintile 4
Quintile 5
None
College
Highest educational attainment Household Income Occupational/ Employment

Status
Graph 20.2 Distribution of socioeconomic status by gender in Colombia, 2011 (n 2988)
household income, although only in decimal compared with other employment status. The
points. The unadjusted RD between the poorest greatest unadjusted RD was found between
and richest quintiles was 0.7 points of life satis- those unemployed and those working in the for-
faction. The SWB index followed the same unad- mal sector (11.5 percentage happiness points,
justed trend as educational attainment, with and 0.6 points of life satisfaction). The adjusted
bigger increments between the two poorest RD in SWB scores between unemployed and
quintiles. After adjusting for socioeconomic, formally employed was about 0.33 SD
socio-demographic and regional covariates, (Table 20.2). A test for linear trend in employ-
each additional quintile of household income ment status was statistically signicant, and
was associated with higher SWB (RD 0.06. improvements towards working in the formal
95 % CI 0.01, 0.11, p < 0.05). The gradient or sector were associated with higher SWB
linear trend was more discernible up to Quintile (RD 0.09. 95 % CI 0.05, 0.13, p < 0.001).
4, especially among women. SWB scores of Men who were employed experienced statisti-
women in Quintile 4 were higher than the scores cally signicant higher SWB scores than
of women in the poorest or richest quintiles women formally or informally employed
(Graph 20.3). (Graph 20.2).
20.5.4 Disparities in Subjective Well- 20.6 Discussion

Being by Employment Status
This chapter examined the distribution of subjec-
Happiness and life satisfaction were lower tive well-being (SWB) by individual-level
among the unemployed (Table 20.1), as indicators of socioeconomic status (SES) using
Table 20.2 Relative differences in subjective well-being (SWB) by socioeconomic status in Colombia, 2011
Intercept SE 95 % CI
1.12* 0.14 1.39 0.86
Education [ref: none] (adjusted p for trend p < 0.05) Elementary 0.15 0.11 0.06 0.36
High school 0.29* 0.10 0.09 0.48
College 0.38* 0.10 0.18 0.58
Household income [ref: Quintile 1] (adjusted p for Quintile 2 0.08 0.05 0.02 0.18
trend p < 0.05) Quintile 3 0.10 0.06 0.02 0.23
Quintile 4 0.11 0.07 0.01 0.24
Quintile 5 0.14 0.09 0.03 0.31
Employment status [ref: unemployed] (adjusted Not in the workforce 0.30* 0.06 0.18 0.42
p for trend p < 0.05) Informal 0.26* 0.07 0.13 0.39
Formal 0.33* 0.06 0.21 0.44
Socio-demographic covariates Age 0.01 0.00 0.01 0.00
Age Sqr 0.00* 0.00 0.00 0.00
Male 0.09* 0.04 0.02 0.16
Racial/ethnic minority 0.15 0.08 0.01 0.32
Married/cohabitating 0.13* 0.03 0.06 0.20
[ref: no]
No health insurance 0.13* 0.06 0.25 0.01
[ref: yes]
Rural [ref: urban] 0.05 0.05 0.05 0.15
Region [ref: Bogota] Orinoqua 0.29* 0.09 0.12 0.47
Pacico 0.09* 0.12 0.32 0.13
Caldas 0.63 0.11 0.42 0.84
Tolima 0.44* 0.06 0.33 0.55
Cordoba-Sucre 0.39* 0.09 0.20 0.57
Antioquia 0.33* 0.09 0.16 0.51
Norte de Santander 0.69* 0.07 0.54 0.83
Valle del Cauca 0.53* 0.10 0.35 0.72
Atlantico-Bolivar 0.45* 0.11 0.23 0.66
Cesar-Guajira- 0.43* 0.14 0.16 0.70
Magdalena
Boyaca 0.13 0.08 0.04 0.29
Cauca-Huila 0.39* 0.06 0.27 0.51
Relative differences in subjective well-being index (SWB)- Z scores (n 2987; *p < 0.05)
a nationally representative sample of Colombia with a gap of a third of standard deviation. The
of 2011. Even though the country reported high poorest income quintile was about a fth of a
levels of happiness and life satisfaction, levels of standard deviation of SWB below the richest
SWB tended to be higher depending on quintile.
individuals educational attainment, household
income or employment condition. Moreover,
we found that the gaps in SWB were marked
20.6.1 Summary of Findings
between higher and lower SES, but also that the
differences became wider with each additional
In this sample, only one out of ve participants
level of SES. The biggest disparities were found
had educational attainment beyond high school,
between the highest-and-lowest educational level
and roughly one out of three participants had
of almost half a standard deviation, and between
elementary school as highest educational level.
those formally employed vs. the unemployed,
Though participants who did not complete
352 D.A. Hurtado
Female (n=1436) Male (n=1461)
0.80
0.60
0.40
0.20
0.00
-0.20
Not in the
workforce
Formal
High School
Quintile 2
Quintile 3
Quintile 4
Quintile 5
Elementary
College
Informal
Education [ref: Household Income [ref: Employment Status
None] (p for trend Quintile 1] (p for trend [ref: Unemployed]
p<0.001) p<0.05) (p for trend p<0.05)
Graph 20.3 Relative differences in subjective well-being (Z-scores) by socioeconomic status in Colombia, 2011
stratied by gender
Elementary school (about 5 % of the sample) scores upon high school completion. This thresh-
reported rather higher levels of happiness or life old has also been documented in international
satisfaction than the average of other studies, assessing different measures of educa-
industrialized nations (Leigh and Wolfers 2006; tional attainment and multiple civic and political
Heukamp and Arino 2011), these scores were outcomes (Inglehart 1990; Alaminos and
systematically lower than other Colombians Penalva 2012).
with higher educational attainment. We found In the poorest income quintile (36 % of the
that higher educational attainment was sample), the prevalence of happiness was above
associated with higher SWB, whereby each edu- 80 % and life satisfaction average was also above
cational level was separated with the next in 8.0 in a 10-point scale. Despite this high absolute
about 0.10 SD. Colombian ndings are consis- level of SWB among poorer Colombians,
tent with other international studies that have increments in income were also linked with higher
documented a positive link between higher edu- SWB. Even though studies have also reported
cational attainment and well-being measures, at non-linear associations between income and hap-
both the individual or national level (Cutler and piness, either at the individual or national level,
Lleras-Muney 2006; Michalos 2008). We also especially in low-income countries (Diener
found adjusted differences in the relationship et al. 1999; Easterlin and Sawangfa 2009), our
between education and SWB between men and results show a linear trend between income and
women. Even though educational attainment was SWB. However, the adjusted effect sizes regarding
equally distributed by gender, each educational income differences in SWB were relatively small,
level was associated with higher SWB in men where gaps were below the 0.2 SD. Nonetheless,
compared with women. This nding suggests nearly two thirds of the sample was allocated in the
differential returns on SWB associated with two poorest quintiles and the estimated average
higher SES might be lower in women as com- differences in SWB were not weighted according
pared with men with the same educational level to the prevalence at each income quintile. These
(Hill and King 1995; Coley and Center 2001). ndings are consistent with recent international
Our results also showed an increment in SWB cross-and-within country evidence that document
a linear association between income and life satis- ascertainment, as all SES indicators occurred ear-
faction (Stevenson and Wolfers 2013). The lier in the life course of the participants. Another
Colombian gradient between income and SWB, related limitation is that some indicators of SES
however, was more discernible up to quintile such income or employment status could change
4, raising the need to explore whether an absolute over time, so the validity of the reported
income threshold exists, upon which there would associations should not be considered as denite.
be diminishing returns on SWB, or to rule out However, there were found signicant
sampling issues, including sufcient people from differences in more time-stable indicators like
each income quintile. In addition, the income gra- educational attainment, which for the most part
dient on SWB was more notorious among women, happened earlier in the life course of the
adding evidence to the possibility of participants. Time-variable indicators like house-
non-differential returns of SES by gender. hold income and employment status also had the
Women were more likely to report lower income same trends as education, which favor the reli-
compared with men, but increments in income ability and validity of these ndings. Second, the
were linked with higher levels of SWB for women. retrospective and self-reported nature of the
SWB was also differentially distributed by exposure may be prone to recall bias. This limita-
employment status. In our sample, only one out tion pertains mostly to household income were
of ve Colombians were working in the formal respondents provided information based on their
sector, that is, with a paid salary and job benets knowledge of their household situation. Another
like pension fund or health insurance. It is possi- limitation of the income measure is that it lacked
ble that the job benets associated with formal information regarding the number of people per
work confer psychological health to individuals household, which hindered the computation of
in such employment conditions, especially in a adjusted measures of income typical in econo-
country with prevalent and incident job informal- metrics. Finally, analyses were not able to
ity, and with high rates of unemployment Unem- account for the other factors, including individual
ployed participants (about 13 % of the sample) differences in the interpretation of SWB (Rojas
reported lower levels relative to employed 2007), social desirability or normative standards.
Colombians, either formally or informally. Nevertheless, this study has several strengths
Colombian working in the informal sector that support the external and internal validity of
reported lower SWB relative to those working the ndings. The nationally representativeness
formally. Moreover, the association between and the mixed-sampling strategy combining ran-
employment conditions varied by gender, dom and quota sampling favor the generalization
whereby employed males reported higher levels of the ndings to other non-included regions of
of SWB relative to employed women. the country. In addition, measures of SWB were
collected with standardized procedures, and
based on questions that have proven to be reliable
20.6.2 Study Limitations and Strenghts and valid across nations (Diener 2009). Likewise,
the point-estimates are big enough to rule-out
This study, however, has several limitations that statistical validity issues or associations caused
should be discussed. First, the cross-sectional by chance. Finally, this study assessed multiple
study design cannot establish a temporal ordering indicators of SES, which helped to unpack and
of the associations, and therefore has substantial identify bigger differences in SWB scores.
limitations in establishing causal inference.
Although reverse causation bias cannot be
disregarded because people with better psycho- 20.6.3 Research Implications
logical health could nd better employment or
income opportunities, this bias is unlikely here These Colombian results yield several questions
because the outcome did not inuence exposure to be addressed by further research, and that are
354 D.A. Hurtado
also relevant for public policies aimed to augmenting the access, retention to basic educa-
increase well-being and quality of life of the tion (up to high school) and beyond should be a
population. The attenuation of the estimates fundamental strategy to keep and increment
after adjusting for regional and socio- SWB nationwide, and to reduce SWB disparities
demographic covariates exhorts further (Adler and Rehkopf 2008). Even though the
analyses of contextual/regional and composi- effect size linked with increasing income were
tional determinants of SWB in Colombia. Mul- relatively small, nearly two thirds of the sample
tilevel studies that include area-level variables, were allocated in the second poorest income
for example, poverty rates, income inequality, quintile, therefore these ndings argue for an
unemployment and informality rates as well as improvement of neo-material conditions for the
individual-level information are needed to pro- poorest sectors of the population, including
vide a more complete understanding of the access of public goods and services and living
determinants and variations of socioeconomic conditions. Policies towards the formalization of
factors in Colombia. Additionally, the reported labor and protection/funds of unemployed
linear association between income and SWB, Colombians might contribute to foster and incre-
especially up to quartile 4, invites to assess if a ment levels of SWB. Finally, addressing the gen-
threshold of absolute income exists in relation der gap as shown by the differential returns on
with SWB, where the relationship with SWB SWB by higher SES of women compared with
could change before or after a certain amount men ought to be a public policy priority,
of income. Likewise, it is pertinent to study incrementing education, income and employ-
other reference points and test the Relative Dep- ment opportunities for women, and especially
rivation hypothesis, comparing individuals for those single mothers who are also head of
SWB levels relative to people with higher their respective households (Londono 2011b).
income instead of using the poorest quintiles
as the reference point. Regarding employment
status, future research ought to clarify whether 20.7 Conclusions
higher educational attainment modies the asso-
ciation with SWB. It is plausible that unemploy- Although Colombia reports high levels of SWB,
ment offsets the potential benets that higher this chapter documented socioeconomic
educational might confer to well-being, or con- disparities in the distribution of SWB, where
versely, that highly educated individuals with- less educated, poorer or unemployed individuals
out formal job experience worse SWB relative reported statistically signicant lower SWB
to less educated and unemployed persons. scores. Socioeconomic disparities were in the
Finally, future studies should more beyond order of a fth (poorest and richest quintiles), a
the descriptive aims of this chapter and debate third (unemployed and formally employed) and
if public policies or other political economy almost half of a standard deviation (lowest and
factors may have caused and maintained highest educational level). In addition, this chap-
avoidable and unjust systematic differences by ter revealed differences in SWB by gender,
levels of SES (Navarro and Shi 2001; where women reported systematically lower
Braveman 2006). levels of SWB compared with men within each
From the public policy perspective, this chap- level of SES. Future studies ought to clarify the
ter exhorts the establishment of a monitoring role of contextual/regional variations in the SWB
system of the levels and variations of SWB, in gaps by levels of SES, and continue the surveil-
order to routinely assess whether the SES gap lance and monitor not only of average levels of
narrows or widens over time. Assuming the SWB but also the gaps between high and low
reported associations would be causal, SES individuals and communities.
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Stevenson, B., & Wolfers, J. (2013). Subjective well-
being and income: Is there any evidence of satiation?
Individual and Social Dimensions
of Subjective Well-Being: Evidence 21
Across Latin-American Countries
Victoria Ateca Amestoy, Teresa Garca-Munoz,

and Ana I. Moro Egido
21.1 Introduction based in a list of individually related domains

(van Praag et al. 2003).
It is easy to recognize that what affects subjective Less analysis has been performed, though, in
well-being can hardly be referred only to individ- the broadest circles of domains, that is, domains
ual circumstances, such as health status or earned related to institutional and social circumstances.
income, but that the relevant dimensions for a The relevance of the distinction between those two
good life are also related to broader circles of spheres is relevant from the policy-making point of
inuence. Subjective well-being is also linked view; whereas the social or institutional sphere
with a balanced family life, rich friendship and could leave a place for public policy to intervene
relations with other people, a rewarding social directly (higher public expenditure in education or
status, enjoying a good quality environment and, health public services), the personal sphere of sub-
in the last instance, with a good and fair eco- jective well-being could only be indirectly
nomic, legal and political setting. inuenced by public policy (for instance, by
In the literature of subjective well-being, a lot means of taxation and income distribution policies
of attention has been dedicated to the analysis of or through working-conditions regulation).
the closest circles of the individual. Domains of Before even thinking about any type of public
satisfaction have been measured and analyzed intervention to enhance individual quality of life or
with respect to mainly personal-related spheres subjective well-being, it is necessary to explore
(individual and household circumstances). which are the circumstances that determine that
Van-Praag and co-authors present what they an individual asses his or her quality of life in a
call the anatomy of subjective well-being, particular domain in a positive way. There is an
extensive literature dealing with subjective well-
being determinants (Argyle 1999; Frey and Stutzer
V. Ateca Amestoy (*) 2002; Dolan et al. 2008; van Praag and Ferrer-i-
BETS-Dpto. Fundamentos del Analisis Econ
omico II,
Carbonell 2010; MacKerron 2012; Stutzer and
University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU),
Bilbao, Spain Frey 2012). Following that literature, we are con-
e-mail: victoriamaria.ateca@ehu.es scious that not only objective individual conditions
T. Garca-Munoz matter, but also perceived conditions and evalua-
Dpto. Metodos Cuantitativos para la Economa y la tion of some relative standing and interpersonal
Empresa, Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain relationships are important (Frank 1985; Alpizar
A. Moro Egido et al. 2005 among others). Therefore, throughout
Dpto. Teora e Historia Econ
omica, Universidad de the analysis presented here, we use this

358 V. Ateca Amestoy et al.
classication of the possible determinants of sub- While variables concerning interpersonal

jective well-being: personal variables and interrelationships, such as social capital, have only a
personal variables. statistically signicant inuence on individual
The main novelty of the research is the dis- dimensions of subjective well-being, other
tinction of individual domains and societal variables, such as the interest in politics, only
domains of subjective well-being. The aim is affect the social or institutional dimensions of
double, rst, to check whether some determinant subjective well-being.
can affect differently the different dimensions In terms of the second goal, interestingly, we
(individual as opposed to societal); and second, nd that it is possible to set a degree of substitu-
to analyze if the determinants exert a differential tion between personal characteristics (in terms of
effect across the distribution of subjective well- resources) and interpersonal relationships to
being (i.e. if the effect of one variable on the improve subjective well-being when dealing
lowest ranks of satisfaction related to unhap- with individual dimensions, but that such substi-
piness levels is the same as the effect of that tution does not exists when considering social or
variable on the upper ranks of satisfaction or institutional dimensions of subjective well-
happiness levels). being. This could be important in order to design
With this in mind, we present a cross-country policies to improve quality of life.
study of the determinants of subjective well-being The plan of the rest of the chapter goes as
in different dimensions, using data derived from the follows. In Sect. 21.2, we present the background
Latinobar ometro, an annually conducted cross- and previous ndings from subjective well-being
section public opinion survey, for the year 2007. research, in Latin America and in other interna-
Information is available for 18 countries: tional samples. By doing so, we underpin the
Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa hypotheses that we are going to test in this chap-
Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, ter and we can present the structure of our analy-
Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Pan- sis in Sect. 21.3. We also introduce the survey,
ama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. comment on the characteristics of the data and
We choose this particular dataset and release present the dependent and independent variables
because, in that specic year, a rich bundle of that we use in our analysis. We proceed to pres-
questions to measure subjective well-being and ent the empirical specications in Sect. 21.4, and
interpersonal relationships were included. How- we discuss on the suitability of the estimation
ever, since some of the most ambitious plans to methods (linear regression models, standard
research quality of life in the region have used ordered probit, and generalized ordered probit,
alternative data sources, such as the Gallup Poll depending on the nature of the dependent vari-
(Lora 2008), or the Latin American Public Opinion able). In Sect. 21.5, we discuss the results and put
Project (LAPOP, as in Cordova 2009), we will also them into perspective accounting from previous
take those results into consideration when ndings. Last, in Sect. 21.6, we conclude and
interpreting the ndings of our research. present some insights for future research.
The analysis leads us to draw a map of the
general effect of individual and inter-personal
variables on the individual domains and social 21.2 Background
domains of subjective well-being. In terms of the
rst goal, we nd that most of the variables in the One of the most interesting reviews of ndings
same manner to individual and society on living conditions in the Americas that use the
dimensions. Concerning those variables that do subjective well-being approach is the Inter
not, we would like to highlight that the attitude of American Development Bank (IADB) report
political interest and the social capital that Beyond Facts (Lora 2008). Using data from
measures the foundations of individuals life in the Gallup World Poll and other public opinion
relation to the others or social capital exert a surveys, the IADB presents a report about sub-
different effect on the two spheres of dimensions. jective well-being for Latin America and the
21 Individual and Social Dimensions of Subjective Well-Being: Evidence Across. . . 359
Table 21.1 Classifications of domains and determinants

Personal Variables concerning the individual in
Determinants variables relation to another people
Objective Foundations of the lives of Abilities Family conditions
variables individuals or of society Age Marital status
Gender Other interpersonal conditions
Education Contacts with friends and relatives
bonding social capital
Self-reported Membership and active participation in
ethnic group organizations
Objective results Material Relative conditions of life
conditions of life
Employment Relative standing in the income
status distribution
City size
Wealth index
Individual
assessment of In regard to the situation of
results In regard to individual him/herselfs country/society
Attitudes Political interest Valuation of fairness of the
income distribution
Future expectations for oneself Future expectation for the
country
Voluntary choice of occupation
Assessment of Satisfaction with life Satisfaction with the economy
results Satisfaction with living standard Satisfaction with democracy
Satisfaction with domains (job, free time, housing,
household income, neighborhood)
Elaborated by the authors, using the information of Latinobar
ometro 2007 and adapting the taxonomy proposed by the
IADBs Beyond Facts Report (Lora 2008: page 11)
Caribbean. Following their proposal we will con- et al. 2003; Van Praag and Ferrer-i-Carbonell
sider two different types of dependent variable: 2004; Rojas 2006; Easterlin and Sawangfa
on the one side assessment of results or satisfac- 2009; Kapteyn et al. 2010).
tion at individual level (the referred individual Social or institutional dimensions have not so
sphere dimensions above), and on the other side frequently been researched in the subjective
assessment of results or satisfaction at country or well-being literature, at least explicitly. When
society level (the referred social or institutional considered, the studies take an international per-
sphere dimensions above). As determinants, the spective and explore how the social context
classication proposed in Lora (2008) leads us to inuences subjective well-being (Helliwell
group the different determinants into two et al. 2009). Preferences for social outcomes as
categories: personal variables and variables ination, unemployment and inequality have
concerning the individual in relation with other been explored using the subjective well-being
people (see Table 21.1). approach (DiTella et al. 2001; Alessina
In related literature, the main focus has been et al. 2004; Blanchower 2007; Helliwell
placed on the study of the micro-dimensions of et al. 2009; Blanchower et al. 2013). However,
satisfaction, an arbitrary set of dimensions of life, comparatively less research has been performed
mostly related to individual circumstances. As on individual satisfaction with societal outcomes.
this literature is eminently empirical, the tradi- We consider the distinctions among determinants
tional research of domain satisfaction in econom- at personal and at social level. In the rst group,
ics relies on how the information in relevant at the personal level we include abilities, material
socio-economic surveys is collected (Van Praag conditions of life and attitudes.
Among determinants classied as abilities, et al. 2013; Cortes-Aguilar and Moro-Egido 2011)
the most usual ones are age, gender, education do not nd a statistically signicant gender effect.
and ethnicity.1 Though a general U-shaped age In this last study, there is neither a gender effect for
effect is found in many papers and for most of the job satisfaction. Regarding health satisfaction, men
domain satisfactions (McAdams et al. 2012), are more likely to report higher satisfaction than
there is still controversy regarding the effect, women (which turns out to be a consistent result
and there is evidence that the curvilinear rela- across cultures and regions; though life expectancy
tionship seems to partially hold in developing is higher for women). However, when asked about
countries (Blanchower and Oswald 2008). satisfaction with the health system, signicant
However, researchers have found that life satis- differences are not found (Lora 2008).
faction have a U-shaped relationship with age in In many studies, it is found that education
different samples of Latin-American countries exert a negative effect in life satisfaction and
(Lora 2008; Graham and Pettinato 2001; satisfaction with some personal domains of life
Cortes-Aguilar et al. 2013; Cortes-Aguilar and (van-Praag and Ferrer-i-Carbonell 2004). This
Moro-Egido 2011). For analysis of domain satis- result is interpreted in terms of the higher
faction, the results are thus quite different. In the expectations of the highly educated and in
case of job satisfaction, there exist contradictory terms of the difculties of meeting those
results. For instance, Cortes-Aguilar and expectations. Contrary to this evidence, for
coauthors, using Latinobarometro Corporation Latin-American countries, some studies have
2007, nd a weak positive linear relationship found a positive signicant effect over life satis-
with age, while Rojas (2007), using a survey faction (Graham and Felton 2006; Graham and
realized in Mexico, afrm that the job satisfac- Pettinato 2001). For job satisfaction only the
tion decrease with age. About health satisfaction, highest educational level has a positive effect
older people are less likely to declare that they (Cortes-Aguilar et al. 2013). In one of the few
are satised with their health than the young. studies that analyse satisfaction with macro-
However, Latin American in their 50s and 60s dimensions, Graham and Pettinato (2001) nd
express greater satisfaction about health care that the most educated are the ones with strongest
services that those in their 20s (Lora 2008). One preferences for democracy but that education has
of the possible explanations for this apparently a negative and signicant effect on satisfaction
paradoxical result is the effect of expectations with democracy. In that same line, people who
and aspirations. There could also be mixed evi- suffer from the lack of quality education are the
dence, due to pure age affects combined with most satised with the education system (Lora
cohort effects, an additional argument in favour 2008). A result that could be interpreted, again,
of running longitudinal studies over populations in terms of expectations of how institutions and
(Lopez-Ulloa et al. 2013). higher services should work, with higher
The results for gender are inconclusive. While aspirations for the most educated members of
the IDB report says that the women are most the society.
satised with their life than men (Lora 2008; In US and UK, Blanchower and Oswald
Graham and Pettinato 2001; Cortes-Aguilar (2004) found differences between whites and
other non-whites races in life satisfaction. For
1
differences by self-declared ethnic origin, Cortes-
Although we follow Loras classication, we are con-
Aguilar et al. (2013) nd statistically signicant
scious that not all these abilities are of the same nature.
For instance, education belongs to the category of abilities differences in Latin America about life satisfaction
that can change over time and are susceptible of some (with whites more satised than indigenous), but
public intervention, whereas personal characteristics as these differences are not found in job satisfaction.
age, gender or ethnicity are of a different nature . How-
There is another bundle of variables (among
ever, since in our analysis we have cross-section data and
this fact will determine the methods for the analysis, we personal variables) that describe material
can consider all of them abilities in a rough sense. conditions of life: labour status and occupation,
place of residence (habitat size) and material authors have alternatively constructed wealth
resources that the individual has to satisfy mate- indexes using information about goods and assets
rial needs. of the individuals or their household. The evi-
Unemployment is one of the most harming dence found is that individuals material
circumstances on life satisfaction (Clark 2003; conditions, captured by wealth indexes, have a
Blanchower et al. 2013). This result is found positive effect on life, household income and job
in developed economies (Di Tella et al. 2001; satisfaction (Lora 2008; Graham and Pettinato
Frey and Stutzer 2002), and also in Latin- 2001; Ateca-Amestoy et al. 2014; Cortes-Aguilar
America (see, for instance, Graham and Pettinato et al. 2013).
2001). However, a common pattern is not found In the second group of determinants, at social
in other job attributes, such as self-employment. level, we include those that are dened in terms of
In developed economies self-employed the relations that the individual has in relation to
individuals report higher levels of life (and job) other people: the familiar relationships, other inter-
satisfaction than wage earners (Blanchower and personal relationships and relative conditions of
Freeman 1997; Blanchower et al. 2001; Frey life. Members of society that are linked by familiar
and Benz 2003). The results can hardly be and friendship bonds or others linked by bridging
extrapolated to a context with much higher relations, so linked in some formal or information
proportions of informal jobs. Thus, in the aggre- association, though different (Narayan 1999). The
gate, in Latin America, self-employed are less way a person interacts with others may also inu-
satised with their life than employed (Graham ence satisfaction, though direct effects and though
and Pettinato 2001; Graham and Felton 2005, indirect ones (one may be more exposed to envy
2006). In order to clarify this relationship in the more frequently he interacts with others, for
Latin America, Cortes-Aguilar et al. (2013) instance).
explicitly take into account the heterogeneity Among family conditions, the evidence about
underlying in the self-employment and nd, the inuence of marital status on subjective well-
among other results, that precarious self- being or assessment is contradictory in the Latin
employed individuals are as satised as the American countries. On the one hand, some stud-
employed with their life but less with job and ies nd out that only divorce seems to affect
household income, while business owners are negatively life satisfaction, with other marital sta-
more satised with their lives, household income tus having no impact in comparison to being sin-
and job. gle (Lora 2008). On the other hand, Graham and
There has been extensive research on the Pettinato (2001) conclude that being married has a
effect of income on life-satisfaction. Starting positive effect, in line with ndings for other
with the Easterlin paradox, economists and cultures and regions (Argyle 1999; Oswald 1997).
other social scientists have tried to disentangle The importance of interpersonal relationships
the effect of income (or relative income) in hap- has been highlighted by Argyle (1999), Rojas
piness (McBride 2001; Stutzer 2004; Ferrer-i- (2007), and Winkelman (2009), among other
Carbonell 2005; Luttmer 2005; Vera-Toscano social scientists. Social capital has distinct
et al. 2006; Caporale et al. 2009; Mentzakis and dimensions and possesses some measurement
Moro 2009; Tao and Chiu 2009; Wolpert 2010; challenges (for an economic approximation to the
Pereira and Coelho 2012). As a proxy for mate- concept, see Durlauf and Fafchamps 2004). It is an
rial conditions, authors have also used some mea- individual resource: a productive resource that can
sure of consumption (Blanchower and Oswald help a person to nd a new job (Winkelman 2009),
2004; Kingdon and Knight 2006; Bookwalter or a strategic complement input in the production
and Dalenberg 2010). Unfortunately, in many and enjoyment of relational goods (Bruni and
instances (as in some surveys from Latin- Stanca 2008; Bechetti et al. 2008; Meier and
America), it is difcult to obtain any of those Stutzer 2008; Sabatini 2009; Sarracino 2010;
measures. To overcome this problem, some Elgar et al. 2011; Leung et al. 2011; Han
et al. 2012). It is also an aggregate resource: age) on a ten step ladder representing their soci-
societies with higher level of trust enjoy better ety, in which on the rst step are located the
living conditions, is found to be related with better poorest and on the tenth step, the richest. They
institutions, and people experience higher satisfac- nd that positive rankings in these classications
tion (Inglehart 1999; Woolcock and Narayan had positive effects on life satisfaction.
2000; Marshall and Stolle 2004; Sabatini 2008;
Tokuda et al. 2010). In developed countries, the
evidence shows that individuals with high levels of 21.2.1 Data and Variables
social capital (measured as belonging to network
of active social relationships or trust in others) tend 21.2.1.1 Data
to be happier with their lives (Helliwell 2003). In this analysis, we use individual data from the
There is also evidence that social capital is 2007 Latinobarometo survey, a representative
among the strongest correlates of individuals life sample of adult population in 18 Latin American
satisfaction (Bartolini et al. 2008; Ateca-Amestoy and Caribean countries. The Latinobarometro
et al. 2014). Moreover, social contacts may (Latinobarometro 2007a, b; 2009) is an annual
enhance the effect of social comparisons for rela- public opinion survey conducted in 18 Latin
tive income (an effect more intense for those who American and Caribbean countries. Unfortu-
perform worse in their reference group (Ateca- nately, it is not a longitudinal study, so we cannot
Amestoy et al. 2014; Cortes-Aguilar and Moro- keep track and examine at the effect of changes
Egido 2011). in individual variables over the same individuals
When assessing how relative income is deter- subjective well-being.2 There are common
mined, the choice of the relevant reference group blocks of information in all the annual releases
is an important empirical issue (van-Praag and but, in addition to the standard demographic and
Ferrer-i-Carbonell 2004; Luttmer 2005; Vera socio-economic variables that come in the ques-
et al. 2006; Bookwalter and Dalenberg 2010). tionnaire every year, for the year 2007, more
In very few cases, data set include explicitly questions about individual satisfaction with dif-
questions that state who the respondent compares ferent life and social dimensions were included,
with (Clark and Senik 2010). Further, as well as a remarkable group of questions
perceptions of relative standing may differ con- related to social capital. For instance, the 2007
siderably from their relative standing based on release of the Latinobarometro includes
reported income (Posel and Cassale 2011). For questions about satisfaction with life, with stan-
example, individuals may think that they are dard of life, with health, with the economy, with
worse off than their reference group, and hence income, with education, with democracy, with
feel relatively deprived, even if they actually job, and with pensions (along with other social
have an income that exceeds the group income dimensions).
level. If this is the case, we would expect indi- The 2007 dataset consists of 20,212
vidual perceptions of relative standing to be a observations of adults,3 with approximately
stronger predictor of subjective well-being than 10001200 interviews per country. Data are col-
how individuals are actually ranked compared to lected in each country by a research rm or
others based on objective measures. This is one
of the important but less emphasized concepts of 2
The interest of conducting subjective well-being
bridging the connection between subjective well- research using panel data in order to better address unob-
being and social comparison (other relevant served heterogeneity and causality problems is to be fur-
items and implications are considered in ther explained in the presentation of the estimation
method. For a general discussion, see Van Praag and
Powdthavee 2009). In the study by Graham and
Ferrer-i-Carbonell 2004.
Pettinato (2001), they use the information from a 3
Eighteen years for all the countries considered, with the
question that asks individuals to place them- exceptions of Brazil and Nicaragua, where the legal age
selves and their parents (when they were their for adulthood is 16.
institution and are then merged into a single of the domains satisfaction in regard to the indi-
dataset. The entire survey is treated as a large vidual and in regard to the situation, respectively.
region-wide sample, with the weights assigned in The second one, for robustness check of our
the whole dataset for each individual and coun- ndings and to gain some insights into some
try. For our analysis, we exclude individuals with domains, is to consider specic dimensions by
missing information for some of the variables, so themselves separately.
the nal sample that we analyze ranges from
9496 observations4 (for the estimation of job
21.2.2.2 Micro-dimensions
satisfaction over a restricted sample composed
of Self-Assessment
by those holding a job) to more than 18,708
Regarding micro-dimensions, respondents are
observations (for satisfaction with income) from
asked in the Latinobarometro 2007 about their
the 18 countries included in the dataset.
satisfaction with their life and the next domains:
standard of living, job, free time, housing, house-
hold income and neighborhood. At that point, it
21.2.2 Variables is important to notice that satisfaction with their
life is of higher hierarchy than the rest of
21.2.2.1 Dimensions of Individual domains that data provide. Therefore, we con-
Satisfaction: Presenting sider satisfaction of life by itself as an index of
Alternative Approaches micro-satisfaction; and additionally, we con-
to Subjective Well-Being struct using principal component analysis5 a lin-
We will rst present the dependent variables that ear additively index of micro-satisfaction index
we are going to use. We consider the different using information about all domains. Second, we
domains of the two different dimensions of the consider separately some of the main domains
assessment of results. Following the taxonomy included into the index, such as standard of life,
presented in Table 21.1, we distinguish between job and income. We now describe the questions
personal dimensions (micro-dimension) and included into the survey. All descriptive statistics
social dimensions (macro-dimensions). The rst are included in Table 21.2. All descriptive statis-
category is related to the individual subjective tics are calculated using country weights.
evaluation of results in relation to the individual Life satisfaction is measured in a 4 points
him/herself. Individuals evaluate how satised descending scale. This variable corresponds to
they are with the whole life or with some partic- the answer to the question In general, would
ular domain of their lives (domain satisfaction is you say you are satised with your life? Would
a concept related to two-layer models of subjec- you say that you are: (a) very satised, (b) fairly
tive well-being, either following a bottom-up or satised, (c) not very satised, (d) not at all
an up-bottom approach, van-Praag et al. 2003). satised?6 We construct the variable
The second category is related to the individual
subjective evaluation of results in relation to the
situation of society or country, including individ- 5
Principal components analysis is a statistical procedure
ual evaluation of domains such as economy, using a set of variables to extract the few orthogonal linear
democracy, public services, etc. combinations of the variables that capture the common
To construct our empirical specications, we information in the most satisfactory way. Consistently,
take two different strategies. The rst one is to the rst principal component of a set of variables is the
linear index of all the variables that capture the largest
build two indexes for the micro and macro amount of information common to all the variables. Thus,
domains of satisfaction, using the information our dependent variables that use information coming from
different domains are additive and linear (Van Praag and
Ferrer-i-Carbonell 2004; Rojas 2006).
4 6
If we consider the index, the minimum level of In all cases of satisfaction variables, the scale is
observations is 9415 for the micro dimensions. reversed.
364

Individual variables
Variables concerning the individual in relation to another
Personal variables people
Objective Foundations of the lifes of individuals Abilities Family conditions
variables or of society Mean/% St. Dev Mean/% St. Dev
Age 40.39 1.66 Marital status
Gender (male 1) 0.49 0.50 Married 0.59 0.49
Education Single 0.29 0.45
Secondary 0.37 0.48 Other interpersonal conditions
Tertiary 0.16 0.37 Bonding SC 0.61 0.49
Ethnic group Bridging SC 0.81 1.61
Mestizo 0.43 0.49
White 0.28 0.45
Other 0.18 0.38
Objective results Material conditions of life Relative conditions of life
Mean/% St. Dev Mean/% St. Dev
Employment status Rank 4.57 1.82
Self-employed 0.30 0.46
Unemployed 0.05 0.22
Out of labor force 0.37 0.48
Size of city
Small city 0.15 0.36
Capital 0.14 0.35
Wealth index 6.13 2.49
Individual assessment of results
V. Ateca Amestoy et al.
21
Opinion Assessment of results In regard to individual him/herself In regard to the situation of country/society
variables Sat_life 2.97 0.83 Sat_economy 2.08 0.81
Sat_stan 5.25 2.81 Sat_democracy 2.32 0.85
Satisfaction with Satisfaction with domains
domains
Sat_job 5.06 3.33 Sat_healthcare 2.57 0.91
Sat_leisure 5.25 2.95 Sat_education 2.63 0.89
Sat_housing 5.54 3.04 Sat_pension system 2.21 0.91
Sat_income 4.74 2.82 Sat_greenpublic 2.48 0.91
Sat_neighbourhood 5.52 2.99 Sat_municipal 2.38 0.87
Sat_security 4.65 2.96 Sat_roads 2.27 0.91
Sat_publictrans 2.37 0.91
Sat_colection 2.56 0.90
Sat_sewerage 2.47 0.90
Index of satisfaction 4.75 2.73 Index of satisfaction reduced 5.01 2.41
(sat_micro) (Sat_macro_b)
Index of satisfaction (sat_macro) 4.83 2.13
Attitudes Pol_interest 2.02 0.98 Fairnes_distribution 1.98 0.77
Expectations_one 2.55 0.93 Expectation_country 3.07 1.10
Voluntary 0.67 0.47
Individual and Social Dimensions of Subjective Well-Being: Evidence Across. . .
365
(Sat_Life), that shows an average value of 2.97 with which each of those dimensions enter into
in our sample. the index. The average index for macro-
For specic domains, the measurement is satisfaction is 4.83. We also build an alternative
slightly different, since those questions are of index Sat_macro(b) that only considers informa-
the type Could you please tell me on a scale tion regarding the following three public
from 0 to 10, where 0 means you are very services: education, health and pensions (average
dissatised and 10 means you are very value of 5.01). Again, for robustness check and
satised, how satised you are with . . . so to further explore the correlates of satisfaction
far?. With this information we construct a vari- with the most important public provided goods,
able (Sat_micro) that is an index of all the six we also consider separately satisfaction with
individual dimensions they are asked to report each of the former three public services
(with standard of living, job, free time, housing, (Sat_education, average of 2.63, Sat_health,
household income and neighborhood). The aver- average of 2.57, and Sat_pensions, average of
age value is 4.75. For robustness check, and for 2.21) as dependent variables in some
comparability of results with previous ndings, specications.
we also consider as dependent variables in some Additionally, in the Latinobarometro survey
specications the following variables: satisfac- we also have information about the assessment
tion with standard of living (Sat_Stan, with an of results in regard to the situation of country/
average of 5.25), job satisfaction (Sat_job with society in terms of satisfaction with the democ-
an average of 5.06), and satisfaction with house- racy (Sat_dem) and satisfaction with the econ-
hold income (Sat_Inc, with an average of 4.74). omy (Sat_eco), with averages of 2.32 and 2.08
respectively. These questions are of the type In
general, would you say you are satised with . . .?
21.2.2.3 Macro-dimensions of Self-
Would you say that you are: (a) very satised,
Assessment
(b) fairly satised, (c) not very satised, (d) not at
In the Latinobarometro 2007, individuals are also
all satised?.
asked about their satisfaction with some social
aspects: access to healthcare, to education, the
availability of green areas and public spaces,
municipal services, roads and paving, public 21.2.3 Explanatory Variables
transport, refuse collection, sewerage services
Following the conceptual setting, as presented in
and the pension system. These questions are of
the type Would you say you are very satised Table 21.1, we now introduce the explanatory
variables that we consider in the analysis.
(1), fairly satised (2), not very satised (3) or
not at all satised (4) with. . .?. We transform
the information to an ascending scale and, with 21.2.3.1 Objective Variables:
that information, we construct derived index Foundations of the Lives
variables. First, the variable Sat_macro,that is of Individuals or Society Abilities
an index of all the reported satisfaction with To control for gender effects, we dene the cate-
those nine public services. Using principal gorical variable Male, which is coded 1 if the
components analysis,7 we derive the weights individual is male and 0 if female. In our sample,
49 % of individuals are male. The age of the
respondent is included with the variable Age
7
Principal components analysis is a statistical procedure measured in years and its square (Age squared),
using a set of variables to extract the few orthogonal linear in order to test for potential nonlinearity in the
combinations of the variables that capture the common
information in the most satisfactory way. Consistently,
the rst principal component of a set of variables is the our dependent variables that use information coming from
linear index of all the variables that capture the largest different domains are additive and linear (Van Praag and
amount of information common to all the variables. Thus, Ferrer-i-Carbonell 2004; Rojas 2006).
relationship between satisfaction with micro- and 29 % of individuals have not been married and
macro-dimensions and with different domains. 59 % have a partner.
Recall the controversy regarding age effects and
domain satisfaction, as well as the divergent 21.2.3.3 Other Interpersonal Conditions
results in different regional samples. Due to the In this category we include variables to measure
cross-section nature of our data, we cannot effec- how the individual interacts with his/her closest
tively control for cohort effects (Lopez-Ulloa ones. We include social capital, as a personal
et al. 2013). The average age in the sample is resource, and make use of the special richness
40.4 years. of the 2007 edition of the Latinobarometro to
Five categorical variables are included to follow the existing literature that distinguishes
cover all the education categories in the dataset. between bonding and bridging social capital.
The variable Illiterate takes the value of 1 if the We also include the possibility that social capital
individual is illiterate. The categorical Primary- shape the effect of the relative income.
Incomplete is coded 1 when the individual has Respondents in the Latinobarometro 2007
not completed primary education.8 If the individ- survey are asked how often they meet friends
ual has completed primary, secondary or univer- and relatives (beside normal activities) and
sity education, we construct the dummies about their active membership of a political
Primary, Secondary and University, respectively. party, a trade union or professional association,
In our sample, 37 % have a secondary level of a church or other religious organization, and/or a
education, and nally 16 % have a university sports, leisure or cultural group. As done by
degree. Beugelsdijk and Smulders (2003) and Sabatini
In an attempt to test for possible ethnic (2009), we use the information about the fre-
differences in Latin America, we dene four quency of contacts with friends and relatives to
categorical variables guided by the self-reported construct the categorical variable SC-Bonding.
ethnic group: Indigenous, White, Mestizo9 and This variable takes the value of 1, if the respon-
Other (Asian, black, mulatto10 and others). In dent meets friends and relatives at least once a
our sample, 43 % of individuals are mestizos, month, and 0 otherwise. On average, 61 % of the
28 % are white, 11 % are indigenous and 18 % respondents in our sample meet friends and
belong to other ethnic groups. relatives at least once a month. We also dene
the variable SC-Bridging, which is a linear index
constructed using an individuals answers about
21.2.3.2 Family Conditions
their membership of associations such as politi-
To control for marital status, we dene a categor-
cal, labor/professional, religious and sport/lei-
ical variable labeled Single, that takes the value
sure associations. Principal components analysis
of 1 if the individual has never married, another
is used to derive the weights. The index ranges
categorical variable, Married, that is coded 1 if
from 0 to 10, and the average value in our sample
the individual is married or cohabiting, and a last
is 0.81.
one, Other, that is equal to 1 if the individual is
separated, divorced or widowed. In our sample,
21.2.4 Objective Variables: Objective
8
We differentiate between illiterate and incomplete pri- Results
mary education levels because being able to read and
write can make a difference in low income countries in 21.2.4.1 Material Conditions of Life
terms of capabilities. In this category we include employment status,
9
The individuals classied themselves as a person of
size of the city and wealth index. This last vari-
mixed race, particularly of indigenous and white
parentage. able is the way to control for the effect of mate-
10
This category includes individuals of mixed black and rial resources into the dependent variables
white parentage. (remember that no measurement of income or
expenditure in consumption is available in this goods and assets households have. In this chapter,
dataset). we proceed in the same way as in Ateca-Amestoy
To capture the relevance of the employment et al. (2014), and we consider a variable that pro-
status, we consider a set of dummy variables: vide us with information on the level of the
Self-employed, Employed, Non-working The households material well-being. We construct a
main criterion used to construct this classica- weighted, linear index of household wealth using
tion, regarding self-employment, is whether the information about the ownership or access to dif-
remuneration received depends wholly on the ferent assets and services. Using principal
(potential) prots from the sales of goods and components analysis, we derive the weights with
services that are produced by the economic unit which each of those assets enter into the index.11
in which the job is located. If it does, then this is Ten assets and services were considered: televi-
considered a self-employment job; and if it does sion, refrigerator, own home, computer, washing
not, then this is considered a paid employment machine, cell phone, car, a second or holiday
job (ILO 1993, see below for the denition of home, running water and bathroom with shower.
labor market indicators in the macro- A similar index is used by the Latin American
determinants). The variable Self-employed that Public Opinion Project (LAPOP), with slight
takes the value of 1 when individuals state that differences (Cordova 2009).12 Our linear index
they are self-employed, and 0 when people in the constructed from our analysis is used as a proxy
workforce are employed by an organization. In of each individuals material welfare and house-
our sample, 30 % of individuals are self- hold wealth.13 The index is rescaled from 0 to
employed. We also include the variable Non- 10 and will be referred to in our analysis as Wealth.
working to measure those that are out of the Table 21.2 presents the main descriptive statistics
labor force (due to temporary unemployment or of the variables used.
some other reasons). The percentage of
individuals in this category is 37 %. Finally the
21.2.4.2 Relative Conditions of Life
unemployed are about 5 %.
To model the idea behind the inuence of rela-
The size of the place of residence can make a
tive standing in the income distribution and
difference in the determination of subjective
potential relative income effects, we follow the
well-being, since it determines, among other,
literature that uses the rank relative to others. The
access to public services such as health
objective measures of relative income assume
treatments and education. Our conjecture is that
that individuals are able to rank themselves
this bundle of variables could have a potential
greater effect in the macro-dimensions of satis-
faction. We construct a set of dummy variables, 11
As mentioned before, principal components analysis is
replicating the choice of other authors (Graham a statistical procedure using a set of variables to extract
and Felton 2005): Capital City (equal to 1 if the the few orthogonal linear combinations of the variables
that capture the common information in the most satisfac-
individual lives in a capital city), Medium City tory way. Consistently, the rst principal component of a
(if the individuals town has more than 10,000 set of variables is the linear index of all the variables that
inhabitants and is not a capital city), and Small capture the largest amount of information common to all
City (if the individual lives in a place that has the variables.
12
The LAPOP index includes information about the own-
fewer than 10,000 inhabitants). In our sample,
ership of a landline and microwave, and excludes owning
15 % of individuals live in a capital city, while a home and owning a second home.
14 % reside in a small city. 13
The internal and external validity of this type of index
Income is not desirable in itself, but rather in and its robustness to the inclusion of different assets can
that it is a resource for consumption. Unfortu- be found in a paper by Filmer and Prichett (2001). Wealth
indexes (showing high correlation with household con-
nately, neither income nor consumption data are
sumption expenditure) are used to explain the relationship
collected in the Latinobarometro 2007. Neverthe- between households material conditions and childrens
less, the survey provides information on certain school enrollment in India.
accurately in the income distribution. Posel and We have the information about the reported
Casale (2011), Guven and Sorensen (2012), and degree of freedom to choose the occupation in
Rozer and Kraaykamp (2013) among others four degree scale (fully, fairly general, not gener-
explore how individuals perceptions of where ally, not at all). Thus, we dene the variable Vol-
they rank relative to others impact on their self- untary as a dummy variable that takes value 1 if the
assessed levels of well-being. individual reports to have fully or fairly general
We choose the variable Rank that comes from freedom to choose the occupation. About 67 % of
the question Imagine a staircase with 10 steps, population reports to have that degree of freedom.
in which on the rst step are located the poorest
and on the 10th step, the richest. Where would
you put yourself on that staircase? The average
21.3.2 In Regard to the Situation
rank reported is 4.57. By using this variable, we
of the Society
also avoid the controversial issue of exogenously
establishing the reference group for the individ-
We consider the variable Fairness_distribution
ual (Clark and Senik 2010).
to reect the opinion about how fair the individ-
To model the possible interaction between
ual thinks the income distribution is (it is in
social capital and relative concern, that is, to
4 values scale from very unfair to very fair).
test the inuence of bonding and bridging social
The average opinion in our sample is 1.98.
capital as enhancers or mitigators of wealth
Equivalently to the individual situation, we con-
comparisons, we include the variables
sider the variable Future expectations (country)
Bonding*Rank and Bridging*Rank that are the
that reects how the individual sees over the next
interaction between Rank(own) and both forms
12 months the countrys economic situation. Again,
of social capital.
this variable is in a 4 values scale from much
better to much worse with average of 3.07.
21.3 Opinion Variables: Attitudes
Here we consider another sort of personal capital, 21.4 The Model

to accommodate the personal relationship with
the system of norms and values; a type of capital The nature of the dependent variables is of two
is sometimes referred as cultural capital (Mufes types. When dealing with the indexes, the depen-
and Headay 2013). To do so, we include a bundle dent variable is continuous, so a suitable estima-
of attitudinal variables. tion method is to estimate a linear regression
model, with clustering by country to calculate
the standard errors. Concerning the specic
21.3.1 In Regard to Individual domains of self-assessment, the dependent
Him/Herself variables are categorical, so a model of the fam-
ily of ordered probit models is an appropriate
We consider here a measure of how interested alternative. In this section, we will present the
the individual is in politics (Pol_int), in a 4 values generalized ordered probit model that we esti-
scale from not at all interested to very inter- mate and will comment on why we choose it
ested. The average value is 2.02. We also over a pooled standard ordered probit.14
include the variable Future expectations (own)
that reects how the individual sees over the next
14
12 months his own economic situation and that of The implications of the nature of the dependent variable
and the estimation method are assessed in Ferrer-i-
his family. This variable is in a 4 values scale
Carbonell and Frijters (2004). A brief though updated
from much better to much worse with aver- overview of estimation methods can be found in
age of 2.55. MacKerron (2012).
In the pooled standard ordered probit model, previous expression of the marginal effects it is
the marginal or partial effect on the probability of possible to conclude that:
choosing alternative k, when the jth covariate
MPEkj z j
changes, is given by: 21:2
MPEk j0 z j0
PrGSi kjzi
MPEkj z
z j which does not depend on I and k. Notice that this
h 0
0
i ratio leads to the concept of compensation varia-
k1 zi k zi j tion.16 In this case, for example, that ratio can
21:1 measure how much of a variation in individuals
income is needed to offset the given change in
Where (.) denotes the density function of the another covariate such that all probabilities
standard normal distribution. Note that if one remain unchanged. In sum, in standard ordered
coefcient is twice as big as another, then so is models this compensation variation is the same
the size of the marginal effect. From the last across the distribution of satisfaction.
expression it is easy to infer that the magnitude As a second restriction, Boes and
of these probability changes depends on the spe- Winkelmann (2006a) point out that the single
cic values of the covariates for the i-th crossing property, from the standard normal and
observation.15 the logistic density functions, precludes a exible
Recent literature explores asymmetries in the analysis of the marginal probability effects by
effect of some determinants, such as for example design. The marginal probability effect in these
income, on subjective well-being, based on the models can change their sign only once when
idea that the determinants of satisfaction and moving from the smallest to the largest outcome.
dissatisfaction might not be the same. Clark The generalized ordered probit model allows
et al. (2005), using latent class models and data for different parameter vectors of thresholds k
from the European Community Household (by making them dependent on covariates k ek
0
Panel, nd that the effect of an income change zi k ), while the standard model restricts those
is larger in the latent satised than in the latent parameters to be the same. Therefore, the
dissatised classes. Mentzakis and Moro (2009) generalized ordered model allows for more exi-
and Boes and Winkelmann (2010), using bility in the marginal probability effects, and hence
generalized ordered probit models, show that in the relative marginal probability effects; at the
the effect of income is different in different cost of a much heavier parameterization. It allows
parts of the satisfaction distribution. Instead of accounting for individual heterogeneity. For
using latent class, we explore the marginal example, the marginal effects on the highest and
effects using the standard ordered probit and the lowest levels of satisfaction can have equal
also the generalized ordered probit model. sign in the generalized model but not in the stan-
As it is shown by Boes and Winkelmann dard one (Boes and Winkelmann 2006b, 2010):
(2006a), after a closer look to the MPEkj(z), two
0
restrictive properties of the marginal probability MPEk j z k1 zi k1 k1, j
effects in standard ordered response models
0
become apparent, limiting their practice useful- k zi k k j 21:3
ness. First, the relative marginal probability effects
between the covariates zj and zj0 are constant across with the consequent inuence on the relative
individuals and the outcome distribution. From the marginal probability, that now depends on the
outcome distribution:
15 16
For a complete revision of assumptions and goodness of An especially useful concept and magnitude for policy
t test, see Mora and Moro-Egido (2008). evaluation (van-Praag and Ferrer-i-Carbonell 2004).
0 0
MPEk j z k1 zi k1 k1, j k zi k k j public transport, refuse collection, sewerage
0
0

MPEk j0 z k1 zi k1 k1, j0 k zi k k j0 services, pension system). We have also built
21:4 the reduced version of the index, Sat_macro_b,
to consider only three main publicly provided
In this chapter, we are going to estimate services (healthcare, education, pension system).
generalized ordered probit models. For the The results on the micro and macro-determinants
sake of comparability with previous results of those three indexes are obtained from the
(many of them based the estimation of pooled estimation of linear regression models, with clus-
standard ordered probit), we will also estimate tering by country to calculate the standard errors.
ordered probit. To capture the possibility that Secondly, we have considered as dependent
omitted variables are clustered at the country variables different specic dimensions for micro
level (imagine that national economic and insti- and macro satisfaction. For the case of micro-
tutional factors are of some inuence in the satisfaction, we analyze separately different
determination of happiness), we consider that dimensions of assessment of results in regard
clustering by country to calculate the standard to individual him/herself that are commonly
errors. studied in the literature, that is: life satisfaction17
Since we are going to analyze a substantial (Sat_life), satisfaction with standard of living,
amount of estimated models, in order to better job satisfaction and satisfaction with income
compare the results and the impact of covariates (Sat_standard, Sat_job,Sat_income). For the
across the dimensions, we have computed and case of macro-satisfaction, as dependent variable
will report the marginal effects. This will allow we have taken into account satisfaction with each
for an easier interpretation of the estimated of the three main public services (Sat_education,
coefcients. Sat_healthcare and Sat_pensions), satisfaction
with economy (Sat_economy) and satisfaction
with democracy (Sat_democracy). We consider
different specications for any of them. Here, we
21.5 The Empirical Results will discuss only on the results derived from the
estimation of generalized ordered probit models,
In this section, we rst start describing the results
with clustering by country to calculate the stan-
concerning the indexes we have built using dif-
dard errors.
ferent domains of satisfaction (micro and macro)
Recall that the explanatory variables we have
described in the previous section. We have con-
chosen to explain the different options of satis-
sidered three indexes of assessment of results
faction as dependent variables are grouped in
as dependent variables: a linear index with all
terms of the taxonomy used thorough the chap-
micro-domains (Sat_micro), an index with all
ter: foundations of the lives of individuals or of
public domains (Sat_macro), and a restricted
society (abilities and family conditions and
version of this last index with the three main
social capital), variables that measure objective
public services (Sat_macro_b). We have built
results (relative conditions of life and employ-
the index Sat_micro, that includes dimensions
ment status), and attitudes (cultural capital at
classied as assessment of results in regard to
individual and country level).
individual him/herself about standard of life,
Before starting the discussion of the main
job, leisure, housing, household income, neigh-
results, we would like to note that for the subset
borhood, and security. We have also the
of the group of variables classied as
Sat_macro index, that captures dimensions clas-
sied as assessment of results in regard to the
17
situation of country/society about public Recall that this measure is an overall measure of evalu-
services (healthcare, education, green areas/pub- ation of life, and it could be considered as a measure of
higher hierarchy than the rest, and therefore the alterna-
lic spaces, municipal services, roads/paving,
tive to the micro-satisfaction index.
Foundations of the lives of individuals or of the sign of the effect is similar the magnitude of
society abilities (among personal variables) the effect is different, since variables related to
and family conditions (among variables personal resources (wealth and social capital, as
concerning the individual in relation to another well as perceived ranking) have larger effect on
people) we nd results very much in line with micro-satisfaction, a reasonable result, as the
those presented in Sect. 21.2.18 For almost all micro-dimensions are the sphere of direct choice
specications, we found no gender effect, but of the individual (more personal resources will
satisfaction diminishes with age, until it reaches enable the individual to achieve higher levels of
a minimum and then increases. While being utility).
married does not have an effect on satisfaction, There exists a group of variables that exerts
separated, divorced or widowed individuals are different effect in micro or macro-satisfaction. In
less satised than single individuals. Although particular, having a higher political interest
some previous studies for Latin American decreases micro-satisfaction and has no effect
countries have found that education variables on macro-satisfaction. Higher expectations on
have a highly signicant effect over satisfaction economy future increases macro-satisfaction
(Graham and Felton 2006), in our analysis we and has no effect on micro-satisfaction. Addi-
nd that only the highest educational level has a tionally, when considering the macro-
positive effect on satisfaction in our sample. We satisfaction index reduced to the three basic pub-
also nd that whites are more satised than indig- lic services (Sat_macro_b), two extra effects
enous individuals. Finally, living in a capital city appear: being self-employed only affects nega-
has a negative effect on satisfaction, while peo- tively the satisfaction with that reduced version
ple who live in small cities are more satised of the index and the existence of bonding social
than people in large urban areas. capital enhances the effect of relative income.
In what follows, we will concentrate in the Recall that bonding social capital is related to
results derived for all the rest of regressors. We the connections with friends and relatives, so
rst present the results for the indexes of satis- people that interact more with the closest ones
faction (Table 21.3). The estimation method in tend to be more inuenced by the reference
this case, as presented before, is linear regression groups outcomes.
method. Now, we move to analyze the estimation
We observe that, most of the explanatory results for the specic dimension of satisfactions,
variables affect similarly to both dimensions of either micro or macro, listed before at the begin-
self-assessment (individual measured in the ning of the section. Since all the variables are
Sat_micro index and society measured in ordered outcomes and, to interpret the results, we
the Sat_macro and Sat_macro_b indexes). In discuss on the marginal effects of individual
particular, self assessment in regard to individual characteristics (personal variables and variables
him/herself (micro-satisfaction) and self assess- dened with respect to others). Marginal effects
ment in regard to situation of the country/society allow us for two ways to interpret the generalized
(macro-satisfaction) are positively affected by ordered probit models (Boes and Winkelmann
wealth, perceived relative income, bridging 2010). The rst is the marginal probability
social capital, expectations about own future, effects (MPE) of each attribute evaluated at the
the freedom to choose ones occupation and the sample means on satisfaction, and shows how
perceived fairness of income distribution. Only one attribute affects the satisfaction distribution
an observation is in order in this case. Although for an average person. The second involves the
trade-off (compensation) ratios between
characteristics, and quanties how much one
18 aspect of live has to change in order to compen-
For the sake of simplicity to the reader, we have not
included the estimation results concerning these variables, sate for having to go without the other (e.g., for
but they are available upon request from authors. job satisfaction, which % increase in resources is
Table 21.3 Micro-determinants of self-assessment

Sat_macro Sat_macro(b) Sat_micro
Wealth 0.093*** 0.080*** 0.130***
(0.024) (0.023) (0.014)
Rank 0.069** 0.067** 0.227***
(0.026) (0.028) (0.027)
Bonding SC 0.057 0.157 0.125
(0.143) (0.167) (0.142)
Briding SC 0.101** 0.096** 0.116***
(0.037) (0.041) (0.024)
Bonding SC*rank 0.002 0.055* 0.004
(0.027) (0.031) (0.025)
Bridging SC*rank 0.009 0.007 0.006
(0.006) (0.007) (0.005)
Political interest 0.045 0.062 0.082***
(0.050) (0.041) (0.028)
Fairness_distribution 0.341*** 0.381*** 0.122***
(0.060) (0.067) (0.031)
Self-employed 0.031 0.091* 0.065
(0.039) (0.044) (0.050)
Non working 0.08 0.050 .
(0.053) (0.057) .
Voluntarieness 0.329*** 0.381*** 0.211***
(0.065) (0.065) (0.065)
Expectations_own 0.233*** 0.304*** 0.296***
(0.055) (0.057) (0.027)
Expectations_country 0.126*** 0.126*** 0.034
(0.022) (0.026) (0.021)
Constant 2.746*** 3.409*** 4.129***
(0.272) (0.289) (0.315)
Socio economic variables Yes Yes Yes
Country dummies Yes Yes Yes
N. observations 12,412 13,250 9,415
Standard errors below coefcients. * p < 0.1, ** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.01
required to compensate an average worker for a high levels (in a larger magnitude). This happens
1 % decrease in social capital). This produces for all dimensions of satisfaction considered with
fairly dense tables of statistical results. For ease the exception of the specic domain of democ-
of presentation, we choose to present only the racy. Secondly, the employment status does not
estimated MPEs of the material conditions of life show consistent results. For example being self-
(Wealth and Employment Status), for relative employed do not affect self-assessment with life,
conditions of life (Rank) and for attitudes standard of life, economy, pensions and educa-
(Political_interest and Voluntarieness from tion; however affects democracy and health, that
micro perspective and Fairness Distribution is, being self-employed increases the probability
from society or macro perspective). They are of reporting lower levels of satisfaction and
reported in Tables 21.4, 21.5, 21.6, 21.7, 21.8, decreases that of higher levels. Moreover, being
and 21.9. non working only affects self-assessment with
When considering material conditions we nd democracy and education, in a reverse way.
rst that, the higher wealth the individual has While not being working increases the probabil-
(Wealth), the lower the probability of reporting ity of dissatisfaction with democracy and
low levels of satisfaction and increases that of decrease the probability of satisfaction with
Table 21.4 Micro-determinants of self-assessment (marginal effects). Panel A

Self-assessment individual (life satisfaction)
Generalized ordered probit Sat_life1 Sat_life 2 Sat_life 3 Sat_life 4
Wealth 0.002*** 0.018*** 0.007*** 0.013***
0.001 0.002 0.002 0.003
Rank 0.006*** 0.021*** 0.013*** 0.014***
0.001 0.003 0.004 0.004
Bonding-SC 0.012* 0.011 0.004 0.004
0.006 0.016 0.028 0.019
Bridging-SC 0.001 0.009* 0.010* 0.019***
0.001 0.005 0.006 0.005
Bonding SC*rank 0.012* 0.011 0.004 0.004
0.006 0.016 0.028 0.019
Bridging SC*rank 0.001 0.009* 0.010* 0.019***
0.001 0.005 0.006 0.005
Political interest 0.000 0.004 0.000 0.003
0.001 0.005 0.006 0.006
Fairness_distribution 0.010*** 0.036*** 0.018** 0.029***
0.002 0.006 0.007 0.007
Self-employed 0.005* 0.013 0.019** 0.002
0.003 0.01 0.008 0.009
Non working 0.005** 0.020** 0.024*** 0.001
0.002 0.009 0.009 0.009
Voluntarieness 0.007** 0.033*** 0.022** 0.018
0.003 0.01 0.011 0.013
Expectations_own 0.005*** 0.021*** 0.002 0.028***
0.001 0.005 0.007 0.005
Expectations_country 0.013*** 0.045*** 0.025*** 0.032***
0.001 0.006 0.005 0.006
N. observations 16,200
MPE[bonding]/MPE[wealth] 5.802 0.615 0.628 0.28
3.113 0.914 3.991 1.466
MPE[bridging]/MPE[wealth] 0.298 0.502** 1.471 1.465***
0.592 0.234 0.93 0.472
MPE[ranking_inc]/MPE[wealth] 3.069** 1.144*** 1.831** 1.071***
1.202 0.151 0.842 0.335
MPE[fairness Distr]/MPE[wealth] 5.068** 2.013*** 2.498** 2.232***
2.249 0.43 1.12 0.781
* p < 0.1, ** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.01
democracy, the case of education is just the in macro-dimensions such as health and
opposite. education.
Among the objective results, when consider- The relative conditions of life affects to all
ing relative conditions of life we nd that bond- dimensions of satisfaction in all domains. The
ing social capital mostly does not affect any effect is that the higher the perceived ranking of
domain, while bridging social capital affects all income (Rank), the lower the probability of
domains in micro-satisfaction. That is, being dissatisfaction and the higher the probability
more active in terms of participation in of satisfaction. The interaction of both
associations decreases the probability of dissatis- variables leads us to conclude that bridging
faction and increases the probability of satisfac- social capital acts as enhancer of relative
tion. This effect although weaker could be found concern.
Table 21.5 Micro-determinants of self-assessment (marginal effects). Panel B
Self-assessment individual (standard of life)
Generalized ordered probit Sat_stan0 Sat_stan1 Sat_stan2 Sat_stan3 Sat_stan4 Sat_stan5 Sat_stan6 Sat_stan7 Sat_stan8 Sat_stan9 Sat_stan10
Wealth 0.000 0.002*** 0.004*** 0.009*** 0.009*** 0.000 0.005*** 0.009*** 0.007*** 0.002 0.002*
0.000 0.000 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.002 0.001 0.002 0.001 0.001 0.001
Rank 0.002*** 0.007*** 0.011*** 0.016*** 0.021*** 0.019*** 0.020*** 0.024*** 0.020*** 0.008*** 0.005***
0.000 0.001 0.001 0.002 0.003 0.005 0.003 0.003 0.003 0.002 0.002
Bonding-SC 0.000 0.008*** 0.009 0.019** 0.019 0.013 0.019 0.017 0.013 0.004 0.019*
0.002 0.002 0.007 0.009 0.020 0.017 0.015 0.013 0.013 0.008 0.010
Bridging-SC 0.001*** 0.001 0.002 0.006* 0.012*** 0.018** 0.002 0.009*** 0.013** 0.006*** 0.014***
0.001 0.001 0.002 0.004 0.004 0.007 0.003 0.003 0.006 0.002 0.003
Bonding SC*rank 0.000 0.008*** 0.009 0.019** 0.019 0.013 0.019 0.017 0.013 0.004 0.019*
0.002 0.002 0.007 0.009 0.020 0.017 0.015 0.013 0.013 0.008 0.010
Bridging SC*rank 0.001*** 0.001 0.002 0.006* 0.012*** 0.018** 0.002 0.009*** 0.013** 0.006*** 0.014***
0.001 0.001 0.002 0.004 0.004 0.007 0.003 0.003 0.006 0.002 0.003
Political interest 0.000 0.001 0.002 0.000 0.006* 0.010* 0.002 0.003 0.007** 0.001 0.007***
0.001 0.001 0.002 0.002 0.003 0.006 0.004 0.004 0.003 0.002 0.002
Fairness_distribution 0.001** 0.002** 0.002 0.009*** 0.012*** 0.003 0.003 0.010*** 0.009 0.002 0.007**
0.001 0.001 0.002 0.002 0.003 0.007 0.004 0.004 0.006 0.003 0.003
Self-employed 0.001 0.003 0.001 0.004 0.013 0.010 0.003 0.002 0.001 0.004 0.004
0.001 0.002 0.003 0.005 0.010 0.009 0.008 0.006 0.009 0.004 0.004
Non working 0.002** 0.004* 0.006* 0.003 0.006 0.000 0.009 0.002 0.002 0.005 0.012***
0.001 0.002 0.003 0.004 0.009 0.011 0.008 0.008 0.007 0.005 0.004
Voluntarieness 0.001 0.004** 0.004** 0.003 0.018*** 0.014 0.004 0.011 0.008 0.013*** 0.009**
0.001 0.002 0.002 0.003 0.006 0.009 0.006 0.008 0.007 0.004 0.004
Expectations_own 0.001** 0.003*** 0.005*** 0.013*** 0.019*** 0.021*** 0.005 0.017*** 0.018*** 0.012*** 0.021***
0.000 0.001 0.001 0.002 0.003 0.006 0.005 0.004 0.002 0.002 0.002
Expectations_country 0.001* 0.001** 0.002* 0.002* 0.002 0.006 0.013*** 0.004 0.003 0.000 0.003*
0.000 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.003 0.006 0.004 0.003 0.003 0.002 0.002
MPE[bonding]/MPE[wealth] 1.285 3.361*** 2.145 2.096** 2.129 62.41 3.862 1.835 1.81 2.463 7.491
4.237 0.998 1.649 0.983 2.087 623.729 2.955 1.455 1.83 4.763 5.209
MPE[bridging]/MPE[wealth] 4.173 0.443 0.549 0.694* 1.369*** 82.915 0.486 0.930** 1.837** 3.499 5.477*
3.012 0.426 0.347 0.414 0.468 820.962 0.628 0.368 0.889 2.681 3.209
(continued)
Self-assessment individual (standard of life)

Generalized ordered probit Sat_stan0 Sat_stan1 Sat_stan2 Sat_stan3 Sat_stan4 Sat_stan5 Sat_stan6 Sat_stan7 Sat_stan8 Sat_stan9 Sat_stan10
MPE[ranking_inc]/MPE[wealth] 5.028 2.902*** 2.530*** 1.784*** 2.292*** 88.351 4.032*** 2.514*** 2.901*** 4.54 1.833
3.335 0.659 0.577 0.341 0.565 896.481 1.155 0.588 0.791 3.829 1.398
MPE[fairnessDistr]/MPE[wealth] 3.558 0.954** 0.51 1.016*** 1.331*** 15.293 0.632 1.013** 1.282 1.116 2.638
3.29 0.486 0.401 0.271 0.469 167.427 0.923 0.424 0.832 1.581 1.672
* p < 0.1, ** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.01
Table 21.6 Micro-determinants of self-assessment (marginal effects). Panel C
Self-assessment individual (satisfaction with income)
Generalized ordered probit Sat_inc0 Sat_inc1 Sat_inc2 Sat_inc3 Sat_inc4 Sat_inc5 Sat_inc6 Sat_inc7 Sat_inc8 Sat_inc9 Sat_inc10
Wealth 0.002*** 0.007*** 0.008*** 0.012*** 0.010*** 0.003 0.008*** 0.015*** 0.011*** 0.002** 0.006***
0.001 0.001 0.001 0.002 0.002 0.003 0.002 0.002 0.002 0.001 0.001
Rank 0.003*** 0.011*** 0.018*** 0.022*** 0.009*** 0.004 0.015*** 0.018*** 0.016*** 0.006*** 0.004**
0.001 0.001 0.002 0.002 0.003 0.004 0.003 0.002 0.002 0.001 0.002
Bonding-SC 0.002 0.010** 0.008 0.009 0.022* 0.042** 0.008 0.013 0.001 0.004 0.011
0.005 0.005 0.011 0.015 0.013 0.018 0.020 0.013 0.013 0.007 0.011
Bridging-SC 0.001 0.001 0.000 0.012*** 0.008* 0.010* 0.002 0.006* 0.008** 0.005*** 0.011***
0.001 0.002 0.003 0.004 0.005 0.006 0.005 0.004 0.004 0.002 0.002
Bonding SC*rank 0.002 0.010** 0.008 0.009 0.022* 0.042** 0.008 0.013 0.001 0.004 0.011
0.005 0.005 0.011 0.015 0.013 0.018 0.020 0.013 0.013 0.007 0.011
Bridging SC*rank 0.001 0.001 0.000 0.012*** 0.008* 0.010* 0.002 0.006* 0.008** 0.005*** 0.011***
0.001 0.002 0.003 0.004 0.005 0.006 0.005 0.004 0.004 0.002 0.002
Political interest 0.000 0.001 0.001 0.002 0.004 0.008 0.005 0.002 0.005* 0.003 0.010***
0.001 0.002 0.002 0.003 0.003 0.005 0.004 0.004 0.003 0.002 0.002
Fairness_distribution 0.004** 0.003* 0.008*** 0.016*** 0.006 0.004 0.007* 0.012** 0.010*** 0.006*** 0.005
0.002 0.002 0.003 0.003 0.004 0.005 0.004 0.005 0.004 0.002 0.004
Self-employed 0.001 0.002 0.007 0.005 0.021** 0.001 0.004 0.005 0.002 0.003 0.012***
0.002 0.004 0.005 0.007 0.009 0.015 0.011 0.007 0.005 0.004 0.004
Non working 0.002 0.008* 0.005 0.005 0.023*** 0.003 0.007 0.007 0.004 0.007 0.016***
0.002 0.004 0.006 0.007 0.009 0.013 0.009 0.005 0.006 0.005 0.004
Voluntarieness 0.003** 0.005** 0.012*** 0.007 0.011* 0.013* 0.001 0.028*** 0.011 0.003 0.010***
0.001 0.002 0.004 0.005 0.006 0.007 0.007 0.005 0.009 0.003 0.003
Expectations_own 0.002*** 0.007*** 0.008*** 0.017*** 0.016*** 0.016** 0.006 0.014*** 0.021*** 0.010*** 0.015***
0.001 0.002 0.003 0.003 0.004 0.007 0.005 0.004 0.003 0.001 0.003
Expectations_country 0.001 0.002*** 0.004*** 0.005* 0.002 0.001 0.004 0.005 0.002 0.003** 0.002
0.001 0.001 0.001 0.003 0.004 0.005 0.004 0.004 0.003 0.001 0.002
MPE[bonding]/MPE[wealth] 1.009 1.523** 0.891 0.774 2.227* 12.477 0.96 0.902 0.092 1.538 1.826
2.382 0.718 1.306 1.214 1.26 10.519 2.572 0.862 1.165 2.65 1.946
MPE[bridging]/MPE[wealth] 0.607 0.187 0.044 0.978*** 0.817* 3.012 0.301 0.428* 0.702*** 2.111* 1.849***
0.44 0.331 0.363 0.382 0.48 3.126 0.636 0.235 0.268 1.202 0.553
(continued)
Self-assessment individual (satisfaction with income)

Generalized ordered probit Sat_inc0 Sat_inc1 Sat_inc2 Sat_inc3 Sat_inc4 Sat_inc5 Sat_inc6 Sat_inc7 Sat_inc8 Sat_inc9 Sat_inc10
MPE[ranking_inc]/MPE[wealth] 1.726** 1.590*** 2.102*** 1.825*** 0.926** 1.136 1.849*** 1.239*** 1.379*** 2.589 0.717*
0.763 0.343 0.339 0.321 0.363 1.36 0.673 0.204 0.304 1.583 0.38
MPE[fairness distr]/MPE[wealth] 1.888* 0.493* 0.936*** 1.271*** 0.672 1.09 0.933* 0.827** 0.914*** 2.428* 0.782
1.108 0.282 0.327 0.274 0.461 1.366 0.547 0.404 0.34 1.388 0.592
* p < 0.1, ** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.01
Table 21.7 Micro-determinants of self-assessment (marginal effects). Panel D
Generalized ordered Self-assessment individual (satisfaction with job)

probit Sat_job0 Sat_job1 Sat_job2 Sat_job3 Sat_job4 Sat_job5 Sat_job6 Sat_job7 Sat_job8 Sat_job9 Sat_job10
Wealth 0.002* 0.002** 0.005*** 0.007*** 0.008*** 0.005*** 0.003 0.006** 0.009*** 0.004* 0.008***
0.001 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.002 0.002 0.002 0.003 0.002 0.002 0.002
Rank 0.005** 0.006*** 0.007*** 0.013*** 0.004 0.012** 0.006 0.015*** 0.013*** 0.008*** 0.005
0.002 0.001 0.001 0.002 0.003 0.005 0.004 0.002 0.004 0.003 0.003
Bonding-SC 0.010 0.004 0.010 0.015 0.029** 0.006 0.001 0.009 0.008 0.007 0.001
0.009 0.008 0.012 0.009 0.013 0.030 0.025 0.011 0.024 0.018 0.018
Bridging-SC 0.001 0.000 0.000 0.008** 0.000 0.013*** 0.010 0.001 0.009** 0.010** 0.013***
0.002 0.003 0.003 0.004 0.006 0.005 0.006 0.004 0.004 0.004 0.005
Bonding SC*Rank 0.010 0.004 0.010 0.015 0.029** 0.006 0.001 0.009 0.008 0.007 0.001
0.009 0.008 0.012 0.009 0.013 0.030 0.025 0.011 0.024 0.018 0.018
Bridging SC*Rank 0.001 0.000 0.000 0.008** 0.000 0.013*** 0.010 0.001 0.009** 0.010** 0.013***
0.002 0.003 0.003 0.004 0.006 0.005 0.006 0.004 0.004 0.004 0.005
Political interest 0.002 0.001 0.002 0.004 0.001 0.006 0.002 0.005 0.002 0.005* 0.011***
0.001 0.002 0.002 0.003 0.003 0.006 0.005 0.004 0.003 0.003 0.004
Fairness_distribution 0.003 0.003** 0.005** 0.011*** 0.000 0.006 0.004 0.001 0.010* 0.002 0.007
0.002 0.002 0.002 0.004 0.004 0.007 0.004 0.006 0.005 0.005 0.005
Self-employed 0.006*** 0.007* 0.005 0.008 0.012 0.005 0.001 0.015 0.004 0.004 0.006
0.002 0.004 0.005 0.007 0.008 0.010 0.010 0.011 0.006 0.006 0.009
Non working
Voluntarieness 0.002 0.003 0.009* 0.011 0.006 0.035*** 0.005 0.003 0.027*** 0.011 0.022***
0.003 0.003 0.005 0.008 0.007 0.011 0.009 0.012 0.007 0.009 0.008
Expectations_own 0.001 0.004* 0.010*** 0.013*** 0.017*** 0.022*** 0.009* 0.005 0.016*** 0.014*** 0.039***
0.002 0.002 0.002 0.003 0.004 0.008 0.005 0.005 0.005 0.003 0.005
Expectations_country 0.005*** 0.004** 0.001 0.000 0.002 0.000 0.007 0.003 0.002 0.002 0.004
0.001 0.002 0.002 0.002 0.003 0.006 0.004 0.004 0.004 0.003 0.003
MPE[bonding]/MPE 5.705 1.747 1.985 2.106 3.471 1.202 0.31 1.491 0.932 1.723 0.119
[wealth] 6.497 3.704 2.445 1.353 1.744 5.755 7.939 1.819 2.693 4.167 2.146
MPE[bridging]/MPE 0.825 0.162 0.057 1.111** 0.019 2.472** 3.071 0.134 1.055** 2.554* 1.558**
[wealth] 1.419 1.354 0.592 0.549 0.681 1.216 3.268 0.656 0.523 1.442 0.73
(continued)
Generalized ordered Self-assessment individual (satisfaction with job)

probit Sat_job0 Sat_job1 Sat_job2 Sat_job3 Sat_job4 Sat_job5 Sat_job6 Sat_job7 Sat_job8 Sat_job9 Sat_job10
MPE[ranking_inc]/ 2.785 2.502** 1.372*** 1.847*** 0.426 2.172* 1.908 2.543** 1.432** 1.974 0.561
MPE[wealth] 2.081 1.223 0.492 0.562 0.398 1.297 2.221 1.127 0.629 1.443 0.522
MPE[Fairness distr]/ 1.506 1.397 0.938** 1.529*** 0.001 1.085 1.294 0.097 1.130* 0.449 0.886
MPE[wealth] 1.057 1.021 0.504 0.531 0.478 1.283 1.267 0.939 0.623 1.267 0.56
* p < 0.1, ** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.01
Table 21.8 Micro-determinants of self-assessment (marginal effects). Panel E
Self-assessment society (economy) Self-assessment society (democracy)
Generalized ordered probit Sat_eco1 Sat_eco2 Sat_eco3 Sat_eco4 Sat_dem1 Sat_dem2 Sat_dem3 Sat_dem4
Wealth 0.003 0.003 0.000 0.000 0.003 0.004 0.007** 0.000
0.002 0.003 0.003 0.000 0.002 0.003 0.003 0.001
Rank 0.009*** 0.003 0.012*** 0.000 0.012*** 0.006 0.017*** 0.001
0.003 0.004 0.004 0.001 0.004 0.005 0.004 0.002
Bonding-SC 0.010 0.024 0.015 0.001 0.033 0.035 0.005 0.007
0.019 0.021 0.023 0.005 0.022 0.036 0.029 0.009
Bridging-SC 0.003 0.005 0.000 0.002** 0.009** 0.017** 0.003 0.005**
0.004 0.005 0.005 0.001 0.004 0.007 0.007 0.002
Bonding SC*rank 0.005 0.003 0.001 0.000 0.005 0.004 0.002 0.001
0.004 0.005 0.004 0.001 0.004 0.006 0.005 0.002
Bridging SC*rank 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.000** 0.001* 0.003** 0.001 0.000
0.001 0.001 0.001 0.000 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.000
Political interest 0.010*** 0.013*** 0.020*** 0.004*** 0.018*** 0.015** 0.024*** 0.010***
0.004 0.005 0.005 0.001 0.002 0.006 0.006 0.002
Fairness_distribution 0.067*** 0.023*** 0.081*** 0.010*** 0.071*** 0.062*** 0.107*** 0.026***
0.008 0.008 0.007 0.001 0.007 0.010 0.012 0.003
Self-employed 0.009 0.002 0.014 0.003 0.013 0.008 0.018* 0.002
0.013 0.012 0.013 0.002 0.010 0.014 0.011 0.005
Non working 0.002 0.015* 0.018* 0.001 0.004 0.016 0.022** 0.002
0.009 0.009 0.009 0.003 0.007 0.012 0.010 0.003
Voluntarieness 0.019** 0.014 0.028** 0.004** 0.044*** 0.052*** 0.071*** 0.025***
0.010 0.011 0.013 0.002 0.010 0.014 0.011 0.007
Expectations_own 0.015*** 0.004 0.014*** 0.005*** 0.019*** 0.022*** 0.026*** 0.014***
0.004 0.006 0.005 0.001 0.003 0.007 0.008 0.003
Expectations_country 0.114*** 0.039*** 0.133*** 0.020*** 0.056*** 0.041*** 0.074*** 0.023***
0.006 0.004 0.006 0.001 0.003 0.005 0.004 0.002
N. observations 16,011 15,846
MPE[bridging]/MPE[wealth] 1.023 1.445 2.421 13.256 2.838 3.928 0.374 13.636
1.706 2.016 48.209 42.638 3.147 3.246 0.945 42.515
MPE[ranking_inc]/MPE[wealth] 2.808 1.028 75.740 0.955 3.862 1.535 2.559** 1.577
2.265 1.915 1263.879 4.001 3.283 1.468 1.262 8.060
MPE[Fairness distr]/MPE[wealth] 22.182 6.938 506.383 59.410 23.620 14.692 15.695 64.831
15.380 6.110 8430.623 176.493 19.348 11.905 7.559 192.600
* p < 0.1, ** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.01
Table 21.9 Micro-determinants of self-assessment (marginal effects). Panel F
Self-assessment society (healthcare) Self-assessment society (education)
Generalized ordered probit Sat_health1 Sat_health2 Sat_health3 Sat_health4 Sat_educ1 Sat_educ2 Sat_educ3 Sat_educ4
Wealth 0.009*** 0.002 0.007** 0.004** 0.007*** 0.004* 0.006 0.005**
0.002 0.002 0.003 0.002 0.002 0.002 0.004 0.002
Rank 0.004 0.017*** 0.016** 0.005 0.003 0.010** 0.011** 0.002
0.004 0.006 0.006 0.004 0.003 0.004 0.005 0.004
Bonding-SC 0.023 0.039* 0.023 0.007 0.027** 0.026 0.020 0.021
0.016 0.024 0.025 0.018 0.011 0.030 0.023 0.021
Bridging-SC 0.003 0.016* 0.005 0.018*** 0.003 0.015** 0.002 0.020***
0.006 0.009 0.007 0.005 0.005 0.007 0.007 0.004
Bonding SC*rank 0.007** 0.006 0.001 0.003 0.007*** 0.001 0.001 0.008*
0.003 0.005 0.006 0.004 0.002 0.005 0.005 0.005
Bridging SC*rank 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.000 0.002 0.001 0.001
0.001 0.002 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.001
Political interest 0.009** 0.004 0.000 0.004 0.007*** 0.006 0.001 0.000
0.004 0.007 0.004 0.004 0.003 0.008 0.006 0.005
Fairness_distribution 0.035*** 0.038*** 0.046*** 0.027*** 0.024*** 0.026*** 0.032*** 0.018***
0.008 0.011 0.012 0.006 0.006 0.007 0.008 0.006
Self-employed 0.000 0.023*** 0.014 0.009 0.003 0.021 0.011 0.006
0.007 0.008 0.010 0.008 0.006 0.013 0.010 0.008
Non working 0.012* 0.001 0.006 0.004 0.013** 0.013 0.018 0.008
0.006 0.008 0.009 0.008 0.006 0.010 0.012 0.007
Voluntarieness 0.022*** 0.028** 0.035*** 0.015* 0.025*** 0.068*** 0.058*** 0.034***
0.007 0.013 0.013 0.008 0.006 0.011 0.012 0.011
Expectations_own 0.011** 0.042*** 0.023*** 0.030*** 0.012** 0.043*** 0.020*** 0.035***
0.005 0.009 0.009 0.005 0.006 0.007 0.006 0.006
Expectations_country 0.013*** 0.006 0.011** 0.008* 0.011*** 0.004 0.008* 0.007*
0.005 0.004 0.005 0.004 0.003 0.006 0.005 0.004
N. observations 15,996 15,678
MPE[bridging]/MPE[wealth] 0.370 7.566 0.805 4.164* 0.376 3.791 0.338 3.962**
0.609 10.237 1.061 2.153 0.766 2.909 1.063 1.844
MPE[ranking_inc]/MPE[wealth] 0.430 8.106 2.455* 1.154 0.438 2.461 1.815 0.349
0.483 9.418 1.425 1.132 0.486 1.803 1.482 0.901
MPE[fairness distr]/MPE[wealth] 3.905*** 17.744 6.969** 6.088** 3.372** 6.436 5.190 3.568*
1.436 20.599 3.529 2.645 1.487 4.439 3.714 2.105
Self-assessment society (pensions)
Generalized ordered probit Sat_pension1 Sat_pension2 Sat_pension3 Sat_pension4
Wealth 0.014*** 0.006** 0.006* 0.002
0.003 0.003 0.003 0.002
Rank 0.010* 0.003 0.012** 0.001
0.005 0.004 0.005 0.003
Bonding-SC 0.003 0.016 0.014 0.005
0.026 0.023 0.029 0.016
Bridging-SC 0.002 0.011 0.006 0.007
0.004 0.007 0.008 0.005
Bonding SC*rank 0.000 0.002 0.001 0.001
0.005 0.004 0.005 0.003
Bridging SC*rank 0.001 0.000 0.001 0.000
0.001 0.001 0.001 0.001
Political interest 0.022*** 0.012* 0.005 0.005
0.006 0.006 0.007 0.005
Fairness_distribution 0.052*** 0.019*** 0.054*** 0.017***
0.009 0.005 0.008 0.004
Self-employed 0.003 0.017 0.017 0.002
0.010 0.011 0.011 0.007
Non working 0.013 0.007 0.002 0.005
0.011 0.009 0.013 0.004
Voluntarieness 0.031** 0.006 0.019 0.018**
0.014 0.010 0.012 0.008
Expectations_own 0.013* 0.028*** 0.027*** 0.015***
0.007 0.006 0.009 0.004
Expectations_country 0.024*** 0.000 0.018*** 0.006**
0.006 0.004 0.006 0.002
MPE[bridging]/MPE[wealth] 0.112 1.788 0.975 3.981
0.277 1.315 1.459 5.293
MPE[ranking_inc]/MPE[wealth] 0.729 0.482 2.002 0.738
0.447 0.579 1.742 2.339
MPE[Fairness distr]/MPE[wealth] 3.695*** 3.109** 9.098 9.689
1.129 1.283 5.679 10.248
* p < 0.1, ** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.01
For the results of the attitudes of the individ- 21.6 Conclusions and Future Lines
ual, we nd two interesting effects. First, the for Research
attitude in regard to individual (Voluntariness
and Expectations_own) and the attitude in regard In this chapter, we have extended the analysis of
to society (Fairness_distribution and the effect of personal and inter-personal variables
Expectations_country) affect all dimensions of (variables concerning the individual in relation to
all domains in the same way. That is, the higher other people) from the personal sphere of satis-
the level of freedom, the higher the perceived faction to the social or institutional sphere.
fairness of the distribution and the higher This chapter presents as a contribution the
expectations (own and country expectations) distinction of individual domains and societal
are, the lower dissatisfaction and the higher sat- domains of subjective well-being. Individual
isfaction. Second, the effect of the political inter- domains (micro-satisfaction) are related to the
est (Pol_int) on micro-dimension of self- individual subjective evaluation of results in rela-
assessment in all domains vanishes, being only tion to him/herself and societal domains (macro-
a determinant of macro-dimension of self- satisfaction) take account individual subjective
assessment in all domains. evaluation of results in relation to the situation
If we focus on the ratios19 between wealth and of society or country. The aim is double, rst, to
social capital, rank and valuation of fairness of check whether some determinant can affect dif-
distribution of income, the interpretation should ferently the different dimensions (individual as
be to measure how many additional resources in opposed to societal); and second, to analyze if the
% is required to compensate an average individ- determinants exert a differential effect across the
ual for a 1 % increase in level of any of those distribution of subjective well-being.
variables. The main conclusion is that this ratio is Concerning the rst goal, that is, whether
only relevant for self-assessment with individual determinants affect differently the individual or
dimensions, that is micro-satisfaction. An the social dimension of self-assessment, our
increase of 1 % of resources has to be ndings suggests the following answer: most of
compensated with more bridging social capital, the determinants exhibit the same effect on
better position in the ranking of income and more macro and micro self-assessment dimensions.
equal distribution of income. Those two effects These dimensions have been described using
turn out to be specially interesting, that is, to keep indexes which resume the behavior of the differ-
the level of satisfaction constant, an individual ent satisfaction domains and considering sepa-
with more resources values also higher position rately the main domains. Concerning the
in the ranking of income (so absolute concern has indexes, we conclude that different effects
to be complemented with relative concern) and appear concerning political interest and
also with a more equal distribution. This effect is expectations for the country. In particular, we
larger for those individuals that report low levels nd that while having a higher political interest
of self-assessment. For example, if we consider decreases micro-satisfaction and has no effect on
Sat_life the ratio goes from about 3.1 % to 1.1 % macro-satisfaction, having higher expectations
and in the case of fairness of distribution goes on economy future increases macro-satisfaction
from 5.1 % to 2.2 %. For the case of bridging and has no effect on micro-satisfaction.
social capital variables, we observe that at some Regarding the case of considering separately
levels of self-assessment such substitution does the specic dimensions of self-assessment, the
not appear to exist. answer to the rst goal is the same. Specically,
rst, objective results measured by material
conditions of life and relative conditions of life
exert the same results on both micro and macro
19
This corresponds to the second interpretation of the self-assessment. In particular, the higher level of
MPE that GOP allows to make.
wealth or perceived income ranking the higher through most of the determinants we have
probability of reporting high level of self- described, it also causes, not indirectly as in
assessment. Secondly attitudes different from principle we have thought, some effect on the
political interest, that is future expectations for personal sphere of subjective well-being or self-
oneself or country, valuation of fairness of the assessment. What is also interesting from policy-
income distribution and voluntary choice of making point of view is that only at the individ-
occupation, also exhibit the same effect on self- ual level there are some degree of substitution
assessment of individual and society dimensions. between factors that contribute to determine self-
The higher expectations, no matter if for oneself assessment of individual dimensions.
or the country, the higher the perception of fair- In this paper, we have only considered per-
ness of the income distribution, and the higher sonal (individual and relative personal and
freedom to choose occupation imply a higher household) circumstances to explore the
probability of reporting high levels of self- correlates of satisfaction in Latin-America. An
assessment. Thirdly, we nd that social capital, area that remains relatively more unexplored is
that measures the foundations of lives of the effect of national economic and institutional
individuals in relation to the others, only affects factors. Still, we know that suitable political and
the evaluation of self-assessment in regard to economic institutions are seen as prerequisites
individual, that is, micro-satisfaction, in such a for growth and, as a consequence, for human
way that the higher level of social contacts leads progress (Acemoglu and Robinson 2012) and
individual to report higher level of satisfaction. that macro factors condition many aspects of
Finally, the attitude of political interest only everyday life. A research program to complete
affects the valuation of self-assessment of socie- the analysis of the determinants of quality of life
tal dimensions. In particular, the having political should include at some point information about
interest implies to report a higher level of satis- the national economic and institutional
faction with public services, economy, circumstances in an attempt, for instance, to
democracy, etc. accommodate gender differences.
With respect to the second goal, that is, the
differential effect across the distribution of sub-
jective well-being, our ndings show that the
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Psychological and Social Determinants
of Subjective Well-Being in Mexico: 22
Poverty, Class Identification
and Social Mobility
Joaquina Palomar Lever and Amparo Victorio Estrada
22.1 Introduction framework of reference in which the current

analysis of data is situated.
This chapter studies the determinants of subjec- Then, we will describe the characteristics of
tive well-being with a particular focus on the the study samples from which the data analyzed
situation in a context of poverty; the chapter here was obtained. Our data analysis is
also studies how subjective well-being relates to subdivided into a number of sections covering
perceived causes of poverty, class identication, the different aspects of subjective well-being.
and social mobility. This reection is based upon These sections explore the relationship between
the assumption that subjective well-being subjective well-being and diverse socioeconomic
inuences peoples socio-economic situation as aspects such as: (1) identication of social class,
well as their perception about the causes of pov- (2) subjective attributes of poverty, (3) social
erty. In addition, the relationship between objec- mobility and progress, and (4) extreme poverty.
tive living conditions and subjective well-being An additional section of data analysis is:
may be mediated by those factors which (5) predictors of subjective well-being, with an
individuals perceive as causes of poverty and examination of the results obtained in the various
by the socioeconomic class they presume they samples studied. Lastly, the conclusions derived
belong to. from our analysis are presented.
With this aim, the analysis presented here
refers to the empirical evidence obtained through
various studies on subjective well-being that we 22.2 What Do We Mean
have conducted over the last 10 years. These by Well-Being?
studies have focused on different samples of
Mexicans, including individuals from the general Some denitions of well-being consider it to be a
population and individuals living in conditions of global concept that encompasses both physical
extreme poverty. We will begin with a theoreti- and mental health as well as social adjustment.
cal review of the concepts of well-being and This implies the maximization of physical, men-
subjective well-being, and of the situation of tal and social functioning and the availability of a
poverty in Mexico, in order to present the supportive environment, resulting in a full, satis-
factory and productive life (Kobau et al. 2010).
J. Palomar Lever (*) A. Victorio Estrada Two types of denitions of well-being have been
Department of Psychology, Universidad Iberoamericana,
Mexico City, Mexico
popularized in the literature. One is hedonic and
e-mail: joaquina.palomar@ibero.mx compares well-being to high levels of positive

390 J. Palomar Lever and A. Victorio Estrada
affect and low levels of negative affect, as well as professionals have criticized the terms vague-
high satisfaction with life. The other is ness, and its emphasis on subjective instead of
eudaimonic, focuses on functioning and consists objective aspects of health (Cameron et al. 2008).
of high levels of autonomy, environmental mas- Also, even though subjective well-being has
tery, personal growth, positive relationships with been addressed as an important goal to achieve,
others, purpose in life, and self-acceptance (Deci there has been criticism of the implicit obligatory
and Ryan 2008). nature of the pursuit of positive thinking and
The hedonic focus has been referred to as happiness, as well as the tendency to compare
subjective well-being and the eudaimonic focus, subjective well-being with mental health
as psychological well-being. In fact, the deni- (Kecmanovic 2010). For this author there are
tion of eudaimonic well-being has been extended some problems in comparing subjective well-
to more complex areas of human behavior being and health. For example, a life that is
involving a way of life. Living eudaimonically absolutely and eternally happy is not realistic
has been characterized as: pursuing intrinsic and is actually associated with the absence of
goals and values (personal growth, signicant mental health (e.g. mania, mental deciency).
relationships, community and health) for their Also, unhappiness is not considered to be a men-
own sake, rather than extrinsic goals and values tal illness. In other words, happiness is not the
(wealth, fame, image and power); behaving in key to mental health, and the latter may exist
autonomous, volitional or consensual ways, without the former. Mental health, viewed as
rather than ways that are heteronomous or con- the absence of a mental disorder, encompasses
trolled by others; being mindful and acting with a the correct perception of reality, a critical stance
sense of awareness; and behaving in ways that toward a given society and certain behavior
satisfy the basic psychological needs of compe- manifestations of mental functions, none of
tence, relatedness and autonomy (Ryan which, according to this author, are included in
et al. 2008). the denition of subjective well-being.
The study of subjective well-being began Subjective well-being is also associated with
approximately four decades ago, and one of the other important aspects in the lives of
most important lines of research was oriented individuals. The extensive literature on well-
toward responding to some of the following being points to a positive relationship between
questions: What are the most important subjective well-being and health, longevity, job
determinants of subjective well-being? To what success, wealth, stability, and even civic partici-
degree is economic well-being of individuals pation and commitment, fairness and civil rights
responsible for their subjective well-being? It is (Kobau et al. 2010). In this regard it is worth
possible for an individual or a country to be considering that when well-being is measured
characterized by subjective well-being if the sat- as satisfaction, other aspects may be inadver-
isfaction of the most basic needs of its citizens is tently included, such as physical health, socio-
compromised? These questions motivated the economic status or social integration (Friedman
study of different types of factors with the poten- et al. 2010). In other words, individuals with the
tial to explain subjective well-being, and also greatest satisfaction are thus so because they are
gave an impulse to research on the relationship healthier, wealthier, and more integrated into
between socioeconomic level and the perception their societies.
of satisfaction of ones basic needs, as well as its Also, by comparing the two types of well-
impact on overall subjective well-being and being (subjective and psychological), it has
expectations for a better life in the future. been found that post-traumatic growth, which
Subjective well-being is also an important refers to the positive change experienced by an
aspect within the denition of health, since it individual as a result of a process of struggle
suggests an emphasis on positive health, as following the experience of a traumatic event,
opposed to negative health. Nevertheless, health is more associated with psychological well-
22 Psychological and Social Determinants of Subjective Well-Being in Mexico:. . . 391
being than with subjective well-being (Durkin 9 or 10 on a scale of 010, with higher values
and Joseph 2009). This result does not seem signifying greater happiness (Instituto Nacional
surprising, if one considers that psychological de Estadstica y Geografa 2012). The high
well-being includes precisely personal growth. indexes of subjective well-being contrast with
However, the use of an expanded denition of the increase in the percentage of the population
well-being such as emotional well-being (posi- living in extreme or moderate poverty, and the
tive affect and satisfaction), psychological well- increase in violence and crime indexes in recent
being (self-acceptance, positive relations with years in Mexico.
others, purpose in life, environmental mastery The problem of poverty in Mexico is quite
and autonomy), and social well-being (social severe. The National Council of the Evaluation
acceptance, actualization, coherence and integra- of Social Development Policy (Consejo Nacional
tion) has the advantage, according to de Evaluacion de la Poltica de Desarrollo
(Kecmanovic 2010), of taking psychological Social-CONEVAL) uses different criteria for
and social adjustment into consideration, and conducting a multi-dimensional measurement of
comes closer to the concept of mental health. poverty. These criteria include income, educa-
Comparative studies addressing the tional backwardness, access to health services,
differences in subjective well-being, in line access to social security, housing quality and
with the material abundance of individuals and spaces, basic housing services, access to food,
nations, have found that happiness is greater in and degree of social cohesion. Taking these
countries that are economically more prosperous criteria into consideration, CONEVAL denes
(Veenhoven 2005). In addition, in international poverty as the presence of at least one social
comparisons of studies on well-being, it is evi- deciency and income below the line of well-
dent that subjective well-being is associated with being, and it denes extreme poverty as the pres-
greater wealth, or in other words, it is greater in ence of three or more social deciencies and
wealthier countries that also have better living income below the line of minimal well-being
and health conditions and longer life expectancy. (Consejo Nacional de Evaluacion de la Poltica
Nevertheless, at the individual level and within de Desarrollo Social 2012).
the same culture, the effect of economic According to CONEVAL, results of the mul-
conditions on subjective well-being appears to tidimensional measurement of poverty in Mexico
be less evident (Ng et al. 2009). demonstrate that 44.2 % of the Mexican popula-
tion was poor in 2008, or in other words, they had
at least one social deciency and insufcient
22.3 Poverty and Subjective income for acquiring a basic package of food
Well-Being in Mexico and non-food products. In addition 4.5 % of the
population was vulnerable in terms of income, or
In a relatively recent study, Vazquez and Hervas in other words, this segment of the population did
(2009) report high scores in life satisfaction and not have any social deciencies but its level of
subjective happiness in the Mexican population. income was insufcient to acquire the complete
This data is conrmed by the results from a food and non-food package. Also, 21.7 % of the
recent survey entitled Bienestar autoreportado population was characterized by educational
and conducted by the National Institute of Statis- backwardness, 40.7 % did not have access to
tics and Geography (Instituto Nacional de health services, 64.7 % did not have social secu-
Estadstica y Geografa-INEGI) with the Mexi- rity coverage, 17.5 % did not have adequate
can population. High indexes of life satisfaction housing quality or space, 18.9 % did not have
are indicated: over half of the individuals, includ- basic housing services, and 21.6 % did not have
ing both males and females, consider themselves adequate food. In addition to this difcult pano-
to be happy, or in other words, report values of rama, the population living in poverty increased
by 3.2 million between 2008 and 2010, from 48.8 dened as a change in schooling level, wages or
to 52 million (Consejo Nacional de Evaluacion job position with respect to the time when they
de la Poltica de Desarrollo Social 2012). became economically independent, and as a
Thus, in countries like Mexico, where poverty change in schooling level, ownership of housing
levels are very high, research on subjective well- or housing conditions (services, materials and
being must include the study of mechanisms property) with respect to that of their parents. A
through which citizens manage to obtain high general index including both criteria for mobility
indexes of subjective well-being. With this aim, was used. In addition validated psychological
the analysis presented here is focused on the scales were used for measuring depression, self-
empirical evidence on subjective well-being esteem, locus of control, achievement motiva-
that we have obtained throughout the last tion, social support, styles of coping with stress,
10 years. and subjective well-being.
Sample B. University students and professors
in Mexico City (N 404, age
22.4 Analysis 32.11 11.44). Validated psychological scales
were used to measure life satisfaction, perceived
Our analysis of our research results is subdivided stress and psychosomatic symptoms. Also
into ve topics: (1) Subjective well-being and measured were level of schooling, and frequency
class identication, (2) Subjective well-being of illnesses and medical appointments per illness.
and attributes of poverty, (3) Subjective well- Sample C. Households living in poverty,
being and expectations for social mobility and identied in the Lo que dicen los pobres survey
progress, (4) Subjective well-being and extreme designed by the Ministry of Social Development
poverty, and (5) Determinants of subjective well- (Secretara de Desarrollo Social) (N 3,000,
being. age 39 16.22). The sample is nationally
Our analysis covers data from samples of representative of urban and rural areas, and of
Mexican adults, including individuals from the the countrys northern, central and southern
general population and persons living in regions. The data analyzed corresponds to the
conditions of extreme poverty. The samples perceived causes of poverty, perception of social
come from different studies conducted at differ- mobility and progress, and subjective well-being,
ent moments in time and with different with the latter measured as perceived
populations, and nearly all of the results analyzed satisfaction.
in this paper have been reported previously in Sample D. Beneciaries of the Oportunidades
other documents. Below is a brief description of program, residing in Mexicos central region
the characteristics of the samples in the studies (N 913, age 43.71 12.58). The Single
upon which the analysis presented here is based. Score System (Sistema U nico de Puntajes),
developed by the Ministry of Social Develop-
ment (Secretara de Desarrollo Social) (De la
22.4.1 Description of Analysed Samples Torre 2004), was used to provide the criteria for
determining participants social mobility. Level
Sample A. General population in Mexico City of schooling and subjective well-being were
(N 918, age 36 8.50). Criteria from the measured, with the latter dened as perceived
Economic Commission for Latin America and satisfaction. In addition validated psychological
the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the National Insti- scales were used for measuring optimism, sense
tute of Statistics and Geography (Instituto of humor, religiosity, problem-solving strategies,
Nacional de Estadstica y Geografa 1993) were coping styles, self-esteem, social support,
used to classify participants according to their depression, anxiety, stress and self-regulation.
level of poverty, and their level of consumer Sample E. National probabilistic sample of
spending was measured. Social mobility was beneciaries of the Oportunidades program
(N 3,072, age 47.59 13.94). The Single internality and direct coping with stress. In addi-
Score System (Sistema U nico de Puntajes), tion they perceived more social support in their
developed by the Ministry of Social Develop- environment and from their church or religion,
ment (Secretara de Desarrollo Social) (De la and their subjective well-being scores in various
Torre 2004), was used to provide the criteria for domains were higher (well-being with regard to
determining participants social mobility. Sub- their work, relationships with offspring, couple
jective well-being was measured as perceived relationships, economic situation, sociability and
satisfaction. In addition, validated psychological friends, social environment, and personal percep-
scales were used to measure resistance to stress, tion) (Palomar 2007).
emotional intelligence, problem-solving In the same study conducted with Sample A
strategies, coping styles, achievement motiva- (Palomar 2007), the lack of correspondence
tion, self-control, stress, depression, anxiety, between the measured socioeconomic level and
social maladjustment, religiosity, adversities, self-reported class identication was evident. Of
respect for civil rights, and trusting others. Also a total of 904 cases surveyed, including low,
measured were health status, housing conditions middle and middle-high socioeconomic levels,
and level of schooling. the objective socioeconomic level and the socio-
economic level reported by individuals coincided
in only 327 of the cases. In particular only 18 of
22.4.2 Subjective Well-Being and Class the 344 individuals who were objectively very
Identification poor reported their socioeconomic level as
extreme poverty. Also, only 14 of the 258 who
Class identication refers to the manner in which indicated they were moderately poor actually
individuals dene their position within the social belonged to this socioeconomic level. And
structure, and indicates social preferences such nally, of those reporting to belong to middle or
as the type of person with whom they like to middle-high socioeconomic levels, 97.7 % of
socialize, the lifestyle they wish to have, and them reported that they were not poor (only
other signicant aspects of their lives. It has 2.3 % of them reported that they were poor and
been reported in the literature that individuals none of them said they were very poor). These
class identication frequently does not corre- ndings indicate that the majority of individuals,
spond to their socioeconomic level, but it is actu- especially the poorest, do not feel poor or so
ally a better predictor of their physical health, poor, revealing that class identication is not
psychological health and subjective well-being particularly associated with objective living
(Jackman and Jackman 1973). conditions. In fact, coefcients of moderate cor-
In the study conducted with Sample A relation were obtained between class identica-
(Palomar 2007), it was observed through dis- tion and some indicators of socioeconomic level
criminant analysis that subjective well-being in such as occupation and family income (0.30 and
some domains such as satisfaction with ones 0.40, respectively). Similar results have been
family relationships and ones recreational found previously, and it has been observed that
activities makes it possible to predict class iden- most individuals identify themselves with the
tity, in terms of the perceptions of individuals middle class (Kelly and Evans 1995).
regarding whether they belong to the group of
those who feel poor or the group of those who
dont feel poor (Palomar 2007). Also, the 22.4.3 Subjective Well-Being
individuals in Sample A who do not consider and Attributes of Poverty
themselves to be poorin contrast with those
who do consider themselves to be poorhad Due to the lack of clear correspondence between
more favorable scores in a group of variables objective living conditions and subjective well-
associated with psychological resources such as being, a question arises regarding the
relationship between the type of attributions poverty, and their own self-esteem, all of which
made by individuals with respect to their living likely inuence the level of subjective well-being
conditions and the signicance of those they experience (Shek 2002).
conditions in explaining their subjective well-
being. Regarding the multiple meanings of pov-
erty for different social groups, the types of 22.4.4 Subjective Well-Being
beliefs related to the causes of poverty may be and Expectations of Social
classied in three categories: (a) individual or Mobility and Progress
internal causes (lack of skills, effort or savings);
(b) social or external causes (exploitation, lack of Regarding the relationship between subjective
education, low wages, and absence of social well-being and expectations for improving
opportunities); and (c) fatalism (bad luck or mis- ones economic situation and socioeconomic
fortune). The rst type of belief is based on the level, the study conducted by Palomar (2005)
perspective that poor people are responsible for revealed that subjective well-being was
their condition, while the other two are based on associated with the expectation for progress, par-
a view that poor people suffer as a result of ticularly among the poorest sectors (Sample C).
circumstances outside of their control (Shek The ndings indicate that while the number of
2002). individuals who believe they have few
The results of research on this topic, possibilities for improving their economic situa-
conducted with Sample C of individuals living tion is very high, the percentage of individuals
in poverty (Palomar 2005), reveal that when con- who believe they have many possibilities for
sidering the proportion of satised persons in living well or improving their economic situation
relation to the type of beliefs regarding the was higher among those satised with their lives
causes of poverty, it is observed that the propor- (23 %) than among those unsatised with their
tion of individuals who report being satised lives (16.1 %) (X2 17.54, p 0.000).
with their lives is somewhat higher among Subjective well-being appears to be different
those who attribute poverty to individual causes between individuals who experience negative
(78.1 % of 541 cases) than among those who social mobility and those who experience posi-
attribute poverty to structural and fatalistic tive social mobility in an index constructed on
causes (70.8 % in 712 cases and 69.3 % in the basis of differences over time with a number
504 cases, respectively) (X2 15.91, of indicators, including: (a) the materials used to
p 0.000). According to the literature, an expla- construct their own housing and their parents
nation for this difference may be that attributing housing; (b) beginning wages (when they started
poverty to individual causes is associated with a to live independently) and current wages;
stronger feeling of control over ones life, and (c) initial occupation and current occupation;
this in turn may be associated with having greater and (d) initial level of schooling (when they
life satisfaction (Palomar 2005). This type of began their rst job) and current level of school-
attribution is benecial for all social classes, ing. According to Palomar (2006) (Sample A), an
since these individuals are more satised with analysis based on comparison of means revealed
their lives, and have better physical health, that there are differences in subjective well-being
fewer symptoms of depression and more between those with positive social mobility and
possibilities for moving up the social ladder. negative social mobility in the various life
Attributing poverty to external causes places domains such as satisfaction with work,
life situations outside of ones control, relationships with offspring, personal develop-
generating impotence and discomfort. And thus ment, sociability and relationships with friends,
feeling poor may be associated with the and personal perception. Specically, those
perceptions that individuals have regarding their experiencing positive social mobility had higher
own capacities, their own manner of confronting scores in all cases, with the exception of the
Table 22.1 Dimensions of subjective well-being as predictors of social mobility

M SD B 95 % CI
Well-being with work 3.02 0.56 832.6** 245.3 1419.9
Well-being in relationship with offspring 3.36 0.57 231.0 359.5 821.4
Well-being with money 2.49 0.76 788.6** 286.0 1291.3
Well-being with couple relationship 3.27 0.69 2.5 462.5 467.4
Well-being with family in general 3.15 0.60 114.8 715.0 485.3
Well-being with personal development 2.38 0.89 272.9 678.2 132.4
Well-being with sociability and friends 2.94 0.51 331.3 332.3 995.0
Well-being with personal perception 3.10 0.53 1076.3** 1812.5 340.1
Well-being with recreation 2.28 0.79 45.0 539.4 449.5
Well-being with social environment 1.76 0.67 3.88.9 809.7 32.0
Well-being with family of origin 2.96 0.64 81.6 632.4 469.3
Adjusted R2 0.11
F 3.12**
Data is from Sample A of the general population in Mexico City
N 91, M Mean, SD Standard Deviation, CI Condence Interval of B
** p 0.01
dimension of well-being with regard to ones Lastly, it is particularly noteworthy that in the
social environment. In the latter case, individuals measurement of overall well-being, those with
with less life satisfaction were precisely those the highest averages were individuals who were
who experienced positive social mobility. not poor and who experienced negative social
In addition social mobility may be explained mobility. It is likely that the explanation for this
by well-being with regard to work, money and result is that even when individuals who are not
personal perception. It is important to point out poor have experienced negative social mobility,
that personal perception has a negative sign, they still have their most basic needs covered
signifying that greater dissatisfaction with the something that cannot be said of those who are
way individuals perceive themselves will lead extremely poor. The averages obtained in the
to greater motivation to engage in activities that various dimensions of well-being, depending on
will improve living conditions and achieve social the socioeconomic level and social mobility of
mobility. The proportion of explained variance is those interviewed, are presented in Table 22.2.
modest, with only 10.9 % of the total variance in Other ndings obtained from Sample D,
social mobility explained, as illustrated in consisting of beneciaries of the Oportunidades
Table 22.1. program residing in Mexicos central region,
It is worth highlighting that socioeconomic reveal differences in subjective well-being
level and social mobility experienced by among the group of those with positive social
individuals are aspects that may interact to pro- mobility, between those who crossed the poverty
duce effects in some areas of subjective well- line and those who did not. The latter group
being. For example, Palomar (2006) found in reported greater satisfaction than the former. In
Sample A that individuals who were not poor contrast, within the group of those experiencing
and who dropped to a lower position on the social negative social mobility, differences were not
ladder felt more satised with their couple rela- noted among the two sub-groups differentiated
tionship, and those less satised in this area were by their degree of satisfaction (Palomar and
those who were extremely poor and who also Matus 2010). These results are partially consis-
experienced negative social mobility. In terms tent with the positive relationship between well-
of family relationships, persons who were being and income levels reported in other stud-
extremely poor and who experienced positive ies, in the sense that greater economic well-being
social mobility reported being more satised. is associated with greater subjective well-being
Table 22.2 Dimensions of subjective well-being, by socioeconomic level and social mobility
Socioeconomic level Social mobility
EP NP NM PM
M SD M SD M SD M SD
Well-being with work 2.79 0.61 3.21 0.52 3.11 0.62 3.22 0.51
Well-being in relationship with offspring 3.28 0.59 3.41 0.57 3.30 0.59 3.45 0.49
Well-being with money 2.05 0.69 2.92 0.64 2.66 0.76 2.89 0.66
Well-being with couple relationship 3.18 0.73 3.41 0.65 3.32 0.63 3.43 0.68
Well-being with family in general 3.10 0.63 3.20 0.56 3.13 0.60 3.26 0.54
Well-being with personal development 1.94 0.77 2.84 0.78 2.65 0.84 2.87 0.76
Well-being with sociability and friends 2.80 0.53 3.05 0.46 2.94 0.42 3.09 0.48
Well-being with personal perception 2.97 0.55 3.17 0.52 3.10 0.57 3.22 0.49
Well-being with recreation 1.77 0.73 2.75 0.60 2.51 0.74 2.57 0.67
Well-being with social environment 1.52 0.55 2.00 0.69 1.94 0.69 1.79 0.62
Well-being with family of origin 2.83 0.72 3.06 0.53 3.10 0.60 3.02 0.47
Overall well-being 2.55 0.38 3.02 0.33 2.82 0.42 2.99 0.31
Note: Data from Sample A of general population in Mexico City
EP Extreme Poverty, NP Not Poor, NM Negative Mobility, PM Positive Mobility, M Mean, SD Standard Deviation
(Kobau et al. 2010). Nevertheless, it is important Nacional de Estadstica y Geografa 2012). Also
to point out in this regard that Veenhoven (2005) in the national study of beneciaries of the
proposes that the relationship between well- Oportunidades program, with a rural and urban
being and purchasing power is actually curvilin- probabilistic sample (Sample E), high average
ear, since after a certain income level is passed, levels of satisfaction were observed
the regression line attens out, suggesting a (8.03 2.18) in a range from 1 to 10. This data
descending return. This raises the question of differs from the assessment of wealth, with aver-
how much well-being is experienced by poor age values (4.98 2.45) in a range from 1 to
individuals. 10, indicating that extremely poor individuals
placed themselves basically at the mid-point
between poverty and wealth. This suggests that
22.4.5 Subjective Well-Being they feel quite a bit more satised than wealthy
and Extreme Poverty individuals. And this difference between both
subjective assessments suggests that the results
By focusing analysis exclusively on individuals are not a product of generalized over-estimation,
living in extreme poverty in the sample of or in other words, that the results are not due to
beneciaries of the Oportunidades program those responding viewing everything too
residing in Mexicos central region (Sample D), optimistically.
it was found that when measuring the degree of By reviewing the opposite of subjective well-
satisfaction with a single item, nearly half of the being, specically psychological distress, among
individuals (47.6 %) consider themselves to be the results obtained from the sample of
very satised (Palomar and Victorio 2010). This beneciaries of the Oportunidades program
data does not differ signicantly from the data residing in Mexicos central region (Sample D),
reported by Kobau et al. (2010), who indicate it was observed that, according to the values of
that approximately half of those responding con- well-known scales of depression (Zung 1965)
sider their lives to be close to their ideal and that and anxiety (Beck et al. 1988), the average
their living conditions are excellent, and are only values of this sample are within the expected
slightly lower than those reported in the range. In the scale of depression, for example,
Bienestar autoreportado survey (Instituto average values of 37.45 (12.33) in a range from
20 to 80 were obtained, with 50 indicating a competitiveness as a factor in achievement moti-

depressive disorder. And in the anxiety scale, vation, as well as the effect from the perception
average values of 10.79 (12.55) were obtained of rejection as a factor in depression (Palomar
in a range from 0 to 63, with 26 indicating an et al. 2005).
anxiety disorder (Palomar and Victorio 2012). With regard to the sample of university
In addition, in the national sample of students and professors in Mexico City (Sample
beneciaries of the Oportunidades program B) who tend to belong to the middle class, it was
(Sample E), average values of 41.87 (13.64) observed that subjective well-being, measured as
were obtained in the depression scale and aver- life satisfaction (Diener et al. 1985), is associated
age values of 16.04 (13.03) were obtained in with the female gender, with less perception of
the anxiety scale. The values obtained suggest stress, and higher levels of schooling. In addition,
that a signicant proportion of those interviewed greater satisfaction is associated with fewer
in both samples do not report clinical levels of reports of psychosomatic symptoms. Neverthe-
symptoms of depression or anxiety. It is impor- less, neither life satisfaction nor stress directly
tant to clarify that the average values for depres- predicted the frequency of illnesses or the fre-
sion and anxiety are higher in the national sample quency of medical appointments, which could
that in the sample corresponding to the countrys rather be predicted through the reporting of psy-
central region, but clinical levels are not reached chosomatic symptoms (Victorio 2008). Similar
in either of the two cases. This suggests that differences in gender and schooling levels have
when persons living in extreme poverty are stud- been reported in other studies Kobau
ied exclusively, a generalized deterioration is not et al. (2010), but a direct relationship was not
observed in relation to either satisfaction or the found between satisfaction and health, with the
presence of indicators of emotional distress, such latter measured more objectively as the fre-
as anxiety or depression. quency of illnesses and medical appointments.
In addition, while there is no relationship
between age and life satisfaction, there is a nega-
22.4.6 Predictors of Subjective tive relationship between age and psychosomatic
Well-Being symptoms. This is consistent with the ndings of
other authors who have reported an inverse rela-
If a high degree of satisfaction can be observed tionship between psychological health and age
even in the poorest population, it is important to (Erskine et al. 2007).
look at the factors that might predict such satis- In the analysis of samples consisting of only
faction. With respect to the group of individuals poor individuals, specically the sample of
categorized as very poor, moderately poor and beneciaries of the Oportunidades program
not poor (Sample A), we nd that subjective residing in Mexicos central region (Sample D),
well-beingmeasured as the overall score for the group that felt very satised was contrasted
satisfaction with various aspects of life such as with the group that did not, and it was found that
work, offspring, money, marital relationship, greater satisfaction was associated with more
family, personal growth, friendship, recreational optimism, more instrumental use of a sense of
activities and social environmentis directly humor as a social resource, more positive religi-
determined by consumption level, achievement osity, younger age, less use of evasive-impulsive
motivation and depression. Specically, greater problem-solving strategies, less use of searching
subjective well-being is associated with a higher for support as a coping style, less negative self-
level of consumption, a greater tendency toward concept and less negative religiosity (Palomar
mastery in achievement motivation, and less and Victorio 2010).
depression. Also, subjective well-being is indi- In the same sample of beneciaries of the
rectly inuenced by the effects from a stronger Oportunidades program residing in Mexicos
internal locus of control and more central region (Sample D), predictors of the
Fig. 22.1 Note: Structural model of satisfaction. Data is from a national probabilistic sample of beneciaries of the
Oportunidades program (Sample E). All coefcients are signicant at the level of p 0.05
lack of well-being were studied, with the latter possible to obtain a more parsimonious model
measured as the presence of symptoms of depres- with good adjustment (CFI 0.958, RMSEA
sion or anxiety. It was observed that more fre- 0.027, pclose 1.000). This model is valid
quent reporting of depression was determined by for both males and females, and for both rural
more anxiety, more negative self-concept, more and urban populations. It includes the individual
use of evasive-impulsive and stagnation characteristics of personal strength, negative
problem-solving strategies, lack of emotional affect and social support as predictors of life
self-regulation, less search for support as a cop- satisfaction. This model is presented in Fig. 22.1.
ing style and more likelihood of being female. The results from the model indicate that
The determinants of anxiety were more depres- greater life satisfaction is directly associated
sion, more stress, more search for support and with more personal strength and less negative
denial used as coping styles, and lack of self- affect, but not with social support. Strength
regulation (Palomar and Victorio 2012). consists of individual resources such as resis-
The national study of beneciaries of the tance to stress, emotional intelligence, a reexive
Oportunidades program (Sample E) also coping style, achievement motivation, rational
provides information on the predictors of subjec- strategies for problem-solving, and self-control.
tive well-being, measured as the degree of life And negative affect consists of stress, anxiety,
satisfaction. In this analysis the relevance of dif- depression and social maladjustment. Social sup-
ferent economic and social factors was deter- port consists of general social support and family
mined through the modeling of structural support. Social support is positively associated
equations. As a result of an initial modeling, with personal strength and negatively associated
some factors were eliminated, including age, with negative affect, but it does not have direct
schooling level, housing conditions, respect for inuence on life satisfaction. At the same time
citizen rights, trusting others, religiosity, health there is an inverse relationship between personal
status and adversity, due to the lack of prediction strength and negative affect. In other words
( p > 0.05) and/or lack of adjustment (CFI individuals with more personal resources or
< 0.85). Excluding these variables made it strengths receive more support, while individuals
with more affective and social disruption receive Table 22.3 Predictors of subjective well-being and psy-
less support and have fewer strengths. Neverthe- chological distress
less, what directly affects levels of life satisfac- Subjective well-being Sample
tion are personal strengths and negative Level of consumption (+) A
affectivity, regardless of support. Achievement motivation: mastery (+) A
It is interesting to observe that in this last Depression () A
analysis of Sample E, some factors previously Gender (female) B
Stress () B
identied as predictors of life satisfaction, such
Level of schooling (+) B
as housing conditions, religiosity and level of
Psychosomatic symptoms () B
schooling, were not noted to have a signicant Optimism (+) D
effect. In addition, other factors such as health Sense of humor as social resource (+) D
status and adversitywhich one would expect to Positive religiosity (+) D
have an important effectwere not found to be Age () D
good predictors. The same can be said of social Problem-solving: evasive-impulsive () D
aspects, such as the perception that civil rights Coping: search for support () D
should be respected and having trust in others, Negative self-concept () D
since they were not found to have a signicant Negative religiosity () D
effect on life satisfaction. Strength: resistance (+) E
In the attempt to explain the results obtained Strength: emotional intelligence (+) E
Strength: reexive coping (+) E
in the different samples studied, it becomes clear
Strength: achievement motivation (+) E
that trying to predict subjective well-being is an
Strength: problem-solving: rational (+) E
elusive endeavor. Individual characteristics seem
Strength: self-control (+) E
to be the most signicant, but they vary among Negative affect: stress () E
the different studies. These differences are Negative affect: anxiety () E
illustrated in Table 22.3. Negative affect: depression () E
Coping styles, problem-solving strategies and Negative affect: social maladjustment () E
self-control seem to be the most consistent Psychological distress (depression) Sample
predictors of subjective well-being, in addition Anxiety (+) D
to those associated with negative affectivity. Negative self-concept (+) D
Also, the effect of emotional intelligence on Gender (female) D
well-being is consistent with other results Problem-solving: evasive-impulsive (+) D
suggesting that difculties in understanding, Problem-solving: stagnation (+) D
Lack of self-regulation (+) D
communicating and regulating emotions have a
Coping: search for support () D
negative impact on health and subjective well-
Psychological distress (anxiety) Sample
being. Thus, more difculty in identifying and Depression (+) D
describing feelings is associated with mental Stress (+) D
problems such as depression, anxiety, insomnia, Coping: search for support (+) D
somatic complaints and social dysfunction Coping: denial (+) D
(Saxena et al. 2011). Lack of self-regulation (+) D
The relationship between stress and subjective Note: The positive and negative signs indicate the direc-
well-being is quite complex, since subjective tion of the relationship. Samples: A general population
well-being is associated inversely with stress in Mexico City, B university students and professors in
Mexico City, D beneciaries of the Oportunidades
and negative affect in international comparisons. program in Mexicos central region, E national proba-
Also, more stress is reported in wealthier bilistic sample of beneciaries of the Oportunidades
countries with better living conditions program
(Ng et al. 2009). In other words, stress does not
appear to be an affective state produced only by basic needs, corruption and criminality), but
adverse circumstances (low income, unsatised these adverse circumstances are indeed
associated with negative affect and with low also found to be negatively associated with the
satisfaction with life in intercultural contrasts. possibility of experiencing stress in a sample of
In addition, at the individual level and within the Turkish population, and at the same time it
the same culture, the relationship between stress was associated with relief from symptoms of
and negative affect is stronger than the relation- depression (Gencoz and O zlale 2004). In other
ship between stress and subjective well-being words, individuals who believe they have support
(Ng et al. 2009). from persons they can count on when they need
The role played by coping styles in relation to assistance, and who feel taken care of by others,
subjective well-being makes an explanation even have fewer symptoms of depression, partly
more complex. While stress and subjective well- because they have a lower index of stress. How-
being are negatively associated, the effect of ever, the absence of a relationship between social
stress on well-being is positively measured support and subjective well-being is not an
through problem-centered coping and an orienta- isolated result. It has also been reported in a
tion toward growth, and is negatively measured sample of the Greek population (Kafetsios 2006).
through avoidance-centered coping (Karlsen In addition, the lack of a consistent effect
et al. 2006). In addition to this complexity, the from religiosity in the samples studied here is
effect from age must be considered, according to also particularly noteworthy, in contrast to other
results encountered by Erskine et al. (2007), who international ndings indicating that religiosity
observed that better mental health, measured as may contribute to individual health and well-
fewer psychopathological symptoms in older being, independently of work and family. It has
adults (e.g. anxiety, depression, neuroticism, been reported in the literature that the degree to
psychoticism and schizotypy), was associated which individuals consider themselves to be reli-
with the use of repressive coping. This type of gious is the variable associated with their health
coping consists of the tendency to deny, mini- and happiness, independently of their religious
mize or postpone problems instead of resolving afliation or their involvement in religious
them in a direct manner. When only older adults activities (Green and Elliot 2010). In another
are compared, between those who use repressive study it was found that high levels of religiosity
coping and those who do not, the former had are associated with low levels of psychological
better health than the latter. When participants distress symptoms (depression). However, cop-
with a high degree of repressive coping were ing with problems through religion does not
eliminated from the total sample, the effect of moderate the relationship between stress and
age on well-being diminished. In other words, depression. To the contrary, more spiritual or
the authors detected a protective effect from religious coping was associated with more
both age and repressive coping with respect to depression (Lee 2007). In summary, our analysis
the presence of psychopathology. This effect of predictors of subjective well-being reveals that
may be important when samples of young people social support and religiosity are not consistent
are compared with samples of older adults. predictors of subjective well-being in the
In the analysis of results reported here, the samples studied. Instead, it appears that individ-
lack of a more consistent effect from social sup- ual aspects, such as personal strengths, are those
port is noteworthy, given its relevance widely that predict subjective well-being with more
documented in the literature. For example, in a consistency.
sample of males from rural Australian
communities, social support was the most impor-
tant predictor of subjective well-beingmore 22.5 Conclusions
than stress or a sense of community. It was also
found that social support and a sense of commu- The main ndings from the analysis presented
nity had a buffering effect on stress (Kutek here may be summarized in the following man-
et al. 2011). Support related to assistance was ner: regarding the relationship between
subjective well-being and class identity, some mobility but did not manage to cross the poverty
domains of subjective well-being, such as satis- line. In the group that experienced negative
faction with family relationships and with recre- mobility, no differences were noted in relation
ational activities, made it possible to predict the to the other two groups with respect to their
perception of individuals as to whether they levels of subjective well-being.
belong to the group that feels poor or the With respect to subjective well-being or the
group that doesnt feel poor. Those who do lack of subjective well-being among those living
not consider themselves to be poor have more in extreme poverty, a generalized deterioration
favorable scores in terms of psychological was not observed in levels of satisfaction or
resources and most of the domains of subjective indicators of emotional distress or afiction,
well-being, in comparison to those who do feel such as anxiety or depression, among persons
poor. With respect to the relationship between living in extreme poverty, in comparison with
subjective well-being and the perceived causes of the general population. Also important to note
poverty, the proportion of individuals who report is that the predictors of subjective well-being
feeling satised with their lives is higher among varied among the different samples studied.
those who attribute poverty to individual causes, Greater subjective well-being has been
than among those who attribute poverty to struc- associated with different factors such as: a higher
tural and fatalistic causes. consumption level, a greater tendency toward
In terms of the relationship between subjec- mastery in achievement motivation, less depres-
tive well-being and social mobility, the percent- sion, a higher level of schooling, less perception
age of individuals who believe they have many of stress, fewer reports of psychosomatic
possibilities for improving their economic situa- symptoms, more optimism, more instrumental
tion is greater among those who feel satised use of a sense of humor as a social resource,
with their lives than among those who are dissat- more positive religiosity, younger age, less use
ised with their lives. In most of the domains of of evasive-impulsive problem-solving strategies,
subjective well-being, there is greater satisfac- less use of the search for support as a coping
tion among those who experienced positive style, less negative self-concept, less negative
social mobility than among those who experi- religiosity, more personal strength and less nega-
enced negative social mobility. Among the spe- tive affect. In terms of the lack of subjective
cic domains of subjective well-being, positive well-being, more reports of depression have
social mobility can be predicted by higher levels been associated with more anxiety, more nega-
of satisfaction with work and with money, as tive self-concept, more use of evasive-impulsive
well as lower levels of satisfaction with personal and stagnation problem-solving strategies, lack
perception. Also, individuals who are not poor of emotional self-regulation, less search for sup-
and who dropped to a lower position on the social port as a coping style, and more likelihood of
ladder feel more satised with their couple being female. Also, more anxiety has been
relationships, while those who are extremely associated with more depression, more stress,
poor and experienced this social decline are the more search for support and more denial as cop-
most dissatised in this area. Extremely poor ing styles, plus the lack of self-regulation.
individuals who experienced positive mobility The results analyzed in this paper generally
feel more satised in terms of family support the premise that economic well-being is
relationships, and individuals who are not poor positively associated with subjective well-being.
and who have experienced negative mobility are However, when data for only individuals living
those with the highest averages in overall well- in extreme poverty are analyzed, indexes of high
being. Also, the group that experienced positive levels of psychological distress or a lack of sub-
mobility and crossed to the other side of the jective well-being are not found. Lastly, when
poverty line reports greater subjective well- various predictors of subjective well-being are
being than the group that experienced positive studied, it is observed that the factors that best
and most consistently explain subjective well- transmitted? And how is it inherited from
being are individual factors, particularly those parents? All of this must be viewed from the
associated with personal competencies that individuals perspective, and from a more quali-
enable individuals to confront life directly. tative perspective.
From our perspective, considerable research
has been conducted on subjective well-being in
Mexico and in other countries, but there are still
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Happiness Inequality in Latin America
and the Caribbean 23
Nestor Gandelman
23.1 Introduction 23.2 Methodology
This contribution is motivated by two relatively 23.2.1 Utility and Happiness

well known facts. First, the Latin America and
Caribbean (LAC) region has the most unequal The basic methodological idea is simple. In our
income distribution in the world. Second, several microeconomic courses we assume that people
LAC countries are ranked among the happier have a utility function which they strive to maxi-
countries in the world. These two facts raise mize subject to a budget constraint.
three questions of interest. Is LAC the region The concept of utility dates at least since the
with the largest happiness inequality? Does the end of the nineteenth century. The British philos-
inequality in income translate to inequality of opher Jeremy Bentham refers to the the princi-
happiness? How much happiness inequality can ple of utility as a guide used by individuals to
be attributed to income inequality? approve or condemn actions according to
To address these questions we follow a whether they seem to increase or diminish their
recently published paper (Gandelman and happiness. In those days, for philosophers and
Porzecanski 2013), where we focus on how economists utility was simply treated as an indi-
much happiness inequality can be explained by cator of general well-being and therefore, utility
the underlying income inequality. In that paper maximization was a very reasonable behavioral
we used a worldwide database that allow for assumption. The problem was that classical
comparison between regions and show that economists were not particularly clear on how
LAC and Sub-Saharan Africa have the largest utility was measured.
levels of income and happiness inequality. In Modern decision theory focuses on the
the present chapter we focus on the second and preferences of individuals. The utility function
third question for LAC countries. is the mathematical representation of those
preferences whose main advantage is that it is
easy to use. This mathematical representation
valuates bundles of goods and assigns them a
number. Utility is therefore a function of how
much of each good is included in the bundle.
N. Gandelman (*) Not all type of preferences can be represented
Department of Economics, Universidad ORT Uruguay, by a utility function. Fortunately, the two
Montevideo, Uruguay
assumptions needed for a utility function to
e-mail: gandelman@ort.edu.uy

406 N. Gandelman
exist are intuitively appealing. Namely, the com- and the selected bundle is a function of prices
pleteness and transitivity assumptions. and income it can be said that indirectly utility
The completeness axiom says that an individ- depends on prices and consumer income. Mathe-
ual can always compare between two bundles of matically, by substituting back the optimal con-
goods. Let X be a bundle of n goods with sumption basket in the utility function, we obtain
amounts x1, x2, ,. . . xn, of each good and let the so called indirect utility function which is
Y be a bundle with amounts y1, y2, ,. . . yn. itself a function of income and prices.
According to the completeness axiom a decision Assuming additionally that all consumers
maker is able to say (i) if X is preferred over Y, within a country face the same set of prices,
(ii) if Y is preferred over X or (iii) if X and Y are consumer theory implies that lower (higher) util-
indifferent to him. The transitivity axiom says ity levels are associated with lower (higher)
that if a decision maker prefers the bundle income levels. This establishes a natural link
X over the bundle Y and the bundle Y over the between income inequality and utility inequality.
bundle Z he must also prefer the bundle X over Furthermore, given the interpretation of the util-
the bundle Z. Assuming that preferences satisfy ity function as a proxy to the consumer well-
the completeness and the transitivity axiom it can being we have a natural link between income,
be shown that there exist a utility function that utility and happiness inequality.
represents these preferences. Saying that the util- A commonly used functional form for the
ity function u represents the preferences of the utility function is
consumer i is the same as saying that for all
bundles X and Y such that the consumer y1
u y k if 6 1 23:1
i prefers the bundle X over the bundle Y it is 1
also true that u(X) > u(Y). For every bundle X u y log y k if 1
and Y that are indifferent it must be that u
Where u is the utility level, y the income level
(X) u(Y).
and and k are parameters. This utility function
Utility is an ordinal concept useful for ranking
reects several characteristics of the relations
and not a cardinal concept for measuring
between income and the utility level that are
differences in well being. Suppose the utility
appealing from a theoretical point of view and
level of bundle X is 2 and the utility level of
empirically supported.
bundle Y is 4, u(X) 2 and u(Y) 4. We can
First, the utility level is increasing in the level
establish that Y is preferred over X. We cannot
of income, i.e. the more income the larger the
establish a magnitude of how much Y is pre-
utility level. The marginal utility of income is the
ferred over X, i.e. we cannot say that Y is dou-
change in utility produced by an innitesimal
bly preferred over Y, or that Y gives two times
change in the income level. The positive correla-
as much utility as X, or that two bundles of X are
tion between utility and income implies that the
indifferent to one of Y.
marginal utility of income must be positive. For-
Consumer theory assumes that consumers
mally, the marginal utility of income is the rst
choose the bundle that they most prefer among
derivative of the utility function and as reected
the bundles that are affordable to them. In other
in Eq. (23.2) is positive for all positive income
terms, consumers choose the bundle that
levels.
provides them with the maximum level of utility
among the bundles that satisfy their budget con- 0
u y y 23:2
straint. Naturally, the chosen bundle changes
when the prices or the income of the consumer Second, the marginal utility of income is itself
changes. In mathematical terms it is said that the decreasing in income. This means that an extra
optimum bundle for consumer i is a function of dollar for a rich individual implies a lower mar-
prices and his income. Since the utility of the ginal utility than for a poor individual. In plain
consumer is a function of the selected bundle
23 Happiness Inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean 407
words an extra dollar produces a lower increase Starting at least since Friend and Blume (1975)
in the utility of rich people than in the utility of study for the demand for risky assets, there has
poor people. The second derivative is the deriva- been a lot of applied research in risk aversion.
tive of the rst derivative and as shown in Unfortunately, after more than 30 years there is
Eq. (23.3) is negative for all positive income not yet a commonly accepted estimate for . In
levels and for a positive value of . Gandelman and Porzecanski (2013) we present a
00
brief review of existing results and establish that
u y y1 23:3 based on theoretical arguments and empirical
results among economists the most accepted
Third, the utility function allows to represents
range for the coefcient of relative risk aversion
different attitudes towards risk depending on the
is between 1 and 2. In Gandelman and Hernandez-
value of . The Arrow-Pratt coefcient of rela-
Murillo (2015), using data on self reported well
tive risk aversion (see the Appendix for an expla-
being, we report estimates of the coefcient of
nation of this concept) is:
relative risk averison for 75 countries that vary
00
u y closely around 1. In the Results section we report
r R y 23:4 our computation for several values of to show
u0 y
how sensible-robust the results are.
Therefore, using micro data on individuals Note that for all positive values of the utility
income, for any given value of it is possible function exhibits decreasing marginal utility with
to obtain the utility levels up to an additive term respect to income, i.e. an extra dollar produces a
(k) of the population under study and the distri- lower increase in the utility of rich people than in
bution of these utility levels. the utility of poor people. This has two
implications for income and utility inequality.
First, we should expect utility inequality to be
23.2.2 Calibration lower than income inequality. Second, since the
larger the faster the marginal utility decreases as
In this note we calculate the theoretical utility income increases we should also expect that the
level of individuals. The rst step is to have larger , the lower the level of utility inequality.
access to information on individuals data from
a representative survey. The second step is to
choose a value for the parameters of the utility 23.2.3 Ordinality and Cardinality
function. The calibration of the model is the
exercise to select the most reasonable values for A potential problem in measuring happiness and
these parameters as explained in this section. utility inequality using the Gini indicators is that
For values of higher than one, without consid- both are ordinal concepts. The Gini treats these
ering k, Eq. (23.1) produces negative utility levels. ordinal numbers as cardinal numbers, which
Since the most common inequality measures, means that happiness ratings are considered equi-
e.g. the Gini coefcient, are dened over positive distant. That is to say, if individuals are given
values it is not possible to obtain an inequality three options to rate their level of happiness (say
measure from these negative gures. The additive 1, 2 and 3), the distance from the second level to
term, k, moves the distribution of utility levels of a the rst is the same as the distance from the third
country to the right. In our estimations we calibrate level to the second.
k to be the minimum value that moves the whole All ordinary least squares (OLS) estimations
utility-distribution to the positives. This technical using happiness data in cross section or in panel
step should be taken with care because it could data are implicitly assuming cardinality. Ferrer-i-
decrease articially utility inequality if k is larger Carbonell and Frijters (2013) state Psychologist
than necessary. In that sense, our estimates of util- and sociologists usually interpret happiness
ity inequality should be consider upper bounds on scores as cardinal and compare across
utility inequality. respondents, and thus run OLS regressions. On
408 N. Gandelman
the other hand, economists usually (but not Table 23.1 Summary statistics: happiness
always) assume only ordinality, run ordered Mean s.d Observations
latent response models and are not able to control Argentina 6.3 2.0 996
for xed individual traits that in a panel can be Bolivia 5.4 1.8 991
easily accounted in linear regressions estimating Brazil 6.5 2.6 1021
xed effects. Ferrer-i-Carbonell and Frijters Chile 6.2 2.2 1005
(2013) study which problem is more severe: the Colombia 5.9 2.4 995
assumption of cardinality or the lack of control Costa Rica 7.0 2.1 980
for xed effects. They conclude that assuming Cuba 5.4 2.1 994
Dominican Republic 5.1 3.0 975
ordinality or cardinality makes little difference
Ecuador 5.1 2.3 1065
but failing to control for xed effects generates
El Salvador 5.6 2.2 977
substantial differences in results. This result is Guatemala 6.0 2.1 1007
similar to Van Praag and Ferrer-i-Carbonell Haiti 3.8 1.8 499
(2008) that report that several methods based on Honduras 5.3 2.7 965
ordinal or cardinal assumptions yield almost no Jamaica 6.2 1.9 536
differences in the estimations of the determinants Mexico 6.7 2.2 988
of income satisfaction. Nicaragua 4.8 2.7 966
Panama 6.2 2.3 999
Paraguay 4.9 2.0 991
23.3 Data Peru 4.9 2.2 987
Puerto Rico 6.6 2.7 499
Trinidad and Tobago 5.8 2.4 505
With the increase of research on subjective
Uruguay 5.6 2.3 1001
indicators there has also been an increase in the
Venezuela 7.2 2.6 992
availability of databases that could be used to Total 5.8 2.4 20,934
implement this methodology. In Gandelman
Source: Authors computation based on Gallup World Poll
and Porzekanski (2013) we used the Gallup for 2006
World Poll for 2006 that had usable information
for 117 countries, averaging 1000 observations distinguish it from happiness. We acknowledge
each. In this chapter we focus on a subsample that within the subjective indicators literature
consisting of 23 LAC countries. (especially from a psychological point of view)
The Gallup World Poll is a highly comprehen- there are differences between the constructs life
sive database of behavioral economic measures. satisfaction, well-being, happiness and
While the Gallup World Poll does not have a quality of life, that depend on the affective or
specic question on personal happiness (e.g., cognitive evaluation of the quality of ones life.
How happy are you?), it has a life evaluation Following Dockery (2005) we take a pragmatic
question that corresponds to a personal assess- approach and treat the terms as synonyms in the
ment of general well-being. The question in the sense that they are overall individual evaluation
survey reads Please imagine a ladder/mountain of quality of life.
with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to The Gallup World Poll reports income in
ten at the top. Suppose we say that the top of the 29 brackets. In our estimates the individuals in
ladder/mountain represents the best possible life the lowest three brackets ($0, less than $1 a day,
for you and the bottom of the ladder/mountain $1$2 a day) were consolidated into one bracket.
represents the worst possible life for you. If the They were imputed an annual income level of
top step is 10 and the bottom step is 0, on which $365. For the rest of the brackets we imputed to
step of the ladder/mountain do you feel you per- each individual the average of the extremes of
sonally stand at the present time? We use the the brackets. For instance, the next to last bracket
ordered responses to this question as our measure is from $75,000 to $125,000, therefore we
of reported well-being, and henceforth we do not imputed $100,000. The top bracket is more than
Table 23.2 Income and happiness inequality

Gini income (ofcial
statistics) Gini income (our estimations) Gini happiness (our estimations)
Argentina 0.500a 0.363 0.175
Bolivia 0.582a 0.487 0.179
Brazil 0.550a 0.450 0.225
Chile 0.520a 0.528 0.194
Colombia 0.585a 0.260 0.230
Costa Rica 0.472a 0.372 0.166
Cuba 0.300b 0.346 0.213
Dominican Republic 0.500a 0.458 0.335
Ecuador 0.544a 0.401 0.251
El Salvador 0.497a 0.444 0.221
Guatemala 0.537a 0.449 0.191
Haiti 0.595a 0.388 0.272
Honduras 0.553a 0.368 0.285
Jamaica 0.455a 0.376 0.171
Mexico 0.481a 0.412 0.179
Nicaragua 0.523a 0.254 0.317
Panama 0.549a 0.435 0.209
Paraguay 0.532a 0.492 0.213
Peru 0.496a 0.453 0.247
Puerto Rico 0.567c 0.513 0.227
Trinidad and Tobago 0.403a 0.464 0.232
Uruguay 0.462a 0.446 0.228
Venezuela 0.434a 0.449 0.195
LAC 0.492 0.236
Sources: aWorld Bank (2009), bInstitute for Economics and Peace (2010), and cSegarra (2006)
$125,000 and we imputed two times the next to Gini coefcient as published in ofcial statistics
last imputed value, i.e. $200,000. to have an idea of how representative our country
Table 23.1 present summary statistics for hap- surveys are. In general, the Gini computed using
piness for the LAC countries with usable data. the Gallup World Poll is lower than the ofcial
According to the averages Venezuela, Costa Rica statistics. This is reecting that the coverage of
and Mexico are the happiest nations while Haiti, the Poll is not as wide as the national household
Nicaragua and Paraguay are less happy surveys and that in the Poll the last bracket does
countries. not allow differentiating among the really richest
of society. Two cases particularly problematic
are Nicaragua and Colombia where the Gini
23.4 Results computed from Gallup is less than half the of-
cial Gini. On the other hand, it strikes Cuba and
Table 23.2 presents the Gini coefcient for Trinidad and Tobago where the Gini computed
income and happiness1 data from the Gallup from the Gallup data is 15 % above the published
World Poll. In the rst column we included the statistics. Gasparini et al. (2008) working with
the same data also nd that Gini coefcients
1
from Gallup are lower than from household
Kalmijn andVeenhoven (2005) discuss the pros and cons
of nine different statistics for measuring happiness
surveys but larger than those here reported. The
inequality including the Gini coefcient. divergence with our results is produced by a
410 N. Gandelman
methodological difference. Since we do not have family satisfaction, friendship satisfaction, health
more information than the income bracket we satisfaction, community environment satisfac-
assumed that everyone within the bracket has tion etc.). This literature postulates that overall
the same income level equal to the mid-point. life satisfaction is a general construct of many
Gasparini et al. (2008) imputed income randomly specic domains. Aggregation of these domains
within each bracket. is at the basis of the overall individual evaluation
Inequality measures may be affected by the of his life.2
disaggregation level at which the data is handled. If the non-pecuniary aspects of life are nega-
Due to the way questions are reported in the tively associated with income (e.g. the poor
Gallup database we have a maximum disaggre- showing more solidarity, suffering less stress,
gation of 11 values for happiness and 29 values being more satised with their friends or family),
for income (and utility). The statistics reported in then happiness inequality should be lower than
this chapter are using this maximum disaggre- utility inequality. The reason for this is that the
gation available but robustness exercises were poor would compensate their lower utility level
performed where we reduced the number of (derived only from their income) with more sat-
income brackets. The results do not change in isfaction in non monetary variables. Table 23.3
any relevant feature. shows the results of the calibration exercise of
Due to the usual postulation of diminishing utility inequality. Comparing with Table 23.2 it
marginal utility, it was expected for the utility is clear that happiness inequality is larger than
(and happiness as a proxy) inequality to be lower utility inequality for of 1 and above. Therefore,
than in income but the theory does not have an under the most reasonable parameterization of
implication of how much lower. In Gandelman the utility function, richer people are happier
and Porzecanski (2013) we showed that world- not only because they can consume more, but
wide, happiness inequality measured through a also because they are more satised with the
Gini index is approximately half of income non-monetary aspects of their life.
inequality. This result also holds for LAC Having established that differences in income
countries as a whole. Nicaragua and Colombia are in general unable to fully explain differences
results are different. Happiness inequality in in happiness, in Table 23.4 we address the ques-
Nicaragua is larger than income inequality and tion of how much happiness inequality can be
happiness inequality in Colombia is about 90 % attributable to income inequality. To do so, we
of happiness inequality. When considering the report the ratio between the Gini for utility
ofcial statistics for income inequality, happi- (whose only source of inequality is the underly-
ness inequality in these countries represent a ing income distribution) and the Gini for happi-
proportion closer to that of other LAC countries. ness. As expected the larger the lower the
This leads us to think that there is a measurement predictive power of income inequality. The
problem in the income variable of the Gallup widely used logarithmical utility function,
database for these two countries. 1, is able to reproduce an inequality level
As explained, the utility level of an individual of 81 % of total happiness inequality. For values
is entirely dependent on its income level and the of above 1 the percentage explained is much
parameters that introduced risk aversion. If hap- lower. Our results therefore suggest that theoret-
piness reects only income and risk aversion, the ical models where happiness plays a key role
measures of inequality of happiness and utility should probably be based on the logarithmic
should match. This does not happen in our form instead of other forms with larger
estimations. Therefore, the inequality in happi- coefcients of relative risk aversion.
ness must also be reecting other differences in
aspects of life not associated with monetary
income. The literature on life satisfaction has 2
See for instance Cumminis (1996), Salvatore and Munoz
focused on various life domains (job satisfaction, (2001), Sirgy et al. (1995), and Rojas (2006).
Table 23.3 Simulated levels of utility inequality by country
Gini coefcients for utility under different assumptions for
0.8 0.9 1 1.1 1.3 1.5 2.0
Argentina 0.168 0.148 0.129 0.112 0.097 0.084 0.027
Bolivia 0.289 0.264 0.241 0.219 0.199 0.181 0.090
Brazil 0.188 0.162 0.139 0.119 0.101 0.085 0.023
Chile 0.218 0.187 0.159 0.134 0.113 0.094 0.023
Colombia 0.118 0.104 0.091 0.080 0.069 0.060 0.021
Costa Rica 0.163 0.143 0.126 0.111 0.098 0.087 0.048
Cuba 0.229 0.215 0.201 0.189 0.177 0.167 0.122
Dominican Republic 0.290 0.270 0.250 0.232 0.216 0.201 0.135
Ecuador 0.208 0.187 0.167 0.148 0.131 0.116 0.046
El Salvador 0.239 0.216 0.195 0.176 0.158 0.143 0.077
Guatemala 0.262 0.240 0.219 0.200 0.183 0.167 0.094
Haiti 0.277 0.259 0.241 0.225 0.209 0.194 0.114
Honduras 0.217 0.201 0.187 0.174 0.162 0.152 0.114
Jamaica 0.181 0.159 0.139 0.120 0.103 0.088 0.027
Mexico 0.205 0.183 0.162 0.143 0.127 0.111 0.043
Nicaragua 0.146 0.137 0.130 0.124 0.119 0.115 0.101
Panama 0.258 0.236 0.215 0.196 0.178 0.162 0.088
Paraguay 0.263 0.237 0.213 0.190 0.170 0.152 0.067
Peru 0.259 0.238 0.218 0.201 0.184 0.170 0.104
Puerto Rico 0.214 0.185 0.158 0.135 0.115 0.098 0.038
Trinidad and Tobago 0.198 0.172 0.149 0.129 0.111 0.096 0.038
Uruguay 0.212 0.188 0.166 0.146 0.129 0.113 0.049
Venezuela 0.226 0.201 0.177 0.155 0.136 0.118 0.041
Table 23.4 How much happiness inequality can be attributed to income inequality? percentages
Gini coefcients for utility under different assumptions for
0.8 0.9 1 1.1 1.3 1.5 2.0
Argentina 96 84 74 64 55 48 15
Bolivia 162 148 135 123 111 101 51
Brazil 84 72 62 53 45 38 10
Chile 112 96 82 69 58 48 12
Colombia 51 45 40 35 30 26 9
Costa Rica 98 87 76 67 59 53 29
Cuba 108 101 94 89 83 78 57
Dominican Republic 87 80 75 69 64 60 40
Ecuador 83 74 66 59 52 46 18
El Salvador 108 98 88 80 72 65 35
Guatemala 137 126 115 105 96 87 49
Haiti 102 95 89 83 77 71 42
Honduras 76 71 66 61 57 53 40
Jamaica 106 93 81 70 60 51 16
Mexico 114 102 90 80 71 62 24
Nicaragua 46 43 41 39 38 36 32
Panama 123 113 103 94 85 77 42
Paraguay 124 111 100 90 80 71 32
Peru 105 96 88 81 75 69 42
Puerto Rico 94 81 70 59 51 43 17
Trinidad and Tobago 85 74 64 56 48 41 16
Uruguay 93 83 73 64 56 50 21
Venezuela 116 103 91 80 70 61 21
Simple average 100 90 81 73 65 58 29
412 N. Gandelman
23.5 Conclusions Appendix
The use of subjective indicators in economic In this appendix we provide a simple explanation
research has been growing strongly in the latter for non-economists of what is the relative risk
years. This chapter is certainly part of such liter- aversion measure used in this paper to calibrate
ature. It is not yet clear how important this line of utility levels.
work would be to our paradigms of thought, but it Under the assumption of decreasing marginal
is now clear that subjective indicators research returns to income the utility function is concave in
can shed light on many interesting elements to income. Assume that an individual is offered the
which economists had not paid enough attention opportunity to invest in a project that will pay $12
so far. with probability 0.5 but that may end up losing $4
In this chapter we have established that using with probability 0.5. If he is risk neutral he will be
the popular Gini coefcient, happiness inequality indifferent between this project and another one
is about half the size of income inequality in that will pay him $4 with certainty since
LAC. This result is not surprising and, prima 0.5*12 0.5*4 4. If he strictly prefers the cer-
facie, it can be understood as reecting decreas- tain project we say that he is risk averse.
ing marginal utility of income. What is more Figure 23.1 presents a concave utility function
surprising is that, for the most plausible values and shows how the certain option is strictly pre-
of a parameterization of the utility function, ferred over the lottery for a risk neutral individual
income inequality can explain a sizeable portion of wealth level $80. If he buys the lottery with
(more than three quarters in the best case) of probability 0.5 he ends up with a wealth level of
happiness inequality but not all of it. The happi- $76 $80 $4 and with probability 0.5 he ends
ness inequality that remains unexplained must be up with wealth $92 $80 + $12. If he invest in
attributed to some non-pecuniary dimensions of the certain project he ends up with a wealth level of
life that overall are also positively correlated $84 $80 + $4. The expected utility of investing
with income. in the risky project is therefore 0:5u80-4 0:5
Fig. 23.1 Expected utility
u80 12 0:5u76 0:5u92 lower than example are the same as the previous one. The
the utility level of investing in the certain project only difference is that in this example the
u(84). projects pay a rate of return relative to initial
It is clear from the graph that for all concave wealth.
functions the certain project will be strictly pre- Extending previous reasoning risk neutrality
ferred, i.e. concavity of the utility function implies indifference between a risky project and
implies risk aversion. Intuitively it seems to be the certain project of 5 % return. A risk adverse
that the more concave a utility function is the individual will strictly prefer the certain project
more risk averse an individual is. The second over the risky one. Once again concavity plays a
derivative of the utility function is therefore a key role but since the payments of the lottery are
natural candidate for measuring risk aversion. proportions of the initial wealth (or investment)
The problem is that it is not constant to the measure of risk aversion should take this into
transformations of the utility function. For account. The relevant concept is the Arrow-Pratt
instance, if we multiply the utility function by a coefcient of relative risk aversion that is dened
constant, the preferences of the individual do not as:
change but the second derivative gets multiplied 00
by this constant. In order to have a measure of u y
r A y 23:6
risk aversion that is invariant to afne transfor- u0 y
mation of the utility function the second deriva-
The literature on risk has theoretically and empir-
tive can be normalized dividing by the rst
ically addressed the issue of how risk aversion
derivative. This is the so called Arrow-Pratt mea-
changes with wealth levels. It is reasonable to
sure of absolute risk aversion.
think that as people become wealthier it is less
00
u y problematic for them to take chances on lotteries
rA 23:5 implying xed sums. In the rst examples if
u0 y
wealth changes from 80 to 800 the outcomes of
The Arrow-Pratt measure of absolute risk aver- the lottery represent a much small proportion of
sion is useful when the projects evaluated are total income and therefore affect less the life of
additions or subtractions over the wealth level the individual. It is likely that the individual
of individuals. Many times projects imply might be able to afford to get involved in
proportions, like the return on investments that riskier projects. Therefore decreasing absolute
are usually stated relative to the investment level. risk aversion is in general assumed. Empirical
Suppose an individual is offered an investment research has presented wide support for this.
that with probability 0.5 will imply a return of When the lotteries imply proportions of an indi-
15 % but with probability 0.5 will imply a return vidual wealth it is not clear what might happen.
of 5 %. The expected rate of return is 5 %. With In the second example the change in the wealth
an initial wealth of $80 with probability 0.5 he does not alter the proportions, the positive out-
will end up with wealth $92 (80*1.15) and with come is always 15 % of wealth and the negative
probability 0.5 will end up with wealth level $76 outcome is also 5 %. Empirical research has
(80*.95). Investing in a project with a certain not been able to establish a denitive answer.
payment of 5 % will end up with wealth level Friend and Blume (1975) obtained mixed results
$84 (80*1.05). indicative of either increasing relative risk aver-
The expected utility of the risk project is: sion or constant relative risk aversion. Cohn
et al. (1975) found decreasing relative risk aver-
0:5u80*:95 0:5u80*1:15 sion. Morin and Fernandez (1983) found that
0:5u76 0:5u92 23:2 attitude towards risk varies among social groups:
poorer individuals exhibiting increasing relative
and the expected utility of the certain project is u
risk aversion while richer individuals exhibiting
(84). Note that the nal wealth levels of this
414 N. Gandelman
decreasing relative risk aversion. The latest Gasparini, L., Sosa, W., Marchionni, M., & Olivieri,
published paper on this issue that we are aware S. (2008). Income, deprivation, and perceptions in
Latin America and the Caribbean: New evidence
off is Chiappori and Paiella (2011) that report from the Gallup World Poll. Paper written for the
evidence of constant relative risk aversion. This Latin American Research Network on Quality of
is the assumption used in this note. Life in Latin America and the Caribbean of the Inter
American Development Bank.
Institute for Economics and Peace. (2010). The Global
Peace Index, NSW 1590, Sydney Australia.
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is constant: Evidence from panel data. Journal of the Rojas, M. (2006). Life satisfaction and satisfaction in
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Does the Chilean Pension Model
Influence Life Satisfaction? 24
A Multilevel Longitudinal Analysis
Esteban Calvo
24.1 Introduction nancial outcomes as the main criteria to evalu-

ate pension systems (Holzmann and Hinz 2005).
Chile is a worldwide leader in old-age pension In addition, the solvency of public pension
system reform. In 1981, Chile became the rst systems and the risk of private pension systems
nation to make the shift from a pay-as-you-go have dominated policy debates during times of
(PAYG) to a mandatory funded individual retire- nancial turmoil. Although nancial and cover-
ment accounts (IRAs) pension system. Numer- age indicators are very informative about the
ous countries around the globe followed in performance of pension systems, we cannot say
Chiles wake. During the last years, Chile took that they improve the well-being of older adults
leadership again and started a second round of if they deem the overall quality of their lives as
pension reforms in response to the shortcomings unsatisfactory or unhappy.
of IRAs. The reforms combined signicant It may be controversial to argue that old-age
revival of public components in old-age income pension policy should care about happiness, but
maintenance with improvement of IRAs in an is less contentious to argue that if pension policy
attempt to better balance social risks with indi- is creating unhappiness, we should do something
vidual savings. The recent nancial volatility and about it. When assessing pension policy perfor-
heavy losses experienced in nancial markets mance, measurements of overall happiness of
have encouraged other countries to apply similar older adults, such as life satisfaction, have an
corrections to the old-age pension system. Given important advantage over other common evalua-
the global spread of the Chilean old-age pension tive criteria; they are indicators of realized
model, it is important to understand: What is the quality of life, whereas measures of solvency,
impact of the Chilean old-age pension model on replacement rates, contribution rates, and cover-
the life satisfaction of older adults across the age are indicators of potential quality of life
world? And what factors moderate this (Frey and Stutzer 2002; Veenhoven 2009). Life
relationship? satisfaction is a widely accepted measure of the
Because the main goal of pension policy is to enduring and global aspects of subjective well-
secure retirement income and prevent poverty, being and is frequently used to assess the degree
previous studies largely focus on coverage and to which people evaluate the overall quality of
their present lives favorably (Diener et al. 1999;
E. Calvo (*) George 2006). The more satised the older adults
Public Policy Institute, School of Business and are on average, presumably the better pension
Economics, Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile policy is performing (Calvo et al. 2009, 2013).
e-mail: esteban.calvo@udp.cl

416 E. Calvo
Measurements of quality of life in terms of life of the effects that pension policy has on life
satisfaction are also useful to assess the degree to satisfaction.
which countries meet the needs of their citizens This study aims to address these limitations by
and the extent to which their members can our- integrating separate bodies of literature, assem-
ish in that environment (Veenhoven 2009). bling and utilizing a multilevel longitudinal
What do we know about the impact of old-age dataset, and using cutting edge methodology of
pension policy on the life satisfaction of older three-level hierarchical modeling (Raudenbush
adults? Research on pension policy is abundant and Bryk 2002). This study presents the rst
as is research on subjective well-being. However, multilevel longitudinal analysis of the impact
for the most part these literatures are separate, that old-age pension policy has on life satisfaction
with comparative-historical sociology studying throughout the world, as well as of the factors that
policy development mainly in Western Europe may moderate this relationship. The analysis is
and OECD countries (Esping-Andersen 1999; based on a newly created dataset, including
Myles and Pierson 2001; Pierson 1994; Skocpol repeated cross-sections for a total of 126,560
1990, 1992), sociology of aging and the life individuals age 45 and over, nested within
course looking at the intersection between policy 91 high-, middle-, and low-income countries,
and well-being mostly within the United States observed between 1981 and 2008. The inclusion
(Elder and Rudolph 1999; Kim and Moen 2002; of a large number of low- and middle-income
Silverstein and Parker 2002), and sociology of countries over time provides a unique opportunity
emotions and health largely focused on micro- to answer the call for research on pension policy
social processes and younger populations and life satisfaction to be more cross-national and
(Berkman et al. 2000; Massey 2002; Turner and dynamic in its orientation (e.g., Berkman
Stets 2006). Bridging theoretical perspectives et al. 2000; Calvo et al. 2015; George 2006;
and integrating empirical work across elds has Mares and Carnes 2009; Peterson 2007; Turner
been particularly difcult due to the lack of reli- and Stets 2006; Yang 2008).
able multilevel longitudinal data. In order to understand the inuence of pension
Because the variation of pension policy within policy on life satisfaction, this study focuses on
any given nation is so narrow, the inuence of the Chilean pension policy model (Calvo
pension policy on individuals life satisfaction et al. 2010). What is distinctive of the Chilean
can best be assessed using a combination of pension policy model is not the amount of
individual and cross-national data. Multilevel expenditures on social security, which in fact
data also allow for an assessment of the have little if any effects on subjective well-
moderating effects of country characteristics. being (Di Tella et al. 2003; Ouweneel 2002;
However, previous studies typically draw either Radcliff 2001). The Chilean pension model is
from individual or cross-national data. Studies distinctive because of the particular institutional
that use cross-national data are mostly cross- design of the system combining individualization
sectional and do not focus on the effect of of risk (as opposed to socialization, or pooling, of
old-age pensions on life satisfaction (for a risk) and redistribution of resources (that is,
review, see Veenhoven 2009). Those studies poverty prevention through income redistribution
that actually investigate the impact of old-age mechanisms such as non-contributory pensions).
pensions on non-monetary well-being tend to Existing research characterizing pension
focus on social security expenditures rather than systems has predominantly focused on the
the type of pension policy (Di Tella et al. 2003; differentials in individualization of risk (Waine
Ouweneel 2002; Radcliff 2001). In sum, the lack 2006; Whiteside 2005; World Bank 1994). How-
of data combined with the distinct focus of pre- ever, recent theoretical and empirical research
vious research has resulted in fragmented suggests that differentials in high or low redistri-
ndings and minimal sociological understanding bution of resources are a separate dimension of
24 Does the Chilean Pension Model Influence Life Satisfaction? A Multilevel. . . 417
variation in pension policy (Calvo et al. 2010; assessing the exportability of the Chilean
Kay and Sinha 2008; Mares and Carnes 2009). old-age pension model by emphasizing the t of
Using principal component factor analysis, the particular institutional design of the pension
Calvo (2015) found support for a two- system to the context in which these policies are
dimensional model of variation in the institu- embedded. Specically, this study answers three
tional design of pension policy and created two questions: (1) How do pension policies that pro-
standardized scales: individualization and mote greater individual responsibility and
redistribution. Pension policies scoring high on privatization of pensions inuence life satisfac-
the individualization scale are characterized by tion of older adults? (2) How do pension policies
low levels of risk pooling and high contributions that promote redistribution of resources and pre-
from the insured person. These are private type vent poverty through strong public safety nets
policies where individuals bare the risk and the inuence life satisfaction of older adults?
level of benets is linked to the returns made by (3) Do the effects of pension policy vary
investments in IRAs. Policies taking high values depending on the cultural, economic and policy
on the redistribution scale involve the presence contexts in which individuals live? That is, does
of government funded non-contributory pension policy operate similarly in traditional
pensions. These are the public type of policies and secular cultures, rich and poor countries,
that aim to prevent poverty and redistribute strong and weak welfare states?
income from high-income to low-income groups. The next section reviews the theoretical and
Chile constitutes a useful case study to illus- empirical literatures that inform this study. This
trate this two-dimensional model because over is followed by a section describing the multilevel
the last three decades it has increased both indi- and longitudinal data used to assess the effects of
vidualization and redistribution in pension policy pension policy individualization and redistribu-
(Calvo et al. 2010). In 1981, Chile became the tion on life satisfaction of older adults. The next
rst country in what later became a worldwide section reports results of a three-level hierarchi-
wave of old-age pension reforms when it cal linear model. The nal section discusses the
introduced mandatory funded IRAs and moved ndings and conclusions from this study, consid-
away from PAYG schemes. In recent years, with- ering theory and policy implications, and propos-
out moving away from an individualized pension ing directions for future research.
system, Chile initiated another major pension
reform intended to address the problems created
by IRAs, such as low coverage and replacement
rates for low-income workers and women. One 24.2 Literature Review
of the most interesting changes was the creation
of a public institution that manages two types of The aim of this review is not only to summarize
benets: a minimum non-contributory benet previous research and identify gaps, but also to
that is paid to the poorest 60 % of the older present an overview of the impact of pension pol-
adults, and a supplementary benet for those icy on life satisfaction and subjective well-being
workers with low IRA balances. This new system from a sociological perspective that can be helpful
is expected to reduce poverty and income for moving forward research in this area. The
inequalities as well as to increase coverage, and review is organized in four subsections. It begins
it may also inuence life satisfaction. by addressing theoretical controversies and evi-
In the context of rising longevity, results from dence about the effects of pension policy individu-
this study contribute to the evaluation of the alization on life satisfaction, and then moves to the
non-nancial strengths and weaknesses of the effects of redistribution and poverty prevention.
Chilean pension model by focusing on the effects Next, it addresses the moderating effects of
of pension policy individualization and redistri- country-level characteristics. The nal subsection
bution the life satisfaction of older adults across summarizes the theory-based hypotheses that
countries. This study also contributes to emerge from this literature review.
418 E. Calvo
24.2.1 Effects of Pension Policy to shifts in the nancial market (Babb 2005;
Individualization: Risk, Choice, Mesa-Lago 2005). Research on nancial illiter-
and Returns acy has lowered the expectations about
individuals making the right decisions in an
How do pension policies that promote greater individualized pension system (Clark
individual responsibility and privatization of et al. 2005). Furthermore, psychological and eco-
pensions inuence life satisfaction of older nomic research has identied numerous unfore-
adults? The most hotly debated issue in the liter- seen undesirable effects of choice: people are
ature on individualization of pensions is whether hesitant about their decisions, get paralyzed, set
it has resulted in greater risk that reduces well- unrealistically high expectations, make poor
being or greater choice and returns that enhance decisions, end up dissatised, and feel more
well-being. guilt and shame when facing failures (Gilbert
Pension schemes are subject to a variety of 2005; Schuartz 2004). Interestingly, all of these
risks (Gillion et al. 2000; Shuey and ORand detrimental effects happen even in circumstances
2004): economic (e.g., nancial crises), demo- where choices are few and not overwhelming
graphic (e.g., global changes in birth and mortal- (Botty and Iyengar 2006).
ity rates), political (e.g., privatization and Summing up, scholars emphasizing the
re-nationalization reforms in Argentina or increase in risk argue that individualization
benets reductions in numerous countries), insti- decreases life satisfaction, while scholars that
tutional (e.g., bankruptcy of nancial focus on choice and returns have mixed opinions
institutions), and individual (e.g., uncertainty about the difculties and opportunities that arise
about future spells of unemployment and with individualization. Overall, the balance
extreme longevity). Each of these possibilities suggests that scholars are inclined to see individ-
introduces risk that anticipated pension benets ualization as detrimental for life satisfaction. Not
may be reduced or not received. Because indi- only there are more decisions to make and prots
vidualization shifts risk to the individual, risk to gain, but these decisions and gains happen in
society theory is typically pessimistic about the context of higher (perceived and consequen-
subjective well-being outcomes and highlights tial) risk. The lack of empirical research
increases in anxiety and negative emotions qualifying and assessing the positions in this
(Beck 1992; Giddens 1990; Habermas 2001; theoretical debate is striking.
Luhmann 1993). This literature suggests that However, because most of the studies
the effect of pension policies on life satisfaction discussed in this section focus on individualiza-
is inversely related to the amount of risk that tion without considering independent variations
individuals bear. in redistribution, the expected (positive or nega-
Rational choice theory takes a different tive) impact of individualization on life satisfac-
position, suggesting that at the same time as tion is likely to be overestimated. The next
individualization of pensions increases risk, it section specically addresses variations in
enhances choice and opportunities for greater redistribution through a discussion of the poten-
returns (World Bank 1994). For this school of tial relationship between poverty, inequality, and
thought, choice is a fundamentally desirable con- life satisfaction.
dition that maximizes utility and satisfaction (see
Boudon 2003 for a review). However, recent
literature criticizes the greater return argument 24.2.2 Effects of Pension Policy
as an undelivered promise and highlights the Redistribution: Poverty
dark side of greater choice. After a quarter of a and Inequality
century of pension individualization reforms, the
initial promise of higher rates of returns is How do pension policies that promote redistribu-
deemed disappointing and extremely vulnerable tion of resources and prevent poverty through
strong public safety nets inuence life satisfac- The strength of these mechanisms suggests
tion of older adults? Poverty prevention and that pension policies that prevent poverty and
income redistribution have not received the redistribute income can make a real difference
attention they deserve in previous literature and for life satisfaction of older adults. The subjec-
debates on pension policy, which have largely tive threat posed by individualization seems very
focused on contributory pensions and the minor or irrelevant when taking into account that
endorsement or critique of individualization. for many older adults non-contributory pensions
Recent publications by numerous international can literally mean the difference between life and
organizations acknowledge this gap and suggest death.
an emerging consensus about the effectiveness of
social assistance as a response to poverty,
inequality, and vulnerability (Barrientos and
24.2.3 Moderating Effects of Country
Hulme 2008). The World Bank, one of the
Characteristics: Cultural,
major advocates for individualization during the
Economic, and Policy Context
1980s and 1990s (World Bank 1994), has specif-
ically argued that excessive attention has been
Do the effects of individualization and redistribu-
paid to mandatory and voluntary IRAs, and that
tion on life satisfaction vary depending on the
pension reform has not paid enough attention to
context? This subsection explores the cultural,
non-contributory pensions that prevent or allevi-
structural, and policy contexts under which the
ate poverty in old age (Gill et al. 2005).
relationship between pension policy and life satis-
Previous research highlights the economic,
faction may exacerbate or dwindle. It begins by
social, and health benets arising from noncon-
theorizing about how the relationship between
tributory universal and targeted pensions
pension policy and subjective well-being is
(Bertranou et al. 2002; Help Age International
embedded in larger cultural and structural
2006; Johnson and Williamson 2008). Economi-
contexts. Next, it discusses the moderating effects
cally, they reduce individual poverty, redistribute
of the policy context and more specically of
wealth, contribute to reduce household and over-
government expenditures on social security.
all poverty, and can stimulate the local economy.
Socially, children benet when grandparents
have pensions, family cohesion increases, the 24.2.3.1 Cultural and Economic Context
status of older adults improves, and they feel Pension policies are embedded in cultural and
both independent and socially integrated. Health structural contexts that may help to explain how
benets include access to food, medical care, and people react emotionally to these policies. The-
medication. In many countries, the effects are ory and research on subjective well-being, policy
striking. For example, the social pension in change, culture, and economy have been the sub-
South Africa has reduced the scale of old-age stantial focus of a number of subelds in socio-
poverty by 94 % and overall poverty by 12.5 % logical research, but for the most part these
(Case and Deaton 1998; Help Age International literatures are separate. A call for integrative
2004). Because older people care for children in research in this area has been repeated across
one out of every four South African households, disciplines (Berkman et al. 2000; George 2006;
the whole family has beneted from the Massey 2002; Turner and Stets 2006). This sub-
non-contributory pensions. For many older section attempts to integrate different
adults, the pension means that they can afford contributions to delineate a macro-social theory
to eat. To my knowledge, no study to date of subjective well-being emphasizing the cultural
directly explores the relationship between and structural conditions under which pension
redistribution and life satisfaction or subjective policies are more likely to increase or decrease
well-being more in general. subjective well-being.
420 E. Calvo
There is little doubt that culture and structure economic arguments and criticize cultural
play a major role in shaping our reaction to arguments for being vague and essentialist (see
pension policy, creating and limiting the critiques by Pierson 2001; Skocpol 1990).
possibilities, stimulating some reactions and Despite criticisms, comparative-historical
discouraging others, and dictating the script that studies that emphasize cultural and economic
we dramatize as actors in a theater (Stets and factors suggest that specic challenges for the
Turner 2007). However, with a few exceptions success of pension reform arise in the context
(e.g., Collins 2004), sociological theories of sub- of a traditional culture and low-income economy.
jective well-being have focused on For example, previous studies characterize
microstructural factorspower, status, and den- numerous societies in Latin America and Asia
sity of networkswithout analyzing macrostruc- as organized around the principles of family,
tural forces that may impact life satisfaction and reciprocity, loyalty, and poverty (i.e., traditional
interact with pension policy in shaping subjective culture and low-income economy), and nd that
well-being (Turner and Stets 2006). Among the each of these factors shapes the unfolding of
exceptions is research on economic prosperity pension reform with respect to coverage, compli-
and subjective well-being, which for many ance, transparency, and scal stability (Calvo
years tried to explain the weak link between the and Williamson 2008).
two and nally concluded that wealth has a posi- Because the present study looks at a greater
tive inuence on subjective well-being, though variety of countries, a model to classify cultures
these benets are marginally decreasing (Bonini and economies is needed. Specically, this study
2008; Rojas and Martnez 2012). proposes a model that characterizes the context
What is true of theories emphasizing struc- in which pension policy is embedded according
tural factors also holds for theories emphasizing to two dimensions: (1) cultural values ranging
cultural factors. Despite the cultural and con- from traditional to secular-rational, and (2) struc-
structivist bias in most sociological research, tural economic conditions ranging from scarcity
the few studies that elaborate theoretical to afuence.
connections between subjective well-being and Cultures with traditional values place strong
broader cultural values are by and large done by emphasis on religion, deference to authority,
psychologists (Diener et al. 1995; Suh and Oishi have a nationalistic outlook, and low levels tol-
2004). This lack of sociological theories and erance for abortion, euthanasia, and divorce
research is surprising given the widespread belief (Inglehart 2003, 2008; Inglehart and Baker
among sociologists that life satisfaction is 2000). Cultures with secular-rational values
heavily determined by cultural and structural have the opposite preferences on all of these
factors (Peterson 2007; Veenhoven 2009). topics. In this system of cultural classication,
The role of culture and economy has also been the separation of traditional and secular-rational
largely overlooked in the literature on pension does not imply that traditional cultures are irra-
reform, which tends to focus on political factors, tional. Given theoretical and empirical
such as the welfare state and the role of interna- constraints, a second dimension of cross-cultural
tional organizations (e.g., Myles and Pierson variation between survival and self-expression
2001). Historic institutionalism theories of policy values is not considered in this study. Not only
development have gained in popularity and it includes an indicator of happiness that is
largely displaced cultural and economic conceptually similar to life satisfaction, but it is
arguments about both policy development and also highly correlated with both life satisfaction
policy outcomes (Orloff 1993; Pierson 1994; (r .78; p < .001) and GDP per capita
Skocpol 1992). Institutional approaches empha- (r .82; p < .001), creating substantial
size the impact of pre-existing political structures problems of multicollinearity.
and policy legacies on policy development. They Classifying the economic context is more
attribute moderate explanatory power to straightforward if GDP per capita is used to
indicate economic prosperity. Considering the are more inclined to rely on this type of institu-
economic context is of crucial importance when tion than secular-rational cultures, which tend to
designing a pension system and is likely to be as shift away from traditional institutions (including
important to understand its outcomes. the state, family, and church). Second, previous
The main effect of traditional cultural values research suggests that, compared to secular-
on life satisfaction is unclear from previous rational cultures, traditional cultures are more
research, but the effect of economic prosperity likely to place God, nature, or the collectivity
today is widely agreed to be positive (Stevenson rather than individual labor as the ultimate origin
and Wolfers 2008; Veenhoven 2009). But how of wealth (Bataille 1998; Mauss 1967). This, in
do culture and structure moderate the effect of turn, makes them more prone to engage in rituals
pension policy on life satisfaction? of wealth circulation and expenditures that are
This study hypothesizes that when pension easily extended to the welfare state (Morande
policies are in conict with the cultural and struc- 1984). In such context, welfare assistance may
tural context, they tend to dampen life satisfac- be experienced as a legitimate transfer to which
tion and to arouse negative emotions. low-income groups are entitled. In contrast, for
Conversely, tight coupling between pension pol- people living in secular-rational cultures,
icy and the cultural and structural context will redistribution may be associated with stigma
increase life satisfaction and generate positive (Estes 2001; Quadagno 2005). Along the same
emotions. Henceforth, these expected lines, it is plausible to argue that traditional
relationships are referred to as the policy/context cultures have a stronger moral conception about
congruence (or discrepancy) theory. social justice that may help beneciaries (and the
Table 24.1 illustrates the interaction between collectivity) to frame social assistance benets as
pension policy individualization and redistribu- an entitlement. Secular-rational cultures have
tion, and the cultural and economic context in less absolute moral conceptions about social jus-
which pension policy is embedded. Although tice and are more likely to engage in a discussion
there are four possible interactions and eight about rights and conditions of redistribution.
possible types of effects, there are strong theoret- The congruence/discrepancy theory also
ical reasons to argue only for two situations in suggests that the effect of individualization on
which the effect of pension policy may signi- life satisfaction may show signicant variation
cantly vary across cultural (cell 2) and structural- across economic contexts (cell 3). The previous
economic context (cell 3). section suggested that holding redistribution con-
The previous section postulated that the stant, the effect of individualization on life satis-
redistribution component of pension policy is faction may be negligible, as it brings both
likely to have a benecial effect on life satisfac- choice and risk to the individual. However, it is
tion. Drawing from the congruence/discrepancy plausible to expect the effects of individualiza-
theory outlined here, it is plausible to expect the tion on life satisfaction to be signicant and
benecial effect of redistribution to be stronger negative for low-income economies and signi-
for traditional than for secular-rational cultures cant and positive for high-income societies. The
(cell 2). First, redistribution involves main reason to expect this heterogeneous effect
non-contributory pensions typically provided is that individuals living in a context of scarcity
and funded by the state, and traditional cultures have a structural disadvantage to bear risk. It may
be hard to bear the risk of having enough retire-
ment income in the United States, but in the
Table 24.1 Interaction between pension policy and the poorest countries of the world, older people live
cultural and economic context
in absolute and complete poverty and thus have
Individualization Redistribution almost no capacity to bear this risk on their own.
Culture (1) (2) Policy-culture Individuals living in low-income countries face
Economy (3) Policy-economy (4) greater risks and will therefore obtain more
422 E. Calvo
benets from socialization as opposed to individ- of the cultural and economic context. Therefore
ualization of risk. In contrast, an afuent econ- policy/context discrepancies occur repeatedly
omy may operate as a shield that protects over time and across countries.
individuals from increased risk and enables
them to enjoy their choices and to obtain more 24.2.3.2 Welfare Expenditures
returns on their investments. For example, it is on Social Security
easier to make and delegate investment decisions As individualization and redistribution in pension
in wealthier societies, where the government has policy interact with cultural values and economic
more resources to improve the default options in prosperity, they may also interact with govern-
the system and promote nancial literacy, and ment generosity in providing benets. Lay
individuals have more resources and conceptions assume that life is better in countries
opportunities to seek expert support and have with higher levels of social security. Yet previous
more condence on the state to insure against research has found that countries with consider-
market risks in situations of crisis (Botty and able welfare effort fare slightly better thanor as
Iyengar 2006; Dion and Roberts 2009). good ascountries that spend less in social secu-
The two empty cells in Table 24.1 indicate rity (Di Tella et al. 2003; Ouweneel 2002;
interactions that have weaker theoretical Radcliff 2001; Veenhoven 2000). This body of
grounds. There is no strong reason to expect the research is very informative and encompasses a
effects of individualization to vary signicantly broad range of measures of welfare expenditures
across cultures (cell 1). It is not clear how the (e.g., expenditures on social security, total welfare
experience of the balance of risk, choice, and expenditures, and others, in constant dollars and
return will change from a traditional to a as a percentage of GDP).
secular-rational culture. An interaction between In order to build cumulative knowledge, this
redistribution and the economic context is also study takes a different approach to explore the
unclear (cell 4). It may be argued that redistribu- relationship between the welfare state and well-
tion has less impact on life satisfaction in afuent being. Instead of emphasizing social security
societies where the overall standard of living is expenditures, the focus is shifted to variations in
higher. However, there are at least two caveats the type of pension policymore or less individ-
for this reasoning. First, poverty and inequality ualization and redistribution. However, this study
are hard subjective experiences everywhere in does take welfare expenditures into account. Spe-
the world. Second, it may be even harder to cically, it explore whether the effects of pension
cope with poverty and inequality for individuals policy vary depending on government commit-
living in afuent societies full of opportunities ment to social securityexpenditures on social
that appear impossible to reach. security as a percentage of total government
Are the policy-culture and policy-economy expendituresand social security generosity
discrepancies possible? Because policy change expenditures on social security as a percentage
is shaped by numerous factors other than culture of total government expenditures, divided by the
and economy (Brown 2005), it is certainly possi- number of people age 60 and over.
ble for pension policy to develop in conict with Does government commitment to social secu-
cultural values and economic needs. Policy rity moderate the relationship between the type of
change is also the result of class struggle and pension policy and life satisfaction? Policy
political organization (Esping-Andersen 1999; debates show divided opinions (Bjrnskov
Quadagno 2005), as well as institutional et al. 2007). On the one side, neoclassic theory
constraints stemming from previously enacted argues that governments have unambiguously
and current policies (Orloff 1993; Pierson 1994; benecial impact on the well-being of their
Skocpol 1992), and ideas (Beland 2005a, b; citizens. For example, government commitment
Campbell 2002). The fact that pension policy is to social security may buffer the detrimental effect
embedded in a culture and economy does not of increased risk that individuals bear in highly
mean that policy change is the unavoidable result individualized pension systems. On the other side,
public choice theory claims that governments longitudinal dataset. Numerous individual-level
have numerous perverse effects that may harm differences in life satisfaction can be observed:
subjective well-being. For example, poverty pre- For example, at a given point in time, older
vention and redistribution can be taxing to the people seem to be more satised with their lives
government. Therefore, a pension policy strong than younger people; individuals are also more
in the redistribution dimension coupled with a satised if they are married, educated, employed,
government allocating a large fraction of its and wealthier (Diener et al. 1999). These effects
resources to social security may result in overall can be estimated with micro-level data. How-
inefciency and inability to provide other very ever, because the variation of pension policy
much needed services. No empirical research has within any given nation is so narrow, estimating
assessed these possibilities, however. the effect of pension policy on life satisfaction
also requires cross-national data. Aggregated
cross-national data also allow assessing the
24.2.4 Research Hypotheses moderating effects of country-level variables.
The raw data for this study are drawn from
Based on the literature review discussed above, several sources, including a number of databases
this study tests four theory-based hypotheses that are publicly available through the internet
about the relationship between pension policy and reports that provide information on the pub-
and life satisfaction: lic pension systems in printed format. The most
important sources of data are: the World Values
1. Higher levels of individualization will be Survey and European Values Survey (WVS-EVS
associated with lower life satisfaction, while 2013) database and the Social Security Programs
higher levels of redistribution will be throughout the World reports (SSA-ISSA
associated with higher life satisfaction. 19792013).
2. The effects of pension policy on life satisfac- The Values Surveys include nationally repre-
tion will be more benecial when policies are sentative repeated cross-sectional surveys in
congruent to the macro-social context. That is, 97 countries, collecting information on life satis-
individualization will have better outcomes in faction and values at ve time points since 1981.
more prosperous economies and redistribution The countries surveyed contain about 90 % of the
will have better outcomes in traditional than worlds population, covering all major cultural
in secular rational cultures. zones and a broad range in terms of income, from
3. The effects of pension policy on life satisfac- very poor to very rich. For the purpose of this
tion will vary depending on government com- study, the sample is restricted to 91 countries
mitment to social security. Specically, with information available on both life satisfac-
individualization and redistribution will have tion and pension policy, and to 126,560
better outcomes when the government individuals age 45 and over. Because some of
commits a larger fraction of its resources to these individuals are more than 20 years away
social security, and when social security gen- from retirement, this study may underestimate
erosity is higher. the inuence of pension policy on life satisfac-
tion. However, a higher cut-off point would have
resulted in countries having insufcient
individual-level observations at each time point.
24.3 Methodology The Social Security Programs throughout the
World reports provide extremely rich informa-
24.3.1 Data and Sample tion on pension systems, but a large portion of the
data available in these reports was only available
This study will use both individual- and country- in textual form and not as a usable database for
level data and combine them into a multilevel statistical processing. Therefore, an extensive
424 E. Calvo
Level-3
(N = 91 COUNTRY 1 COUNTRY 2
countries)
Level-2
(N = 234 TIME1 TIME2 TIME1 TIME2 TIME3
country-years)
Level-1
(N = 126,560 R1 R2 R3 R4 R5 R6 R7 R8 R9 R10 R11
respondents)
Fig. 24.1 Nested structure of the data
and systematic interpretation and coding was capture variation between individuals.
carried to create a database that would include Individuals are clustered within 234 country-
data comparable across countries and over time. year observations at level 2. Because these are
Research assistants coded the printed reports and the same countries observed over time, level
entered the data by hand into an electronic data- 2 captures within country variation. Country-
base. Each data entry was veried by two inde- years are clustered within 91 countries at level
pendent coders, achieving an average inter- 3. At this level, the data capture between country
coder-reliability of 88.24 %. Both coding criteria variation. An alternative way to conceptualize
and solutions to discrepancies were validated by the difference between levels is to think about
a third party. level 1 as personal characteristics of the respon-
Additional aggregate information was pulled dent, level 2 as time variant or dynamic
for gross domestic from the World Development characteristics of countries, and level 3 as time
Indicators (World Bank 2013) and data on gov- invariant or static characteristics of countries.
ernment expenditures from UNdata (United
Nations 2009). The process of creating the com-
bined dataset followed conventional
24.3.2 Dependent Variable
recommendations formulated in previous litera-
ture on cross-national data use and harmonization
Life satisfaction is dened as an enduring sub-
(e.g., Burkhauser and Lillard 2005).
jective enjoyment of life as a whole and
The resulting database has a multilevel scope
measured with a single question in the Values
and longitudinal dimension. Figure 24.1
Surveys (WVS-EVS 2013) posed to every
illustrates the nested structure of these data and
respondent: All things considered, how satised
the sample size at each level. Level 1 includes
are you with your life as a whole these days?
observations for 126,560 individuals over time.
Answers are on a scale ranging from 1 to
Because these are not the same individuals over
10 (1 meaning dissatised and 10 satised).
time (i.e., repeated cross-sections), level 1 data
Despite the simplicity of this measure and known
limitations, there is considerable evidence of its designed to have a mean of 0 and a standard
validity, reliability, and overall adequacy deviation of 1. The validity and the reliability
(Veenhoven 2009). of these two scales have been demonstrated else-
where (Calvo 2015).
24.3.3 Independent Variables

24.3.4 Moderating Variables
Public pension policy type is assessed using two
weighted multiple-item scales: individualization 24.3.4.1 Traditional Versus Secular-
and redistribution. The individualization scale Rational Culture
ranges from .50 to 2.81. Policies taking high Traditional versus secular-rational culture vari-
values on this scale are characterized by low able is a weighted multiple-item scale designed
levels of risk pooling and high contributions to have a mean of 0 and a standard deviation of
from the insured person. These are private type 1, and ranging from 1.94 to 1.82. The scale is
policies where individuals bare the risk and the calculated using principal component factor
level of benets is linked to the returns made by analysis on the following eight items included
investments in IRAs. Policies taking low values in the Values Surveys (WVS-EVS 2013):
on this scale are characterized by a high sociali- (1) God is important in respondents life (1
zation or pooling of risk. not at all important and 10 very impor-
The redistribution scale ranges from 1.64 to tant); (2) frequency of church attendance
1.12. Policies taking high values on this scale (in days per year); (3) respondent has condence
involve the presence of government funded in the countrys churches (1 quite a lot to
non-contributory pensions. These are the public great deal and 0 none at all to not very
type of policies that aim to prevent poverty and much); (4) it is more important for a child to
redistribute income from high-income to learn obedience and religious faith than indepen-
low-income groups. By contrast, policies taking dence and determination (1 yes, and 0 no);
low values on this scale provide little or no pov- (5) respondent favors more respect for authority
erty alleviation and redistribution from the rich to (1 meaning that greater respect for authority is a
the poor. good thing, and 0 meaning bad thing or dont
These scales are calculated using principal mind); (6) respondent has strong sense of
component factor analysis on six dichotomies national pride (1 meaning not proud at all
drawn primarily from the Social Security proud, 2 not very proud, 3 quite proud,
Programs throughout the World reports and 4 very proud); (7) abortion is never justi-
(SSA-ISSA 19792013): (1) presence of individ- able (1 meaning always justiable and
ual retirement accounts; (2) closure or phasing 10 never justiable); (8) euthanasia is never
out of the social insurance system; (3) insured justiable (1 meaning always justiable, and
person contributes more than a third of total 10 never justiable).
contributions; (4) presence of means-tested or The calculation begins by estimating the
universal pensions; (5) government covers the country average for each indicator. Next, it
whole cost of non-contributory pensions; and standardizes each indicator to adjust for different
(6) government systematically subsidizes the distributions. The resulting scale explained 74 %
system regardless of decits. The results of this of the variance in the eight items included in the
analysis suggest that the six indicators tend to calculation and has a very high reliability coef-
group together to form two major dimensions. cient (alpha .95). Countries scoring high on
The rst three dichotomies load high on individ- this scale emphasize religion and deference to
ualization, while the last three load high on authority, show high levels of national pride,
redistribution. Based on these results, predicted and reject abortion and euthanasia. Countries
factor scores are used to create two scales scoring low in this scale emphasize secular
426 E. Calvo
autonomy and self-determination, and have less different methodologies, though the rate of
absolute standards regarding abortion and eutha- change is typically similar.
nasia. Overall, these results correspond to those
identied in previous research (Inglehart 2003,
2008; Inglehart and Baker 2000). 24.3.5 Control Variables
In order to identify the effect of pension policy

24.3.4.2 Affluent Economic Structure
on life satisfaction, and the contexts that
Economic prosperity is measured drawing data
strengthen or weaken this effect, it is necessary
from the World Development Indicators data-
to control for a number of variables. At level
base on GDP per capita in thousands of constant
1, personal characteristics of the respondent are
(year 2000) United States dollars (World Bank
measured using the Values Surveys (WVS-EVS
2013). The raw variable ranged from $200 to
2013). Gender is a dichotomy coded 1 for men
40,000. However, this variable was logarithmi-
and 0 for women. Age is measured in years and
cally transformed and top-coded at the equiva-
top-coded at 105 (top-coding age at 100 created
lent of $40,000.
problems of non-normal distribution for this var-
iable.) Marital status is measured using two
24.3.4.3 Government Expenditure dichotomies indicating (1) divorced, separated,
on Social Security or widowed, and (2) never married, the omitted
Government expenditure on social security is category being married or partnered. Education
measured using UN data information on govern- consists of three dichotomies: (1) primary
ment nal consumption expenditure by function completed but less than high school, (2) high
at current prices (United Nations 2013). Speci- school, and (3) more than high school, the mitted
cally, two measures are created: government category being no education or incomplete pri-
commitment to social security and social security mary school. Employment is measured using two
generosity. Government commitment to social dichotomies indicating (1) retired and (2) not
security is government nal consumption expen- working other than retired (e.g., unemployed,
diture on social security as a percentage of gov- students, and homemakers), the omitted category
ernment total nal consumption. The resulting being working. Income is a scale ranging from
variable is logarithmically transformed and 1 (lowest decile) to 10 (highest decile).
top-coded at the equivalent of 50 %. Level 2 includes repeated observations of the
Social security generosity is government nal same countries across time, and thus requires a
consumption expenditure on social security as a time control variable. This variable is measured
percentage of GDP, divided by the number of in years, ranging from 1981 to 2008, but is
people age 60 and over. The resulting variable included in the model divided by ve (so that
can be considered an age adjusted measure of one unit is 5 years) to obtain coefcients of a
generosity. reasonable magnitude.
Because national accounts data were com- For age, income, and time, a squared term of
piled according to different methodologies the each of these variables is included to test for
calculation of these scales requires making the curvilinear effects. The quadratic term for age
time series comparable. Whenever two was not signicant and thus dropped from the
methodologies are available, the actual values model. Other control variables were explored,
of the most updated accounting method are but also dropped them from the models.
used. If interpolation is needed, the linear rate Although pension income can be complemented
of change suggested by the older accounting by informal family support, measures of
method is used. This is a reasonable solution coresidence and number of children did not
given that values for two overlapping years can have signicant effects and did not change the
look substantially different if calculated using results. Measures of government expenditures on

Variable Mean SD Min. Max.
Individual characteristics (level 1)
Male .48 .50 0 1
Age 58.67 10.04 45 105
Married .73 .44 0 1
Divorced, separated, or widowed .22 .42 0 1
Never married .05 .22 0 1
No education or less than primary school .24 .43 0 1
Primary completed but less than high school .37 .48 0 1
High school .26 .44 0 1
More than high school .17 .37 0 1
Working .44 .50 0 1
Retired .34 .47 0 1
Not working other than retired .22 .42 0 1
Income decile 4.39 2.44 1 10
Dynamic country characteristics (level 2)
Individualization .01 1.00 .50 2.81
Redistribution .01 1.00 1.64 1.12
Time 1997 7.14 1981 2008
Enduring country characteristics (level 3)
Traditional values .01 1.00 1.94 1.82
GDP per capita (U.S. $1,000) 8.63 10.00 .20 40
Government commitment to social security 10.36 9.35 0 50
Social security generosity .05 .17 0 1.50
Notes: Sample size varies across levels: level 1 126,560 individuals; level 2 234 country-year observations; level
3 91 countries.
health and country-level demographics to control Descriptive statistics for the all variables
for other characteristics of welfare states that included in the model are presented in
may inuence life satisfaction and country Table 24.2.
characteristics that may moderate the relation-
ship between pension policy and life satisfaction
were dropped because they introduced severe 24.4 Analytic Strategy
problems of non-normality, multicollinearity,
and heterocedasticity that could not be remedied. The nested structure of these data (see Fig. 24.1)
Measures of balance of payments and external is handled using longitudinal three-level hierar-
debt may be considered a rough proxy for the chical linear modeling (HLM) techniques, also
solvency of public pension systems and the trust known as multilevel modeling or mixed effects
people have on their continuity. However, the modeling (Raudenbush and Bryk 2002). In very
validity of these proxies is arguable and includ- simple terms, HLM is a statistical technique
ing them substantially increased the number of applied to data collected at more than one level
missing values, making imputation a controver- in order to elucidate relationships at more than
sial solution at least for these specic variables. one level (Luke 2004).
Finally, controlling for country-level composi- One of the main methodological challenges in
tion in terms of the respondents characteristics this study is to relate properties of individuals
would have resulted in little power of analysis and properties of countries over time.
given the limited number of countries. Disaggregating country-level variables to the
428 E. Calvo
individual-level (e.g., assigning pension policy by their social context. Hierarchical linear
type to the respondents) and using Ordinary modeling can do this through the simultaneous
Least Squares (OLS) regression will violate the analysis of individual-level data in the form of
assumption of independence of observations and repeated cross-section sample surveys and cross-
uncorrelated errors. Specically, the problem is national data. Second, this technique allows for
that all individuals that live in the same country the use of unbalanced panel data (i.e., data avail-
will have the same values on the country-level able at several uneven time periods). Third, hier-
variables. For example, individuals living in the archical linear modeling allows use of repeated
same country will have the same values for pen- observations which increases the degrees of free-
sion policy individualization. They will also dom and this is crucial in cross-national analysis
share unobserved country-level characteristics, because the number of countries is limited.
for example, simplicity/difculty in the pension Repeated observations over time increase the
system rules. Because there are no available power of statistical tests and allow for the inclu-
measures to control for these unobserved sion of a larger number of variables into the
variables, they will become part of the error models. Finally, hierarchical linear modeling
term in an OLS regression, causing correlation allows for estimates of within country effects
between these disturbances. Aggregating (e.g., the impact of pension policy on life satis-
individual-level variables to the country-level faction) and cross-level interactions (e.g.,
and doing the OLS analysis at the country-level variations in the impact of pension policy on
will result in the loss of information. Because life satisfaction across cultural and economic
most of the variation in life satisfaction happens context), controlling for both individual-level
between individuals (i.e., within countries), characteristics and unobserved country
doing the analysis at the country level will likely characteristics.
result in an overestimation of the relationship As illustrated in the bottom rows of
between aggregated variables. Therefore, using Table 24.2, a number of variables are included
OLS regressions with aggregated and as time-invariant (level 3) in the analysis. Cul-
disaggregated data will yield biased results tural values and economic structure are included
(Luke 2004). Using alternative methods (e.g., as time-invariant (level 3) predictors because the
analysis of variance or covariance) to adjust for focus is on explaining between country
the grouping of individuals is still problematic. variations in the effect of pension policy on life
First, it is not possible to include a dummy vari- satisfaction (i.e., cross-level pension/context
able for each country and at the same time interactions). Although it may sound controver-
include country-level variables. Second, includ- sial to treat culture and economy as enduring
ing a dummy variable for each country will sub- country characteristics, both variables show
stantially reduce power of analysis and great stability for the countries and years
parsimony. Third, these country-effects will be observed in these data. Specically, about 95 %
considered as xed, ignoring that they may ran- of the variance in cultural values is between
domly vary depending on other country-level countries and only 5 % within countries (i.e.,
characteristics. Finally, OLS regressions and across time). For GDP, 93 % of the variance is
other alternative methods to hierarchical linear between countries and 7 % within countries. In
modeling are not exible in handling data avail- contrast, for pension policy about 62 % of the
able at several uneven time points, as is the case variance is between countries and 38 % is
in this study. Hierarchical linear modeling dynamic. These numbers suggests thatat least
resolves all these problems. in this datasetpolicy changes are embedded in
Using hierarchical linear modeling techniques cultural and economic contexts that change at a
is particularly helpful for this study for a number much slower rate. Finally, government commit-
of reasons. First, they can reveal social processes ment to social security and social security gener-
by which individuals life satisfaction is shaped osity are included as time-invariant variables
(level 3) because otherwise the number of miss- To help clarify the analytic strategy, the
ing observations would have increased substan- following equations display the relationships
tially. Figure 24.1 illustrates that only a country that included in the nal model at each level:
average is needed at level 3, while multiple time
points are needed for each country at level 2.
X
Level 1 : LSATi jk 0 jk 1 jk *RESPi jk ei jk 24:1
Level 2 : 0 jk 00k 01k *IND jk 02k *RED jk

03k *IND jk *RED jk 04k *TIME jk 24:2
05k *SQTIME jk r 0 jk
1 jk 10k 24:3
Level 3 : 00k 000 001 *TRADk 002 *GDPk 003 *GOVk 004 *GENk u00k 24:4
01k 010 011 *GDPk 012 GOVk 24:5 subscripts are indicating an important difference:
Hierarchical linear modeling estimates a different
02k 020 021 *TRADk 24:6 level 1 model for each year j and country k. Spe-
cically, average life satisfaction (level 1 intercept
03k 030 24:7
0jk) is allowed to be different in each year j (0jk in
04k 040 24:8 Eq. 24.2) and country k (00k in Eq. 24.4).
The multilevel nature of this model becomes
05k 050 u05k 24:9 evident in Eqs. 24.2 and 24.3, where the level
1 intercept (0jk) is treated as an outcome of level
10k 100 24:10
2 predictors and variability. Level 1 slopes are
This set of equations clearly illustrates the multi- treated as xed because the main purpose is
level nature of the model. Here, the subscripts i, j, controlling for these effects, but not identifying
and k denote individuals, country-year cross-level interactions with individual-level
observations, and countries, respectively. In variables that will result in decreased power of
Eq. 24.1, LSATijk is the life satisfaction of individ- analysis and parsimony. In Eq. 24.2, 00k is aver-
ual i in year j and country k; 0jk is the average life age life satisfaction in country k, controlling for
satisfaction in year j and country k; RESPijk is a level 2 predictors; 01k and 02k are the effects
vector of individual characteristics of the respon- (slopes) of pension policy individualization
dent that predict life satisfaction (including gender, (INDjk) and redistribution (REDjk) in year j and
age, marital status, education, employment status, country k; 03k is the interaction between individ-
income decile, and squared income decile) and 1jk ualization and redistribution in year j and country
is the corresponding vector of regression k; 04k and 05k indicate the linear (TIMEjk) and
coefcients; and eijk is the residual effect for indi- quadratic (SQTIMEjk) effect of time in year j and
vidual i in year j and country k. Although this level country k; and r0jk is a random coefcient
1 equation resembles an OLS regression, the indicating the error or unexplained variance for
430 E. Calvo
year j in country k. This random coefcient on the country-level context (level 3). In other
captures unmodeled within country (level 2) var- words, the effects of individualization can be
iance in life satisfaction. exacerbated or lowered by economic prosperity
In Eq. 24.3, 10k is the average within country (GDPk) and government commitment to social
effect of respondent characteristics. Random security (GOVk). The interpretation of the other
coefcients are not included for these cross-level interaction terms (021) is similar, but
characteristics because the main purpose is in this case the main level 2 effect is redistribu-
controlling for individual-level characteristics tion (REDjk) and the level 3 moderator is tradi-
and not understanding if these effects vary across tional cultural values (TRADk). Tests for other
countries over time. Furthermore, including ran- potential cross-level interactions between pen-
dom effects for gender, age, and the other nine sion policy and level 3 variables indicated that
level 1 variables included in the model will reduce none of them were signicant and thus were
power of analysis and parsimony at higher levels. dropped them from the model. Including u00k in
In Eqs. 24.424.10, level 2 intercepts (00k Eq. 24.4, and u05k in Eq. 24.9, means that life
and 10k) and slopes (01k, 02k, 03k, and 04k) satisfaction and the quadratic time trend are
are treated as outcomes of level 3 predictors and estimated as random. That is, the average life
variability. The rst coefcient in each equa- satisfaction and the quadratic time trend vary
tion is an intercept: 000 is the adjusted grand across countries (i.e., are country specic). Ran-
mean of life satisfaction (Eq. 24.4); 010 is the dom effects were included in all other level
adjusted average effect of individualization 3 equations, but none of them were signicant.
across countries (Eq. 24.5); 020 is the adjusted In sum, Eqs. 24.124.10 clearly illustrate that
average effect of redistribution across countries there are three levels in the model. Level
(Eq. 24.6); 030 is the average interaction 1 predictors include 11 characteristics of the
between individualization and redistribution respondent (RESPijk). Level 2 predictors include
(Eq. 24.7); 040 is the average linear time trend two pension policy variables (INDjk and REDjk),
across countries (Eq. 24.8); 050 is the average and interaction term between them, and control
quadratic time trend across countries (Eq. 24.9); variables for time (TIMEjk) and squared time
and 100 is the average effect of respondent (SQTIMEjk). Level 3 predictors include four
characteristics across countries (Eq. 24.10). main effects of country stable characteristics
Equations 24.424.6 also include slopes ( after traditional versus rational secular values
the intercept), but they represent different types (TRADk), GDP per capita (GDPk), government
of effects. In Eq. 24.4, TRADk is the average commitment to social security (GOVk), and
score in the traditional versus secular culture social security generosity (GENk)and three
scale of country k; GDPk is the average GDP cross-level interactions between these
per capita (in year 2000 constant U.S. dollars) characteristics and the effects of pension policy
of country k; GOVk is the average government at level 2. Equations 24.124.10 also illustrate
commitment to social security of country k; that unexplained variance is divided into differ-
GENk is the average social security generosity ent components (u00k and u05k at level 3, r0jk at
of country k; and 001, 002, 003, and 004 indi- level 2, and eijk at level 1), allowing correct
cate the main effect of these level 3 variables on estimates of standard errors at each level.
life satisfaction. In Eqs. 24.5 and 24.6, the slopes Instead of using a set of ten equations, it is
( after the intercept) indicate cross-level possible to substitute the level 3 parts of the
interactions rather than main effects on life satis- model into the level 2 equations, and then into
faction. For example, in Eq. 24.5, 011 and 012 the level 1 equations. The combined mixed equa-
indicate that the level 2 effect of individualization for the three-level hierarchical linear model
tion (01k) on life satisfaction can vary depending looks as follows:
P
LSATi jk 000 100 *RESPi jk 010 *IND jk 020 *RED jk
030 *IND jk *RED jk 040 *TIME jk 050 *SQTIME jk
001 *TRADk 002 *GDPk 003 *GOVk 004 *GENk 24:11
011 *IND jk *GDPk 012 *IND jk *GOVk 021 *RED jk *TRADk
ei jk r 0 jk u00k u05k *SQTIMEk
where the subscripts i, j, and k denote comparisons, but adjusting the intercept for indi-
individuals, country-year observations, and vidual characteristics.
countries; LSATijk is the life satisfaction of indi- Missing data problems are handled using a
vidual i in year j and country k; 000 is the two-stage single stochastic imputation for less
adjusted grand mean of life satisfaction; other than 5 % of the observations that had missing
are the coefcients that indicate the direction and data. A single stochastic imputation has clear
strength of association between independent advantages compared to a single deterministic
variables and life satisfaction. Visually, it is eas- imputation, as it reduces underestimation of stan-
ier to identify cross-level interactions in dard errors and prevents inated correlations
Eq. 24.11 than in previous equations. For exam- between variables by including a random com-
ple, the last line in the formula starts with the ponent (Allison 2002). Although a multiple
coefcient 022 indicating the strength and direc- imputation by chained equations (MICE) intro-
tion of the interaction between redistribution in duce more rigorous adjustments to standard
year j and country k (REDjk) and traditional cul- errors, as each model is estimated over multiple
tural values of country k (TRADk). Equa- (at least 5, but ideally 20 or more) imputed
tion 24.11 is also useful to separate xed effects datasets, the large number of individual-level
() and the four random effects at the end of the observations slows down the process to an aver-
equation: a random individual effect indicating age of one imputed dataset per 2 days (Royston
the deviation of individual ijks life satisfaction 2004). A single rather than a multiple imputation
from the country-year mean (eijk); random was used because of the slow imputation speed.
country-year effect indicating the deviation of Given that the Values Surveys (WVS-EVS
country-year jks mean life satisfaction from the 2013) dataset has missing values, these missing
country mean (r0jk); a random country effect values were rst imputed in the individual-level
indicating the deviation of country ks mean life variables. To calculate the cultural values scale
satisfaction from the grand mean (u00k); and a using full information and obtain more precise
random country effect for the quadratic time imputed values, the information available for the
trend (u05k), that is, a random effect indicating entire sample was used instead of limiting the
the deviation of country ks quadratic effect of information for individuals aged 45 and over.
time from the mean effect. Next, the imputed individual-level variables
In this study, if continuous variables do not were used to calculate the country-level averages
have a meaningful zero, they are centered around of all indicators included in the traditional versus
the grand mean of all countries in order to obtain secular-rational values scale. The sample was
an interpretable intercept in the hierarchical lin- restricted then to individuals aged 45 and over
ear model. Because hierarchical linear modeling and dropped imputed values of the dependent
calculates the intercept and variations around the variable from the database. The imputation for
intercept holding independent variables at zero, the country-level variables was carried out at the
when zero is not meaningful the estimate for the second imputation stage. After calculating the
intercept is arbitrary and unreliable. At level cultural values scale, all country-level variables
1, dichotomous variable are also grand-mean incorporated in the analysis and supplementary
centered because the goal is not making variablessuch as other characteristics of
432 E. Calvo
pension systems, government expenditures on individuals included in the analysis; however,

health and education, aggregated demographics, they do suggest some new ndings. One is that
and energy usewere included to assist the the individual-level effects hold when levels
imputation. 2 and 3 heterogeneity are taken into account.
Another is that average life satisfaction shows
signicant random variation across countries.
24.5 Results The random effect component at level
3 presented in Table 24.3 is capturing the effect
The results of the three-level hierarchical linear of unobserved stable characteristics of countries.
model for life satisfaction are reported in Time squared is the only variable that has a
Table 24.3. signicant random effect at level 3. The random
In order to estimate the effects of individuali- effect coefcient for this variable suggests that
zation and redistribution on older adults life there are country-specic quadratic time trends
satisfaction, it is necessary to control for personal in the data. This U-shaped relationship was evi-
characteristics of the respondents. These results dent in bivariate analysis of the data.
are presented at the top of the table and show One of the main advantages of hierarchical
clear patterns in the life satisfaction levels of linear models is that they allow identifying
126,560 adults age 45 and over living in within country effects, adjusting for inter-
91 countries, over the period 19812008. Hold- individual differences. Adjusting for individual-
ing all variables in the model at their mean, level characteristics, unobserved characteristics
average life satisfaction is 6.45. Males fare of countries, and country-specic quadratic time
slightly worse than females, having an average trends, is there evidence for signicant effects of
life satisfaction .12 units lower. One year pension policy on life satisfaction?
increase in age is linearly associated with .19 As Table 24.3 shows, within countries, indi-
unit increase in life satisfaction. Individuals vidualization is not signicantly associated with
who are divorced, separated, or widowed, as life satisfaction. In contrast, 1 unit increase in the
well as those who have never been married, redistribution scale is associated with .14 units
show considerable lower levels of life satisfac- increase in life satisfaction. These results are
tion than the married (.43 and .35 units calculated for an average country and partly con-
respectively). Education is associated with rm the rst hypothesis of this study. Results also
higher levels of life satisfaction. The higher the show that there is no signicant interaction
educational level achieved, the bigger the differ- between individualization and redistribution.
ence in life satisfaction compared to the group Another important result is that the effects of
with no education or primary education incom- individualization do not have signicant random
plete. However, based on the signicance level, variation across countries beyond what is
the difference appears to be more systematic as explained by the cultural and economic context
educational attainment increases (p < .01 for as well as governmental commitment to social
primary completed but less than high school, security. Conrming the second hypothesis about
and p < .001 for high school). Retirees and the policy/context congruence, results suggest
other individuals that are not working fare that the effects of pension policy on life satisfac-
worse than the group of individuals working, tion are signicantly moderated by the cultural
but the effects are smaller compared to the and structural context (these coefcients are
effects of marital status. Climbing up the income reported under the heading Cross-level
ladder is associated with increases of .18 units in Interactions). Individualization interacts with
life satisfaction, but the returns are decreasing by the economic or structural context and redistri-
.02 as people get closer to the top. bution interacts with the cultural context. Specif-
These results are not surprising in light of ically, individualization that takes place in more
previous studies and given the large sample of afuent societies can have a benecial impact on
Table 24.3 Three-level model of the pension system effects on life satisfaction
Fixed effect Coefcient SE
Intercept
Average life satisfaction, 000 6.45*** .091
Individual characteristics (level 1)
Male, 100 .12*** .022
Age, 200 .19*** .002
Divorced, separated, or widowed, 300 .43*** .031
Never married, 400 .35*** .042
Primary completed but less than high school, 500 .09** .032
High school, 600 .11* .042
More than high school, 700 .16*** .039
Retired, 800 .07* .030
Not working other than retired, 900 .20*** .030
Income decile, 1000 .18*** .013
Squared income, 11000 .02*** .003
Dynamic country characteristics (level 2)
Individualization, 010 .01 .050
Redistribution, 020 .14** .043
Individualization*redistribution, 030 .06 .036
Time, 040 .01 .025
Squared time, 050 .05** .017
Enduring country characteristics (level 3)
Traditional values, 001 .35** .107
GDP per capita (U.S. $1000), 002 .53*** .073
Government commitment to social security, 003 .05 .089
Social security generosity, 004 .24 .361
Cross-level interactions (level 2*level 3)
Individualization*GDP per capita (U.S. $1000), 011 .100* .040
Individualization*gov. commitment to soc. sec., 012 .26** .074
Redistribution*traditional-secular values, 021 .19*** .042
Random effect Variance component Std. dev.
Between individuals variance (level 1)
Individual life satisfaction variation, e 4.77 2.184
Within countries variance (level 2)
Country-year mean life satisfaction variation, r0 .12*** .350
Between countries variance (level 3)
Country mean life satisfaction variation, u00 .52*** .718
Squared time effect variation, u05 .01** .084
Fit statistics
Explained variance (base null model variance component)
Between individuals (level 1) 4% (4.99)
Within countries (level 2) 33 % (.18)
Between countries (level 3) 59 % (1.28)
Deviance 557663.224
Number of estimated parameters 29
Notes: Estimation of xed effects using robust standard errors. Chi-square signicance tests for random effects are
based on a smaller sample of units that had sufcient data for computation: 220 of 234 units for level 2, and 77 of 91 for
level 3. Variance components estimates are based on all the data
* p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001 (two tailed tests for all variables)
434 E. Calvo
life satisfaction, while individualization as family, friendship, or community (Di Tella

unfolding in contexts of material scarcity can et al. 2003; Ouweneel 2002; Radcliff 2001;
have a detrimental impact on life satisfaction. Veenhoven 2000).
For redistribution, the overall benecial effects Overall, this model explains 59 % of the vari-
on life satisfaction are substantially increased in ance in life satisfaction between countries, 33 %
the context of traditional cultures and decreased of the variance within countries, and only 4 % of
in the context of secular-rational cultures. the variance among individuals. This is expected,
In partial conrmation of the third hypothesis, because most of the variance in life satisfaction
results suggest that government commitment to takes place on the level of individuals, but in this
social security is another signicant moderator of model, the focus was on country-level variables.
the effect of individualization and redistribution
on life satisfaction. Higher government commit-
ment to social security substantially improves the
life satisfaction outcomes of individualization. 24.6 Discussion
However, there is no evidence for an interaction
between social security generosity and any of the Research on old-age pension policy and subjec-
pension policy variables. Non-signicant cross- tive well-being has made remarkable progress
level interactions were dropped from the model over the past decades. However, the vast major-
to increase parsimony and increase power of ity of this research runs on separate avenues, with
analysis and are not reported in the table. comparative-historical sociology studying policy
Finally, the analysis controls for the main development mainly in Western Europe and
effect of cultural values, economic prosperity, OECD countries, sociology of aging and the life
government commitment to social security, and course looking at the intersection between policy
social security generosity on life satisfaction. and well-being mostly within the United States,
First, results indicate that individuals living in and sociology of emotions and mental health
afuent economies report higher levels of life largely focused on micro-social processes and
satisfaction, though extra dollars buy less life younger populations. Bridging theoretical
satisfaction at high levels of afuence (i.e., perspectives and integrating empirical work
GDP per capita is logarithmically transformed). across elds has been particularly difcult due
This is consistent with previous literature, as to the lack of reliable multilevel longitudinal
wealth and subjective well-being are now widely data. This study addressed these limitations and
agreed to have a positive and signicant relation- explored avenues for cumulative theorizing by
ship, though with marginally decreasing returns using a newly created dataset and three-level
(Stevenson and Wolfers 2008; Veenhoven 2009). hierarchical linear models to understand the
Second, traditional values have a positive inu- effects of pension policy on life satisfaction, as
ence on life satisfaction. This main effect of well as the factors that may moderate this rela-
culture on life satisfaction should be explored in tionship. The data analyzed include 126,560
further research, as there are no obvious reasons older adults over the period 19812008 in
to expect such relationship. Third, although it is 91 countries. The inclusion of a large number of
generally believed that societies with a high level low- and middle-income countries over time
of social security also enjoy higher levels of provides a unique opportunity to answer the call
subjective well-being, the results suggest no for research on pension policy and subjective
main effect of government commitment or social well-being to be more cross-national and
security generosity on life satisfaction. Previous dynamic in its orientation (e.g., Berkman
research has found similar results and addressed et al. 2000; Calvo et al. 2015b; George 2006;
this counterintuitive nding arguing that Mares and Carnes 2009; Peterson 2007; Turner
societies compensate for the lack of governmen- and Stets 2006; Yang 2008). Four major ndings
tal assistance using other means of support such emerged from this study.
First, the key challenge that pension reform proposed congruence/discrepancy theory about
poses to older adults life satisfaction is not that the interaction between pension policy and the
of living with a high degree of risk, but living in a cultural and economic context. This theory
world where strong public safety nets are weak, postulates that when pension policy is in conict
eroded, or dismantled. Given the longstanding with the cultural and structural context, it tends to
contention of risk society theory (e.g., Beck lower life satisfaction and to arouse negative
1992; Giddens 1990; Habermas 2001; Luhmann emotions. On the contrary, tight coupling
1993) that the process of individualization between pension policy and the cultural and
reduces well-being, it certainly seems plausible structural context increases life satisfaction and
that individualized pension systems could subjective well-being more generally. Policy-
decrease life satisfaction as well. In the context culture and policy-economy discrepancies can
of planning and making choices about an uncer- happen when factors other than cultural values
tain retirement future, risk may become a subjec- or economic need shape policy development. For
tively experienced threat to life satisfaction and example, policy change is heavily inuenced by
overall well-being. Yet evidence from this study institutional constraints stemming from previ-
does not support risk society theory of increasing ously enacted and current policies (Pierson
uncertainty, anxiety, ambivalence, and ill-being 1994). Class struggle and political organization
associated with individualization of pension polis another important factor shaping policy devel-
icy. Rational choice theory is right in pointing opment (Quadagno 2005).
out that individualization is not wholly about risk Specically, this study nds evidence for two
but also about an expansion of choice and situations in which the effect of pension policy
opportunities for return (e.g., World Bank signicantly varies across cultural and structural-
1994). However, as risk society theory is too economic contexts. First, the benecial effect of
pessimistic in predicting life satisfaction, rational redistribution on life satisfaction is stronger in
choice theory is too optimistic in predicting the traditional than in secular rational cultures. These
positive effect of pension individualization on results are consistent with previous ndings
life satisfaction. I argue that the (positive or suggesting non-contributory (especially means-
negative) impact of individualization on life sat- tested) pensions may be associated with stigma
isfaction has been overstated because previous in secular-rational cultures (e.g., Estes 2001;
literature does not differentiate between individ- Quadagno 2005). These results are theoretically
ualization and redistribution. Results from this sound, because secular-rational cultures are also
study suggest that individualization neither characterized by a shift away from traditional
boosts nor dampens life satisfaction when institutions, including the state, which is in this
redistribution is held constant. Variation in case the primary provider of redistribution
redistribution is what makes a difference for (Inglehart 2008). In contrast, traditional cultures
older adults life satisfaction. This result is con- may have a more favorable attitude towards reli-
sistent with previous research that found a num- ance on government funded pensions as well as
ber of economic, health, and social benets on family support. Furthermore, previous
arising from non-contributory pensions (e.g., research suggests that traditional cultures tend
Barrientos and Hulme 2008; Bertranou to place God, nature, or the collectivity, rather
et al. 2002; Johnson and Williamson 2008). than individual labor, as the ultimate origin of
The second nding of this study is that the wealth (e.g., Bataille 1998; Calvo and
relationship between pension policy and life sat- Williamson 2008; Mauss 1967; Morande 1984).
isfaction is contingent on the macro-social con- This, in turn, makes them more prone to engage
text. Pension policies are embedded in cultural in ritual exchanges of wealth that are extended to
and structural contexts that help explain how the welfare state in the form of circulation of a
people react subjectively to these policies. variety of goods and services, including old-age
Results from this study provide support to the pensions. In this context, welfare redistribution
436 E. Calvo
may be experienced as a legitimate transfer to the form of government commitment to social

which low-income groups are entitled. security (i.e., government expenditures on social
A second case for which the congruence/dis- security as a percentage of total government
crepancy theory holds true is represented by the expenditures) and social security generosity
interaction between individualization and the (i.e., government expenditures on social security
structural-economic context. Results from this as a percentage, divided by the number of people
study suggest that the main challenge that indi- age 60 and over). Corroborating ndings from
vidualization of pension policy poses for life previous studies and challenging lay
satisfaction is not that of living with a high conceptions, this study nds thaton aver-
degree of risk, but living with a high degree of agelife satisfaction is not higher in countries
risk in a world where basic material needs have with governments strongly committed to social
not been met. Specically, this study nds that security and where social security benets are
the effects of individualization on life satisfac- more generous. However, this study nds signif-
tion are signicant and negative for lower- icant interactions between government commit-
income economies and signicant and positive ment to social security and individualization.
for more afuent economies. On one hand, Specically, the results suggest that government
individuals living in a context of material scar- commitment to social security buffers the detri-
city have a structural disadvantage to bear risk. mental effect of increased risk that individuals
On the other hand, an afuent context protects bear in highly individualized pension systems.
individuals from risk and gives them more These results provide moderate support for a
opportunities to enjoy choices and obtain returns. neoclassic view where governments have unam-
For example, individuals living in wealthier biguously benecial impact on the well-being of
economies may have greater exposure to nan- their citizens (see Bjrnskov et al. 2007).
cial education and literacy campaigns, and prob-
ably have more opportunities to delegate
investment decisions to experts (Botty and 24.6.1 Theoretical Implications
Iyengar 2006). The very existence of the struc-
tural disadvantage and afuence-related This study is a rst step in the direction of
advantages puts into question the categorical integrating literature on comparative-historical
claim of negative well-being outcomes of indi- policy analysis, sociology of aging and the life
vidualization made by risk theorists (e.g., Beck course, and sociology of emotions and mental
1992; Giddens 1990). It is clear that risk theory health. The theories and empirical ndings
does not appreciate the full signicance of struc- discussed here may serve as a unifying force for
tural, cultural, and other factors as they inuence the study of the impact of pension policy on the
and shape the subjective experience of risk in subjective well-being of older adults from a
contemporary societies (Elliot 2002). sociological perspective. However, the
Last, but not least, government commitment implications of this study are beyond the substan-
to social security moderates the effects of pen- tive results on the controversy about the impact
sion policy on life satisfaction. For the most part, of pension policy on life satisfaction and the
this study explores the relationship between the moderators of this relationship.
welfare state and well-being by focusing on Findings from this study advance theory in the
variations in the type of pension policymore eld of comparative public policy and policy
or less individualization and redistributionand analysis. Two theoretical postulates emerge in
thus depart from previous research emphasizing this domain. First, the outcomes of the type of
overall social security expenditures (e.g., Di pension policy are not independent from
Tella 2003; Ouweneel 2002; Radcliff 2001; expenditures. Second, the subjective well-being
Veenhoven 2000). However, this study does outcomes of the type of pension policy are
take social security expenditures into account in shaped and constrained by culture and structure.
The emphasis of previous research on economic and cultural contexts, avoiding the
privatization, welfare expenditures, and institu- global diffusion of the Chilean pension model
tional factors shaping policy development has without any adjustments.
resulted in little attention to redistribution, type The 2008 global nancial crisis proves that
of pension policy, and cultural and economic privatizing pension reforms have exposed
factors, respectively. Future research will greatly individuals to too much risk. Since then, many
benet from an integrative approach. individuals have seen their retirement income
By modeling the interaction between pension security severely affected as a result of the
policy and the cultural and structural context in imperfect choices they made in this time of nan-
shaping life satisfaction, the theory sketched here cial turmoil. But what happens to their subjective
provides more explicit macro-foundations for well-being? With most of my sample observed
micro-level outcomes. Three major theoretical before the onset of this crisis, my ndings may be
postulates about the larger macro-social context underestimating the detrimental effects of indi-
in which subjective well-being forms and is vidualization on life satisfaction. However,
sustained emerge from my ndings. First, when policy-relevant generalizations can be made for
variations occur in public policies, individuals situations less extreme than a nancial crisis.
react emotionally to their new circumstances, Somewhat surprising, this study nds that indi-
especially to the distribution of needed resources, vidualization of riskson averagedoes not
such as non-contributory pensions. Second, the have an impact on life satisfaction. With pension
redistribution of risk has less subjective emo- reform on top of the policy agenda in many
tional impact than the redistribution of need. nations, a key nding of this study is that life
Third, policy/context congruence is associated satisfaction comes with sufcient level of
with improved subjective well-being and posi- redistribution and not with more or less individ-
tive emotional arousal, while policy/context dis- ualization. But if any makes the Chilean pension
crepancy has the reverse effect. Future studies model famous worldwide is the individualization
may consider other subjective well-being of risk, not the recent reforms strengthening
outcomes, policies, and age groups to test the redistribution of resources and alleviation
generalizability of these postulates. of need.
The nding that with redistribution comes life
satisfaction, the experience and challenges faced
24.6.2 Policy Implications by countries that introduced IRAs, the changes in
policies by international nancing institutions,
The general study of pension policy and life and the recent nancial volatility and heavy
satisfaction has intrinsic importance, as it losses experienced in nancial markets may all
affects the well-being of people and countries. serve as an incentive for countries to strengthen
Most of us will face a period of life in which we the poverty prevention and income redistribution
will need to consume but will be unable to work, component of their public pension systems.
and the countries we live in will have to nd a However, it would be a mistake to assume that
solution to provide us with enough retirement one size ts all in pension policy reform.
income, either to maintain previous standards of Although population aging and the associated
life or to prevent poverty. Finding the right problems of reforming the old-age pension
balance of public-private provision is a compli- systems are found around the world, results
cated task with great consequences for a larger from this study suggest that the challenge of
fraction of the population, and should not be pension policy reform is context-specic.
entirely abandoned to ideological preferences. Analyzing all the possible contextual
Findings from this study can help determine the variations of pension policy reform inuences
right balance of public and private support on life satisfaction could be the focus of an entire
systems for old-age populations in different new study. However, a few policy-relevant
438 E. Calvo
observations can be made. Overall, the (positive 24.6.3 Limitations and Future Research
or negative) impact of individualization on life
satisfaction has been overestimated in previous This project entailed the creation of a new dataset
literature. The choice and opportunities for and the coding of many variables was not without
returns that individualization brings are for the difculties. Because most of the information for
most part inseparable from increased risk. How- pension policy was only available in the form of
ever, there are important contextual variations. qualitative description in printed reports, there
On one side, individualization without redistri- was space for interpretation. More than ten peo-
bution can have disastrous consequences when ple were involved in checking the quality of the
taking place in low-income countries where data, but ambiguities and contradictions in the
governments are spending most of their reports were frequent. For example, the reports
resources in programs other than social security. sometimes had sections indicating that the gov-
On the other side, individualization appears to be ernment was covering the whole cost of a means-
less of a problem when public pension redistri- tested pension, but these pensions were not men-
bution is provided in parallel, afuence shields tioned anywhere else in the report, giving the
against the increased risks, and governments impression that they did not existed or at least
dedicate substantial efforts to provide social that no additional information was recorded on
security. From a policy perspective, individuali- them. These problems were addressed on a case
zation appears to be a resource-demanding alter- by case basis, reviewing the history of each coun-
native for pension reform. In contrast, pension try, revising the coding criteria, and validating
systems strong in the public safety net tend to the decisions with a third person. Although an
boost life satisfaction, can have even more bene- agreement was reached in every single case, it is
cial results in traditional cultures, and work likely that a different group of researchers would
better without demanding excessive commitment have arrived to different conclusions in a number
from the government. of cases. Further data limitations include the
Evidence presented in this study suggests that insufcient number of people age 50 and over.
pension policy redistribution is a better avenue Because this study uses an age cut-off of
than individualization to increase older adults 45 years, the analysis include people that may
life satisfaction. This evidence is consistent be 20 or more years away from retirement, and
with recent literature showing an emerging con- thus it is likely that the results of this study are
sensus about the effectiveness of social redistri- underestimating the effect of pension policy on
bution as a response to poverty, inequality, and life satisfaction.
vulnerability (e.g., Barrientos and Hulme 2008; Limitations acknowledged, the data used in
Johnson and Williamson 2008). Policymakers this study are unique in their size, scope, and
would benet from looking closely at the social longitudinal dimension, and provide exceptional
pensions introduced in countries such as opportunities for future research in a broad range
South Africa and Chile. In South Africa, the of topics that were not addressed in this study.
social pension reduced the scale of poverty First, future studies may explore if the effects of
among older people by 94 % (Case and Deaton pension policy vary depending on the respondent
1998; Help Age International 2004, 2006). In individual characteristics. As it was argued that
Chile, almost half of the older adult population an afuent context provides opportunities to get
moved out of poverty when the government benets from individualization, an analogous
introduced the social pension (Bertranou mechanism may be operating at the individual
et al. 2002). Of course, the decision to develop level, where power and resources of various
strong redistribution pensions should be types are structured by age, class, gender, and
weighted against creating other poverty preven- other social categories. Second, future studies
tion and income redistribution policies. may include a broader range of outcomes,
including subjective health, happiness, morbid- in connection to this research. However, the author should
ity, mortality, and functional health. Looking at be held responsible for any errors or inaccuracies
remaining in this chapter.
the dispersion or inequality in the distribution of
these outcomes and life satisfaction could also be
of interest. Third, future studies may model
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Does Values Education Make
a Difference on Well-Being? A Case 25
Study of Primary Education in Chiapas
Paola Cubas-Barragan
25.1 Introduction Regarding values education; whilst some

attention has been given to teaching methods,
Values Education refers to any explicit and/or much of the literature on values has tended to
implicit school-based activity to promote student focus on issues of denition and classication,
understanding and knowledge of values, and to and the extent to which anyone can, or ought to
inculcate the skills and dispositions of students impose their own moral precepts on others. By
so they can enact particular values as individuals contrast, values acquisition has rarely been stud-
and as members of the wider community (Cur- ied and little attention has been paid to the
riculum Corporation 2003). According to outcomes of dedicated values education
Aristotle, values become stronger as one applies programs (Curriculum Corp 2003; Fyffe 2006).
them on a daily basis, . . . its not enough the At the stage of primary school is where life long
theoretical knowledge of virtue, one has to make lasting attitudes towards learning are developed,
effort and put it into practice (2004). He sets as this education phase is indispensable as it enables
essential that the agent reacts with analogous students to choose what they want and participate
disposition: rst he has to be conscious of it; in the construction of the collective future. How-
then he has to proceed under his election. . . ever the school as educative institution is facing a
nally he should act with immovable and rm stage of decay due to the disparity between what
spirit (Ibid, p. 27). This process of becoming it should provide, according to its capacities and
values conscious adjusts the intellect; since aims, and what it is actually providing (Yuren
moral and ethics nd harmony faster and more 1995). This research presents values education as
accurately when one is conscious of the value an alternative to the deterioration process in the
expressed in every situation (Paoli 2006a, b). school and aims to nd if it has any impact on
Hence one is able not only to internalize values childrens well-being. The lack of information
but to introduce them into the world through concerning the relation between these themes
ones own actions (Villoro 2006). Consequently became both a limitation and an inspiration to
it becomes core not just to know about values but draw the following proposal.
to put them into practice i.e. to be educated
in/for/about/by values.
25.1.1 The Research Questions
P. Cubas-Barragan (*)
Sociologa, Benemerita Universidad Aut
onoma de
Puebla, Puebla, Mexico
In order to gain a deeper understanding on the
e-mail: paolacubas@gmail.com outcomes of dedicated values education

444 P. CubasBarragan
programs, this research uses the case study of perspectives of children are important not just
Jugar y Vivir los Valores (JVLV) a Values because they differ from that of the adults but
Education programme implemented in Chiapas also because it shows respect for children as
(state in Southern Mexico) and explores if: persons; it informs policymakers and it provides
a foundation for child advocacy (Ibid. 2005,
JVLV has an effect on values inculcation in p. 578). This approach has the potential to
primary school boys and girls improve our understanding of the diversity of
Values apprehension has an impact on childrens childhood experiences (Ben-Arieh 2000;
well-being Taimalu et al. 2007) by creating opportunities
The impact varies according to the values for young people to contribute to discussions
scheme in which the child has been and interventions that affect their lives (Cameld
brought up. et al. 2008).
Within developing country contexts, this par-
The central approach of this research is to adigm gains importance because it is respectful
understand values apprehension in connection of childrens diversities (Crivello 2009) and their
with well-being as experienced by the person. capacities to think, feel, and aspire beyond sur-
By taking this approach this research contributes vival (Ben-Arieh 2005). In so doing, it does not
to go beyond the issues of denition and classi- underestimate the difculties children face.
cation that have overpopulated the research on Moreover, it enhances a holistic understanding
values education, to see a different angle equally of their experiences of both well-being and
relevant this is its connection with students well- adversity that could be used to inform more
being. effective and integrated interventions (Crivello
et al. 2009).
This research attempts to take a similar bal-
anced and nuanced approach to understanding
25.1.2 Child Centered Approach
childrens experiences of well-being in relation
to their exposure or not to a values education
The common slogan that children are the future
programme in Mexico, with the aim of under-
of the world raises questions about the funda-
standing the impact that values education has on
mental assumptions held about children/child-
their well-being.
hood and their temporal denition as social
becomings rather than social beings. In recent
years concerns about child development research
have shifted from a decit view that focused on 25.1.3 Structure
survival, to one that acknowledged childrens
resources, agency and the pursuit of well-being Section 25.2 covers the research methodology. It
(Ben-Arieh 2005; Cameld et al. 2009; Pollard situates the research and the eldwork, it
and Lee 2003). According to Ben-Arieh (2005), describes the values education programme that
two core assumptions in considering childrens was selected and the process of data recollection
well-being are: rstly that children are entitled to and analysis. Section 25.3 sets the theoretical
dignity and basic human rights and secondly that grounds on which this research is established,
their childhood is a unique stage of identity, explaining the process of how children learn,
deserving our attention and respect, not simply the role of the school and an analysis of the
one among many stages of becoming an adult deterioration process that as an educative institu-
(Ibid. 2005).1 Following Ben-Ariehs idea, tion it is facing, the chapter concludes by
1
Casas (1997) expresses it saying that Human life is a one day, the day that a law says he or she has become
process, and nobody gets suddenly already competent adult, formally entering a different social category.
25 Does Values Education Make a Difference on Well-Being? A Case Study of. . . 445
introducing values education as an alternative to and social situation a harmonious and daily
this decay and suggesting a positive relation it working system focused on universal values
might have with childrens well-being. assimilation in elementary schools and other
Considering the scarce research on the topic places (Paoli 2002a, b). From this main objec-
of evaluating values education programmes, tive other ve specic objectives are drawn.
Sect. 25.4 describes how the questionnaire was
created. Section 25.5 shows the data analysis. 1. To cultivate a harmonious capacity building
Section 25.6 interprets the results. Section 25.7 process for educators, students and all
offers a discussion based on the ndings and members of the educative communities that
Sect. 25.8 provides some nal considerations. work with this program
2. To generate reections on diverse values and
its application in a practical way
3. To deepen in the understanding, comprehen-
25.2 Research Methodology
sion and solidarity between human beings
4. Learn to respect and estimate different
This section lays out the research methodology.
cultures
It locates the research site and research
5. Relate experiences and reections on values
participants before discussing the core research
with academic contents and the educative pro-
methods used. It gives an overview of the case
cess in general
study and offers the researchers reexivity for
discussion.
The design of the programme was drawn in
1995 from the Interdisciplinary Research Pro-
gram Human Development in Chiapas
25.2.1 Situating the Research conducted by the Universidad Autonoma
Metropolitana (UAM) in collaboration with the
At the time when the research was conducted international network Living Values. The Pro-
Jugar y Vivir los Valores (JVLV) was the only gram was launched ofcially for the scholar
Values Education programme in Mexico that was period 20022004 through an agreement signed
being systematically implemented by public by four institutions: the Chiapas Education Min-
schools in a specic area. JVLV was undertaken ister, Servicios Educativos para Chiapas (SECH),
by the Ministry of Education of Chiapas and had UAM campus Xochimilco and Living Values
been mainly implemented in Tuxtla Gutierrez, Mexico A.C.3 The agreement also included the
hence the quantitative data that informs this design of a Masters programme called Educa-
research was collected through 8 weeks of eld- tive Communication and Values, which started
work with intermittent visits to the city of Tuxtla in February 2006. The objective of this graduate
Gutierrez. program is to instruct teachers on values educa-
Jugar y Vivir los Valores (JVLV) started as an tion, in the assessment of this education and also
education model focused on values inculcation to promote educative communication through
within the education community.2 It was born as diverse mass media.
an alternative peace process in the context of During 20062007, JVLV was applied in
Chiapas. Its application is mainly in the state of 1,500 kindergartens and 1,000 primary schools
Chiapas, though in Mexico City there are schools in Chiapas. Six books, one for each grade, have
working with it. The main objective of the pro- been published as teachers guides. The author of
gram is: To generate from ones own cultural these books is PhD. Antonio Paoli Bolio,
2
Education community is understood as the group of
3
people who attend and work in a school, as well as the An organization afliated to the international network
students families. Living Values (www.livingvalues.net/).
Professor at the UAM-Xochimilco, Department as she is, and not as someone else thinks she
of Education and Communication. In these ought to be; it is the person who can best assess
books, the contents of the free text books her well-being (Rojas 2006). The role of
published by the Mexican Education Minister, researchers hence is to understand and study the
are revisited; emphasizing the values that these nature of this assessment and its implications for
stand out. Alternative activities and readings are this (Rojas 2006). Within the SWB approach
set out to promote the values somatic experience. there are two main ways of assessing the well-
A central resource to deepen in the somatic expe- being through a life as a whole question or with
rience of the values is music. Each teachers life satisfaction domains. Herein a debate
guide is accompanied by a CD with allusive between both schools of thought is presented.
songs to key values and to the readings in the Veenhoven conceives subjective well-being,
free text books. as the degree to which an individual judges the
overall quality of his life-as-a-whole favourably:
how well he likes the life he leads (1991). He
25.2.2 Methodology also makes a distinction between cognitive and
affective appraisals of life. He states that the
A self-applied childrens questionnaire was cre- latter is the prevailing instrument to evaluate
ated and applied in six public schools selected in ones happiness (2008). Since ones affective
accordance with the JVLV coordinator at Tuxtla; state is not considered relevant information in
three schools in which JVLV is applied and three evaluating many domains (1991), Veenhoven
schools in which the program is not applied, the underlines the importance to ask people directly
latter will be called traditional schools because about their overall happiness and declares that
they follow the traditional education method only happiness can be measured completely,
without any specic attention to the implicit because it is an overall judgment in itself, thus
values referred to in the ofcial education the question about appreciation of life-as-a-
program. whole sufces (2000).
In Mexico primary education lasts 6 years. According to Veenhoven there is a problem of
Children studying in rst, second and third summation in using judgments of specic life
grade are normally between 6 and 8 years old domains: (1) they are more likely to be based
and show specic pedagogic characteristics on inter- and intra-individual comparisons, thus
which bring challenges that go beyond the it raises the intriguing possibility that the same
scope of this research, hence the questionnaire event may inuence evaluations of ones life-as-
was designed and applied with children studying a-whole and evaluations of specic domains in
primary school upper grades. At the time of the opposite directions (1991). (2) Different life
project design, the teachers guide books of domains cannot be meaningfully added in a
fourth and sixth grade had not been published whole, rstly because satisfactions cannot be
hence children that were exposed to JVLV dur- assessed exhaustively and secondly because
ing third and fth grade were beginning their satisfactions differ in signicance (2000).
fourth and sixth grade, since the survey was In 2002 Cummins and Nistico, came up with
conducted at the beginning of the scholar year, the Theory of Subjective Well-being Homeosta-
it was agreed to run the survey just with fourth sis which states that subjective well-being is
and sixth grade students. Four hundred seventy actively controlled and maintained by a set of
one child answered questionnaires were com- psychological devices that function under the
piled. Data was transcribed directly into STATA. control of personality. According to them, the
The research follows a Subjective Well-being operation of these devices is most evident at the
(SWB) approach which considers the well-being level of general personal well-being; a
of a person by directly asking people about non-specic and abstract level (Cummins
it. SWB deals with the well-being of a person et al. 2003). Given the extraordinary generality
of this question, the answer people give tend to resources (human and economic) for the survey
be remarkably stable (2003). According to application, and it couldnt be used for the
Cummins, while the classic life as a whole research aims. Another limitation of the research
question is useful as an estimate of the homeo- is that it does not collect happiness data in the
static set-point, due to its high level of abstrac- long run. It would be interesting to follow up
tion it cannot provide information about the these children to see the happiness long run
components of life that also contribute, posi- effect of their attendance or not to JVLV schools.
tively or negatively, to this sense of well-being. It was perceived the need of an interdisciplinary
In order to obtain such information, questions team to work on the analysis of this theme. For
need to be directed at satisfaction with life example, the child questionnaire could be further
domains. The approach attempts to understand a improved by people from the eld of education
general appraisal of life as a whole on the basis of science especially the values module. The pro-
a multidimensional vector of specic appraisals gram Jugar y Vivir los Valores keeps on growing,
in more concrete spheres of being (Rojas 2006). reaching more schools in Chiapas and outside
In response to Veenhovens claim that Chiapas. A research like the one presented on
satisfactions cannot be assessed exhaustively; this paper could be take up again from an inter-
Cummins declares that there is converging disciplinary perspective in order to obtain more
agreement within the literature on the identica- results which will help to understand better the
tion of the minimal set of domains that form the effects and importance of values based
rst-level deconstruction of personal well-being education.
(2003). Theoretically, such a set should be suf-
cient to describe the entire life as a whole
(Cummins 1997). For Cummins, as domains are 25.3 Theoretical Framework
distanced from the homeostatic inuence, by
becoming more specic, they should show This Section sets the theoretical grounds on
greater variability and sensitivity to the actual which this research is established. It explores
life conditions versus the abstract-personal the process of how children learn, the role of
measures that will evidence little sensitivity to the school and it analyses the deterioration pro-
changing circumstances. In this vein Cummins cess that as an educative institution it is facing.
developed the Personal Well-being Index (PWI). The section concludes by introducing values edu-
In the light of this debate and given the lack of cation as an alternative to this decay and
research that correlates values and SWB, this suggesting a positive relation it might have with
research uses both approaches and test if these childrens well-being.
give different results in their relation between
values education and childrens well-being.
25.3.1 How Do Children Know
and Learn
25.2.3 Limitations
Piagets research is one of the most important
The research was originally planned to engage theorists on pedagogic studies, as Cristobal
with children and parents information. A parents Colon, he aimed to discover new territories; he
questionnaire was made in order to see whether did discover a new continent that has to be fur-
child values education has a positive impact on ther used by many future generations (Maier
parents well-being or not and to see the effect of 1991). Piagets basic idea is that, development
the quality of the father/mother-child relation- is a sum of adaptations (Lonergan 2006). An
ship has on childrens values apprehension. adaptation is the result of the relationship
Unfortunately too little information on parents between assimilation and accommodation.
questionnaires was obtained due to scarce The former is addressed when the activity
involved on the adaptation process comes from on examine and inquire the signicance, willing
an operational pre-existed scheme; the later is to establish veriable relations in order to create
addressed when the pre-existed scheme is a sense of belonging.
modied because the objects, circumstances or According to the child development between
ends differ from the previous scheme. 7 and 11 years, primary school is where life long
Piaget conceives intelligence as a behaviour lasting attitudes towards learning are developed,
that is reected in ones adaptation, equilibrium this education phase is indispensable as it enables
between assimilation and accommodation. He students to choose what they want and participate
explains the process of intelligence in action in the construction of the collective future. The
through the relation between structure, constant following section engages with the schools and
functionalities, environment and contents its role as an education institution.
(Lefrancois 1980). The interaction between the
child and the environment through assimilation
and accommodation is shaped by the structure 25.3.2 The School and Its Educative
which refers to the schemes, innate conducts and Functions
neurological connotations that the child
possesses. The evidence that this so called struc- Within societies, diverse institutions implement
ture exists and that the function process does educative functions; the family, the school,
happen is seen on childs behaviour. churches, political parties, unions, mass media,
The structure is what changes along childrens the State (Yuren 1995). In particular, schools
development, hence it becomes important to perform three essential social functions for the
understand the cognitive structure in each child- educative process: (1) up-down knowledge trans-
hood stage, Piaget states four childhood develop- mission which provides young generations
ment stages; sensorimotor period (years 02), knowledge and values so they can incorporate
preoperational period (years 27), concrete oper- them into daily life, (2) the most effective way
ational period (years 711) and formal opera- of accessing from the basic to the superior sphere
tional period (years 11 and up). of knowledge regarding epistemic and wisdom
The concrete operational stage is communities, (3) provides the method to intro-
characterized by the appropriate use of logic. duce values in an indirect way in the educative
Important processes during this stage are: community (Ibid, p. 250).
Reversibility, the permanent possibility to go In the basic education phase long lasting
backwards to the starting point of any performed attitudes towards learning are developed, this
operation (Piaget 1958). Operational thinking, education phase is indispensable as it enables
mental capacity to arrange and relate any experi- students to choose what they want and participate
ence with the whole. Being able to arrange in the construction of the collective future and
experiences and having conscious of the relation continue to learn (Delors et al. 1996).
with the whole creates an idea of certainty; one is According to UNESCO, basic education
able to choose if only if appraises each possibil- provides the foundation for all future education
ity and perceives the relation between them and learning. Its goal, as concerns those in the
(Maier 1991). During this stage the child also pre-school and primary school-age
changes from an inductive to a deductive think- population. . ., is to produce children who are
ing and is able to nd explanations that relate happy with themselves and with others. . ., an
objects with facts. The connections with the approach to seeking knowledge that they can
physical environment become more productive use and develop throughout their lives. . . Basic
since there is an elimination of egocentrism; the education is aimed at all the essential goals of
child is able to view things from anothers per- education: learning to know, to do, to be (i.e. to
spective. The child also develops an interest in assume ones duties and responsibilities) and to
rules that rule her activities, this interest consist live together with others (2002).
This is what schools can provide and what to the human good perception, as it expresses
basic education should aim4; instead, schools something which is worthy to work by (Rugarca
show typical characteristics of todays modern 2001). Paoli explains the relationship between
world deterioration. First, a students breakup value and the human good on saying that value
between scholar education and daily life, a dual- is an orientation set by ones consciousness
ity between roles played in the school and roles towards the good. He points that this orientation
played on their daily life; Ten in life, zero at is given because the value is a positive quality of
school.5 Second, schools reproduce mechanisms the self which can be appreciated on specic
of competition, selection, evaluation and promo- entities or situations (Paoli 2002a, b). Concrete
tion that ultimately reinforce inequalities (Yuren things and situations are interpreted from abstract
1995). valuations.7 Abstract valuations are used in spe-
There is a disparity between what schools are cic circumstances by specic intentions through
providing and what they should provide. Its edu- which value is given and received. It is just in the
cative function has to turn to its aims, to reinvent process of applying these valuations to specic
itself so it can be able to help children in the circumstances that they can be accepted or
process of learning to know, to do, to be and disowned (Ibid, p. 139).
to live together with others (UNESCO 2002). There are two categories of values attribu-
As Laura Cameld states, the fabric of society tion, subjective value and objective value.
could well be improved by doing far less to The former refers to an entity which is the end
ensure initiation into the so-called domains of of a subjects favourable attitude, the latter is
knowledge and far more by way of instructing independent of any subjects attitude it is valu-
children in the art of living6 with themselves and able per se, it is valid for any subject under
with each other (in Pascoe 2002). certain circumstances regardless a particular
This section has provided a reection on the subjects attitude. Villoro states that the latter
school and its educative functions and has can only been achieved through detachment of
pointed to the gap that exists between what ones personal exclusive interests8 (2006, p. 42).
schools are providing and what they should pro- From these two categories of values attribution,
vide. In the next section the research presents another two types are highlighted in order to
Values Education as an alternative to this deteri- justify values judgments; derivate valuations
oration process of the education system and are believes of what is valuable and transmitted
suggests it might also have a positive impact on by education and culture, and original
childrens well-being. valuations which are based on personal
experiences that prove or reject the social code
of valuation (Villoro 2006). Therefore in order to
justify any values objectivity set by the commu-
25.3.3 Values Education and Well-Being
nity, one has to turn to the original valuations.
That is to say the personal knowledge of values
In general, among the epistemic community
comes together with community values only then
there seems to be a consensus relating the value
external valuations are approved or disproved by
ones personal experiences. In short one has to
4
not just educate our children and youth to know and develop values personal experiences, and then
to do we must also educate them to be and to live use the critical and creative thinking in the pro-
together (Delors et al. 1996). cess of discerning the so called objective values.
5
Title of a book which shows the results of a Brazilian
research in terms of the gap between what children learn
7
in life and what they learn at school (Carraher et al. 2000). Like hope, patience, accuracy, justice (Paoli 2002a, b,
6
This Art of Living concept is clearly stated by p. 139).
8
Venhooven as an inner quality relevant for dealing with Villoro also declares that this detachment is very dif-
outer conditions (2003). cult to reach and is never fully achieved (2006, p. 61).
These thinking abilities also require affective students to stop being an inuence object and to
abilities like empathy, compassion, self-esteem, become a person (Yuren 1995) able to harmonize
which are related to the values personal her ends with her duties, to nd coherence
experiences (Rugarca 2001). between her thoughts, words and deeds, to
When one internalizes a specic value it take her life in her hands; in short a skillful
generates attitudes congruent with it and other person in the art of life able to act with immov-
social and human or universal values (Rugarca able and rm spirit.
2001). Therefore personal values become a crite- In the last three decades, the scientic study
rion that helps to weight social values in the about happiness has begun to awake the minds of
decision making process. The same occurs with researches from different areas of knowledge
human or universal values like: love, friendship (psychology, sociology, economics and anthro-
or beauty. Here comes the importance of ones pology, to mention some). In this process, the
personal values perception, social example and word happiness has acquired different synonyms:
education; these are not to substitute the personal Well-Being, Subjective Well-Being or Life Sat-
experience but to build up the framework in isfaction. These are used indistinctly along the
which it can be performed. This target is reached text to refer to happiness. One important relation
only if instead of imposing values guidelines that has been established is the one between
these are transmitted in order to direct each Subjective Well-being and Values.
ones own personal vision of what is valuable Subjective Well-Being cannot be thought of
(Ibid, p. 67). as a simple form of hedonism that follows only
According to Lonergan, human knowledge from bodily pleasures. Instead, Subjective Well-
supposes four intentional dimensions: experience Being . . . involves the search for meaningfulness
through senses, that is to say collecting external in ones life. Thus, Subjective Well-Being
and internal data related with the interest; under- becomes a broader measure of quality of life
standing, in general this dimension refers to because it reects deeper values beyond physical
intellectual operations which formulate questions pleasure and ephemeral emotions (Diener 1997).
like what?, why?, how?, which?, when?; veri- Diener et al. also states on his value-as-a-
cation of the discoveries from the latter dimen- moderator model that people gain sense of satis-
sion through facts based judgment in order to faction out of activities congruent with their
determine its rightness; and deliberation which values (1999) and reafrms it saying that values
formulates value judgments in order to make are related to positive SWB in that people who
decisions (1993). By following this process one are involved in goal activities that they believe
is able to achieve that what for Aristotle comes are important are more likely to experience
rst: to be conscious of it (the value). feelings of well-being (Diener 1997). Kasser
From this strong baseline, the process of and Ryan (1993, 1996) specify that it is not
values education has to be built up as a proactive enough to pursue ones values but the nature of
instead of a normative one. In relation to ofcial those values; they maintain that the type of goals
education programs, when attention focuses in individuals pursue inuences mean levels of
contents related to values, also social and psy- well-being. Individuals who pursue intrinsic
chological senses become clearer. Values-based goals such as personal growth, good relationships
education gives sense. The constant exercise of and community contribution are more satised
values inculcation makes academic contents than individuals pursuing extrinsic goals like
meaningful as they are related to those values; physical attractiveness, nancial success and
hence those become more understandable (Paoli social recognition (1996). This conrmed other
2006a). At the same time children acquire new ndings of the same authors (1993) that
resources to handle practical life as well as individuals who pursue extrinsic goals tend to
capacities to improve themselves, others and exhibit more physical symptoms as well as low
the environment. This sort of education enables self-actualization, low vitality, and high
depression and anxiety. The so called social traits (e) Well-being. The research follows a Subjec-
have been found to correlate positively with tive Well-being approach to ones well-
measures of positive affect (Veenhoven 2002). being, it also inquires for both Life satisfac-
As mentioned before Kasser and Ryan (1993, tion and an Index of Satisfaction with life
1996) maintain that the type of goals individuals domains.
pursue inuences mean levels of well-being. (f) Mother/Father relationship. One of the PWI
In order to see if values education in the for school children components is personal
context of JVLV is positively correlated with relationships but without any specication
childrens well-being an ad-hoc questionnaire of which relationships should be addressed
was created. Section 25.4 describes the design hence it was determined specically ask
of this instrument. about childrens satisfaction with the rela-
tionship they have with their parents.
(g) Values apprehension. This is one of the core
25.4 The Instrument variables. It is fundamental in order to test
the effectiveness of JVLV and the impact of
The questionnaire was designed to be self- this values reinforcement on
responded by children, hence it was very impor- childrens SWB.
tant to control its extension because of the length
of childrens attention. It also had to be simple
and clear with a friendly format. Through the
questionnaire a number of variables were
25.4.2 Variables Construction
obtained. Section 25.4.1 explains why these
were used and Sect. 25.4.2 describes how the
Attendance to JVLV schools, is a dummy
variables were constructed.
variable which takes the value of zero if the
child attends a traditional school and one if the
child attends a JVLV school.
25.4.1 Variables
Affective, Psychological Variable/Self-
esteem. To obtain data related to this variable,
(a) Age, Grade.
Garduno self-esteem instrument was used as a
(b) Gender.
baseline model which consists on a set of nine
(c) Attendance or not to JVLV schools.
questions. Information from the JVLV sixth
(d) Affective, Psychological Variable. As
grade teachers guide, which specially focuses
stated by Rugarcia, affective abilities are
on the self-esteem theme, was used in order to
needed in order to enhance thinking abilities
adjust Garduno instrument to the research
in the process of values transmission. As
aims. Nine adjectives which describe the
one of the affective abilities, self-esteem
childs self-esteem were evaluated in positive;
was used as an indicator of this variable. It
this was used in a scale from 1 to 4. Four was
is expected to observe whether there is a
used for the maximum expression of it, and
positive relation between values based edu-
one if the child thinks the adjective does not
cation and students self-esteem (Lovat
relate to its personality.
2004). As mentioned by Sirgy; Huebner
For example,9
et al. (1997) conducted a study to demon-
strate that self-esteem is a different con-
struct from life satisfaction in children.
The results of the study indicated that
indeed the self-esteem measure did signi-
cantly discriminate from the life satisfaction 9
The nine questions are the nine questions in the First
measure in children (2001). Module of the appendix.
How sincere you consider yourself? evaluate her level of satisfaction within each
Very sincere ____ Sincere ____ A little of the questions in a scale from 0 to 10, where
sincere _____ No so sincere _____ 0 is very unhappy and 10 is very happy. Ques-
The construction of the affective and psy- tion one of this module is the Overall Life
chological variable is given by the sum of Satisfaction. Questions two to eight on the
each of the nine questions punctuation. same module compound the PWI, its
Well-being. As explained before two subjec- components are: standard of living, health,
tive well-being approaches were used; Life life achievement, personal relationships, per-
Satisfaction and an Index of Satisfaction sonal safety, community-connectedness, and
with certain life components, for the latter, future security. The PWI is built with a
the Personal Well-being Index (PWI) for weighted average of the punctuation of each
school children developed by Cummis and of the seven aforementioned questions.
Lau (2005) was used. The child is asked to How happy are you with your life as a whole?
Mother/Father relationship. The child is asked situations with two possible reactions were
to evaluate her level of satisfaction within the created. The child is asked to select an option
relationship she has with her mother and in which she would react. For the sixth and last
father separately in a scale from 0 to virtue Respect , the child is asked to write
10, where 0 is very unhappy and 10 is very ve virtues (good things) of one of her mates.
happy. If she is able to write three or more the value of
Values apprehension. Values Education litera- the question will be one, and it will be zero
ture is lacking in providing methodologies to otherwise. Adding the punctuation to each of
asses programmes; especially for primary the six questions, a Values Index is
school (Fyffe 2006). No existing instrument constructed.
was found which could full the objectives of
the research. Given the lack of information and
the need to be a logical link between the
assessment items contained in the test and the
25.5 Data Analysis
programs being evaluated (Fyffe 2006), an
instrument was created to assess the level of
This section shows the process of data analysis. It
children values apprehension. The instrument
starts with the descriptive statistics, it analyses
aims to show if childrens reaction to every-
the different information that the life as a
day situations reected the application of spe-
whole question and the PWI give and the
cic values or not. Six values, derived from the
model used for econometric analysis.
JVLV program, which could be evaluated in
relation to everyday situations, were selected:
Tolerance, Collaboration, Generosity, Hon-
esty, Responsibility, and Respect. Each ques- 25.5.1 Descriptive Statistics
tion could take the value of zero (if the answer
does not reect the virtue) or one (if it reects This section aims to provide rst sight relevant
it). For the rst ve virtues, hypothetic information of the main variables obtained.
Table 25.1 Jugar y Vivir los Valores effect

LS PWI SE Val Tol Col Gen Hon Resp Respe Fr Mr
Jvlv 83.6 79.4 27.8 5.0 .94 .86 .89 .77 .87 .88 86.0 91.3
Tra 82.4 76.8 27.9 4.8 .94 .80 .84 .80 .85 .71 84.3 90.8
See Appendix for abbreviations
Table 25.2 Jugar y Vivir los Valores gender effect

LS PWI SE Val Tol Col Gen Hon Resp Respe Fr Mr
Jvlv Girl 83.7 79.9 27.4 5.2 .95 .89 .90 .75 .89 .90 87.5 92.4
Boy 83.4 78.9 28.2 4.9 .92 .83 .87 .79 .84 .85 84.4 90.3
Tra Girl 83.4 74.4 27.2 5.0 .95 .82 .89 .83 .87 .72 81.7 90.9
Boy 81.0 78.5 28.9 4.6 .94 .80 .78 .78 .83 .71 87.3 91.9
See Appendix for abbreviations
(a) Jugar y Vivir Los Valores Effect. Table 25.1 Respect), in all six, girls not attending
shows that children attending JVLV schools JVLV schools show higher levels than
report a PWI 2.6 points above children not boys from the same group (not attending
attending to it. For the latter group, the JVLV schools). The case of Generosity is
Values Index is slightly underneath the for- where the biggest gap is shown. In JVLV
mer group. This Index, as noted in schools, girls show higher levels than boys
Sect. 25.4.1, has six indicators in which we in ve of the components. The biggest gap
also observe the JVLV effect. The Values in is shown in Collaboration. For this group
which JVLV has more impact are: Collabo- boys report higher levels of Honesty com-
ration, Generosity and Respect. Honesty is pared to girls.
the only value in which the contrary effect is
observed, the latter group is above the for- For intra gender comparisons, girls attending
mer). Regarding children perception of their JVLV schools show higher levels than girls not
relationship with their father and mother, in attending, in ve of the Values Index
both cases, children attending JVLV school components; Collaboration and Respect show
report grater satisfaction with those the biggest differences. In the case of Honesty,
relationships. the latter group is above the former. Boys attend-
(b) Jugar y Vivir los Valores-Gender Effect. In ing JVLV schools also report higher levels in ve
Table 25.2 important results regarding of the Values Index components, in this case the
values apprehension and gender are shown. biggest gaps are observed in Generosity and
Girls and boys attending JVLV schools Respect. In the case of Tolerance, the former
report a relatively equal Life Satisfaction group is lightly below the latter.
whereas for those not attending JVLV
schools, girls LS is slightly above than
boys. Regarding the Values Index, the
ratio girl/boy is 1.06 in the former group 25.5.2 Life Satisfaction vs. PWI
and 1.08 in the latter; it is shown that attend-
ing JVLV schools diminishes the girl/boy As previously mentioned two SWB indicators
ratio in 2.1 points as both girls and boys (overall Life Satisfaction and PWI) were
report a higher Values Index. For the Values included in the questionnaire. In order to choose
Index components (Tolerance, Collabora- the best indicator for the hypothesis tests the
tion, Generosity, Honesty, Responsibility, following analysis is developed.
Table 25.3 Bivariate correlation: PWI components to Table 25.4 Life satisfaction and PWI regression analy-
life satisfaction sis: life satisfaction as dependent variable semi-logarithm
specification
PWI components Life satisfaction
Standard of living 0.22** PWI components Life satisfaction
Health 0.18** Standard of living .11*
Life achievement 0.21** Health .13**
Personal relationship 0.14** Life achievement .01
Personal safety 0.25** Personal relationship .13*
Feeling part of the community 0.06 Personal safety .21**
Future security 0.19* Feeling part of the community .05
*Signicant at 5 %; **signicant at 1 % Future security .08+
Intercept 3.33**
R2 .16
The correlation between Life Satisfaction and
PWI was found signicant but not too strong + signicant at 10 % *signicant at 5 % **signicant at
1%
(31.5 %), it is possible that due to the abstract-
ness of the LS question, children might be
Com: Feeling part of the community
addressing different issues to each indicator
FS: Future security
(LS and PWI). All domains except feeling part
: error term
of the community correlate signicantly with
j: parameters to be estimated, j 0, 2, . . . 7
Life Satisfaction (Table 25.3); this is consistent
with Cummins and Lau (2005) notes about this
Table 25.4 shows that overall happiness has a
domain in the PWI-School Manual (2005) and it
low and positive correlation with standard of
might be due to the abstractness of the feeling
living, health, personal safety and future security.
part of the community domain.
It has a negative correlation with personal rela-
However, as stated by Rojas (2006) it is nec-
tionship and it is not related with life achieve-
essary to go beyond correlations to state the
ment and feeling part of the community. The
importance of any domain of life in the generation
domain which seems to be more important for
of life satisfaction. For this, the semi-logarithm
childrens LS is personal safety. An increase of
technique10 proposed by Rojas (2006) was used,
100 % in personal safety leads to a rise of 21 % in
eLS e0 *SL1 *Hea2 *LA3 *PR4 *PS5 LS. However as stated above, none of the
domains have an essential impact on childrens
*Com6 *FS7 *e 25:1 LS. Childrens answers about their satisfaction
Where11 with specic domains and their overall life satis-
faction are showing different analytical process,
LS: Life Satisfaction and hence addressing different areas of their
SL: Standard of Living SWB. This predicts that information from both
Hea: Health indicators will lead to different outcomes in the
LA: Life Achievement further analysis which involves the relation
PR: Personal Relationship between childrens SWB and Values.
PS: Personal Safety
10
The semi-logarithm specication implies diminishing 25.5.3 Econometric Analyses
returns to any domain satisfaction, an increasing marginal
rate of substitution between satisfaction in any two Given that LS and PWI would lead to different
domains, and concavity of life satisfaction in domains of
outcomes it was decided to do hypothesis test
life (life satisfaction tends to be greater in situations of
balanced, rather than polarized, domain satisfaction) with both indicators separately. Do values matter
(Rojas 2006). for childrens well-being? This section uses the
11
All variables are in a 0100 scale. Personal Well-being Index a SWB indicator in
order to test (1) if JVLV does have a positive Table 25.5 JVLV effect on childrens values OLS
impact on childrens values apprehension and regression analysis
(2) if this values reinforcement has a positive Values Mod 1 Mod 2
impact on childrens well-being. Given the JVLV 0.25* 0.28*
results shown by the descriptive statistics a Age 0.10
third hypothesis test was developed to show Self-esteem 0.01** 0.01**
(3) if the impact of values education on well- Female 0.40** 0.39**
Constant 2.70** 3.75**
being is different for boys and girls.
Obs 468 469
Since JVLV is the values reinforcement pro-
R2 0.05 0.05
gram, the child attendance to JVLV schools or
*Signicant at 5 % **signicant at 1 %
traditional schools will be core to determine
whether it affects or not childrens values level
controlling by gender and self-esteem; important
variables for the process of values apprehension. Hypothesis 3: The impact varies according to
It will also be tested whether child subjective gender
well-being is affected by the childs values
level. Its important to control by the childhood
development stage in which the child is at Ho : 4 0 Hi : 4 6 0
(by scholar grade or age) and by the level of
satisfaction with the relationship they have with PWI 0 1 f r 2mr 3val
their father and mother. 4 f emnval
5gr 25:3
Where:
Hypothesis 1: JVLV does have a positive impact
on childrens values apprehension. PWI: refers to Personal Well-being Index in a
0100 scale
Val 0 1jvlv 2 f em 3se fr: refers to the children-father quality
Ho : 1 0 Hi : 1 > 0 relationship (reported by children) in a
25:2 0100 scale
mr: refers to the children-mother quality relation-
Where: ship (reported by children) in a 0100 scale
val: refers to the values index in a 06 scale
Val: refers to the values index in a 06 scale femval: is the interaction variable between
jvlv: dichotomous variable for the schools which female and values
work with JVLV program gr: dichotomous variable for the grade in which
fem: dichotomous variable for gender the child is studying. 1 6th, 0 4th
se: refers to the self-esteem index in a 936 scale
On Table 25.6, Model 1 presents an OLS
Table 25.5 shows that including the child age regression where all the explanatory variables
on the model, does not have signicant effects; are exogenous variables. Including age as control
hence Model 2 was used in order to test hypothe- variable in Eq. 25.2 does not represent any
sis 1. important changes on either equation. In
Eq. 25.3 values is no longer an exogenous vari-
Hypothesis 2: Values reinforcement has a posi- able because it is correlated with the unobserv-
tive impact on childrens well-being able error , therefore as stated in Wooldridge
(2005), OLS estimation results in inconsistent
estimators of all the j. Since hypothesis one is
Ho : 3 0 Hi : 3 > 0 tested by the signicance of 1, on Table 25.7 it is
Table 25.6 PWI, values, JVLV regression analysis The terminology is the same as the one noted for
PWI Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Eqs. 25.2 and 25.3, in this case LS refers to Life
Father R 0.09** 0.09** 0.09** as a whole Satisfaction in a 0100 scale.
Mother R 0.19** 0.16** 0.16**
Values 1.97** 5.44** 5.32**
Fem val 0.14 0.51* 0.49*
Grade 1.99 0.64 0.86 25.6 Results
JVLV 0.31** 0.33**
Age 0.06 This section analyses information presented on
Female 0.37** 0.36** Sect. 25.5 to see whether JVLV does have a
Self-esteem 0.01** 0.01** positive impact on childrens values apprehen-
Constant 42.9** 3.21** 3.82** sion or not, if this values reinforcement has a
Obs 457 455 456 positive impact on childrens well-being and if
Mod 2 and 3 use the method of three-stage estimation for such impact shows differences according to the
systems of simultaneous equations regression (3SLS)
values scheme in which the child has been
brought up. The analysis is made rst with PWI
Table 25.7 LS, values, JVLV regression analysis: three- as SWB indicator and then with Life as a whole
stage estimation for systems of simultaneous equations Satisfaction as SWB indicator.
LS Val
Values 3.01*
Father R 0.14**
25.6.1 Do Values Matter for Childrens
Mother R 0.12*
Well-Being? The Case
Fem Val 0.09 of Satisfaction with Specific
Grade 7.2** Components
JVLV 0.35**
Self-esteem 0.01** This section comments the results of the equation
Female 0.37** system with PWI as indicator of SWB. On
Constant 50.8** 3.8** Table 25.6 it is shown that:
Obs 456 456
*Signicant at 5 % ** signicant at 1 % (A) JVLV has a positive impact on childrens
(boys and girls)12 values index (Hypothesis 1).
also presented the alternative method of consid- (B) Regarding the impact that values apprehen-
ering a system of simultaneous equations by sion has on children well-being. In the case
Three Stage Estimation (3SLS). Therefore of PWI there is a positive impact (Hypothe-
Model 3 was selected for testing hypothesis sis 2) but the magnitude differs by gender,
one, two and three simultaneously. values education has a more positive impact
Do values matter for childrens well-being? for boys well-being than for girls well-being
The case of satisfaction with life as a whole. (Hypothesis 3)
In this section Life Satisfaction is used as a
proxy for Subjective Well-being SWB and it was This result is consistent as shown in
also used the selected regression Model 3 stated Sect. 25.3.3 that social traits correlate positively
on Sect. 25.5.1. with well-being. However in a country like
The equation system is as follows: Mexico where girls are educated under social
values and boys under ego values, the positive
Val 0 1jvlv 2 f em 3se 25:4 effect of a social values education programme on
LS 0 1 f r 2mr 3val
4 f emnval
5gr 25:5 12
The interaction variable female-jvlv parameter was not
statistically signicant.
children well-being is higher for boys than for Grade has signicant and negative effect on
girls. The former group will have a comparison childrens well-being. Children attending
set of ego values versus the social ones; this sixth grade are shown to be 7.2 percentile
comparison will make them appreciate more the points less happy than fourth grade students.
new tool that is being provided because of the In this, it is important to note that the
positive impact it has on their well-being; whilst variability of childrens responses is bigger
girls who have been brought up under the scheme in sixth grade students (0100) than for those
of social values wont nd a lot of difference in in fourth grade (50100). Children in fourth
their behaviour, hence in their well-being, after grade might show higher results to the LS
being exposed to a values education program. question due to the high abstract and com-
Additionally it was found that: plexity level of the question or because they
are happier with their lives as a whole.
In both schools (JVLV and traditional) girls have Another explanation might point to the matu-
a higher Values Index rity level of sixth grade students who have a
In relation to the Father-Child and Mother-Child broader awareness of their environment
relationship,13 both have a positive impact on (household, nances and social) hence they
child SWB. are considering more elements when
The school Grade doesnt have a signicant reecting on their well-being and perceive a
impact on child SWB. bigger gap between their expectations and the
Being a girl increases the Values Index almost in reality.14
the same proportion as to being enrolled in
As for the PWI case:
JVLV schools.
Father-Child and Mother-Child relationship;
both have a positive impact on child SWB.
In both schools (JVLV and traditional) girls have
25.6.2 Do Values Matter for Childrens a higher Values Index.
Well-Being? The Case
of Satisfaction with Life
as a Whole
25.6.3 Satisfaction with Life as a Whole
This section comments the results of the equation vs. Satisfaction with Specific
system with Life Satisfaction as indicator of Components
SWB. On Table 24.7 it is shown that:
As it has been shown at the end of Sect. 25.4 and
(A) JVLV has a positive impact on childrens further by the results presented in Sect. 25.5; the
(boys and girls) values index (Hypothesis 1). two SWB indicators (the Personal Well-being
(B) Values apprehension had a positive impact Index and Life Satisfaction) give different informa-
on childrens well-being (Hypothesis 2) tion regarding childrens Subjective Well-being.
regardless of gender (Hypothesis 3). The rst nding which leads to this conclu-
sion is the low correlation (31.5 %) between both
Additionally and opposed to what is found in the indicators. Additionally, satisfaction with each of
previous section (where PWI is used as measure of the PWI components is not fundamental to deter-
SWB), using the LS SWB measure shows that: mine childrens satisfaction with life as a whole.
Further, the results from Sect. 25 show a dispar-
ity of Grade and Values (differentiated by
13
It might be interesting to test if there are gender
14
(boy-girl) differences on this. Further analysis on this is recommended.
Gender) impact on PWI and on LS. Grade is ones social environment; is the collective pro-
signicant for LS but not for PWI; values show gramming of the mind which distinguishes the
a differentiated effect by Gender over PWI but members of one group or category of people
not over LS. No further studies between from another (Hofstede 1980). A culture xes
differences of both indicators (LS and PWI) for certain superior values which are common to
childrens well-being were found. What seems to every member of it and correspond to diverse
be more important in addressing these manifestations of an ideal of perfection16
differences is the level of abstraction and com- (Villoro 2006); these values are the core of cul-
plexity that the overall life satisfaction implies in ture through which the performance of commu-
comparison with to PWI.15 nity members is determined.
25.7 Discussion 25.7.2 Ego/Social Values
The data analysis shows that gender is an impor- In the research developed by Hofstede to analyze
tant variable in understanding the impact that cultural differences, one of the ve dimensions he
values education has on childrens well-being. established after empirical analysis is labelled
Herein a cultural approach is taken to analyse Ego/Social (1998, p. 13). Hofstede argues that
the results of the research. there is a universal trend of men stressing ego
The election of values can only be done within a goals and women stressing social goals (1998,
specic cultural setting. A culture xes certain p. 79). The Ego/Social dimension concerns rst of
superior values which are common to every mem- all the emotional roles in the home; Hofstede
ber of it; these values are the core of culture through (1980, 1991, 2001) suggests that in ego countries,
which the performance of community members is ego traits (material success and progress, sympathy
determined. This Discussion section looks into this for the strong; ambitious, assertive, competitive,
fact and deepens on how culture impacts values courageous, aggressive, decisive and tough) are
education on boys and girls and brings an explana- encouraged in males but discouraged in females,
tion on why the positive impact that values educa- whereas social traits (caring for others, gentleness,
tion has on well-being varies according to gender preservation, sympathy for the weak, equality, sol-
and how gender determines the values scheme in idarity and being tender) in males are discouraged
which the child has been brought up. and ego ones encouraged. By contrast, in social
societies, ego traits are neither encouraged nor
discouraged in either of the sexes, whereas social
25.7.1 Cultural Differences traits are encouraged in both males and females.
Therefore the gender gap in values is larger in ego
Values can be ordered number wise. Each action countries than in social countries.
induces to establish preferences. One renounces Cross-cultural studies show this gap is wider in
certain ends in order to reach some others which early ages (Hofstede 1998). Gender role program-
are considered more valuable. This is why one ming starts immediately after birth, in the differ-
establishes a values hierarchy through which ential ways in which adults treat girl and boy
superior values are selected, the performance of babies (Meyer in Hofstede 1998), and in the dif-
these superior values guides our conduct. The ferent gender roles in the family which strongly
election of these values varies; can only be affect the values concerning appropriate behaviour
done within the cultural framework (Villoro for boys and for girls (Hofstede 1998).
2006). Culture is learned and it derives from
16
Harmony, justice, freedom, happiness are some
15
Further analysis on this area can be studied from differ- supreme values among different cultures (Villoro 2006,
ent areas of knowledge like psychology or education. p. 47).
25.7.3 The Mexican Case well-being. Such difference was not found when
using the Overall Life Satisfaction question as
According to Hofstede (1998) Mexico is childrens well-being indicator. No further stud-
characterized as a very strong ego country. ies of the differences between both indicators
This section puts this afrmation into context were found. What seems to be more important
by using the framework developed by Rogelio in addressing these differences is the level of
Diaz-Guerrero (1996) La Psicologa del abstraction and complexity that the Overall Life
Mexicano, in which he aims to sketch the nature Satisfaction question implies in comparison to
and behaviour of Mexicans.17 the PWI which is reection on specic areas of
Mexican families are based on two basic childrens life.
prepositions: The Father undeniable supremacy Values education is presented as an alterna-
and the mother absolute self-sacrice. These tive to the deterioration process in the school and
prepositions come from values orientations core in the basic education phase. Nonetheless
which sustain the profound differences between values acquisition has rarely been studied and
men and women in which men are considered little attention has been paid to the outcomes of
unquestionably biological and natural superior to values education programs. The election of
women. This cultural believes are reected in the values can only be done within the cultural
social roles played in the family and characterize framework; a culture xes certain superior values
childrens development. Diaz-Guerrero descrip- which are common to every member of it. These
tion of Mexican childhood reafrms Hofstede values are at the core of culture through which
assumption that gender gap is bigger in ego the performance of community members is
countries and in early ages. Boys are supposed determined.
to be a personication of manliness which is Since the research focuses on Mexico educa-
understood as fearlessness, aggressiveness, tional system, Hofstedes culture analysis was
roughness; no rajarse (Diaz-Guerrero 1996); used to explain the context in which Mexican
whereas girls have to become an example of children are brought up. The empirical analysis
feminity; graceful, charming and tender. All uses Jugar y Vivir los Valores (JVLV) a values
kind of feminine dispositions in boys are education program for pre-school and primary
disapproved by the community (brothers, uncles, school. It was found that in an ego country
cousins the father and even the mother). Hence it like Mexico, values education does have a posi-
can be said that the values scheme in which tive impact on childrens well-being. However
children are brought up generally in Mexico when using the Personal Well-being Index as
varies according to gender. Boys are brought up indicator of childrens well-being, the values
under an ego values scheme and girls under a scheme in which the child is brought up does
social values scheme. inuence the effect of a values education
programme. In this case since the values educa-
tion program is social values oriented, the effect
on children shows gender differences because
25.8 Final Considerations
girls have been educated under a social values
scheme and boys under an ego values scheme.
Through empirical analysis it was found that
What it is suggested is that boy appreciate more
values education does have a positive impact on
than girls this new aspect in their lives and reveal
childrens well-being. This impact is more posi-
this with a more positive impact on their SWB.
tive for boys than for girls when using the Per-
This gender difference was not found when using
sonal Well-being Index as indicator of childrens
the overall life satisfaction question as SWB
indicator which shows that the positive effect of
17
Such description refers to the standard Mexican values education on childrens well-being is the
families. same for both boys and girls.
Appendix
Table 25.8 Explanation of variables

Variable Type Explanation Nom.
Attendance Dichotomous 0 if the child attends a school that does not apply JVLV Jvlv
methodology
1 if the child attends a school that does apply JVLV
methodology
Gender Dichotomous 0 for boy, 1 for girl Gen
Selfesteem Continuous Selfsteem index as a proxy of the affective and SE
psychological variable. Sc. 936
Well-being Continuous Overall life satisfaction Sc. 0100 LS
PWI Continuous Personal well-being index Sc. 0100 PWI
Relationship with mother Continuous Child satisfaction with the relationship with her father/ Fr/Mr
and father mother
Sc. Es 0100
Tolerance Dichotomous 0 the child does not apply the value, 1 the child applies it Tol
Collaboration Dichotomous 0 the child does not apply the value, 1 the child applies it Col
Generosity Dichotomous 0 the child does not apply the value, 1 the child applies it Comp
Honesty Dichotomous 0 the child does not apply the value, 1 the child applies it Hon
Responsibility Dichotomous 0 the child does not apply the value, 1 the child applies it Resp
Respect Dichotomous 0 the child does not apply the value, 1 the child applies it Respe
Values Index Discrete Addition of the value of the 6 components of the selected Val
values. Sc. Es 06
Cameld, L., Crivello, G., & Woodhead, M. (2009).

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Happiness and Quality of Life
in Mexico: Conceptual 26
and Geographical Considerations
Jose de Jesus Garca Vega
26.1 Introduction researchers prefer to take the simplest road and

consider those concepts as similar (Veenhoven
Happiness and quality of life gure among the 2013a). However, authors of recent literature
preferred topics on these early stages of the have tried to differentiate one concept from
twenty rst century among academicians and another and have made intents of getting
political agents around the World. And this is denitions for all of them. The quest has not
not surprising because traditional measures of been easy since most of us have a particular
well-being like the GDP, or even the HDI, have denition of happiness and well-being, while
not fullled the needs a society has to effectively the concept of quality of life is relatively recent
monitor the human progress. There are world and it seems that we have not yet reached a
organizations (i.e., OECD, World Bank, UN, denition that captures the particularities of the
WEF) that have taken initiatives to foster the concept.
measurement of progress including a series of Finding the determinants of happiness has
indicators that more accurately reect the multiple benets. First of all, once we know
human well-being. On the other hand, countries what the elements generate happiness in a soci-
like Great Britain, Australia, Canada, and ety, politicians can direct public policy decisions
Mexico, among others, have initiated projects to foster, or at least, maintain the levels of happi-
which include the ofcial measurement of sub- ness of the population (Graham 2011). As a soci-
jective well-being (OECD 2012). ety, we can take care of those elements and work
One of the aims of the happiness studies is to on projects aimed to generate more happiness or
nd the main determinants of it, because once we quality of life in our communities (JCCI 2013a ).
know what is behind happiness, we can promote On the labor side, rms that investigate the
actions directed to improve it or at least, maintain determinants of job satisfaction or job happiness
it. As it will be presented on a section ahead, have the possibility of having more engaged and
there are a vast number of studies with this pur- productive employees and affect their prots on a
pose. Besides this issue, another very important positive way (WEF 2012).
aspect to study is the denition of well-being, The determinants of well-being may be
happiness and/or quality of life. Sometimes, diverse. However, it seems that a few of them
are common among different groups of people,
J.J. Garca Vega (*) being them from a specic country or a specic
Department of Economics, Universidad de Monterrey, demographic group. Classical determinants are
Monterrey, Mexico health, money, social relationships, and
e-mail: jose.garcia@udem.edu, pepechuy13@gmail.com
x# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016 463

464 J.J. Garca Vega
so. However, some determinants can be different spend the rest of their lives in the community.
for groups that apparently are similar. If we con- The objective of this contribution is to compare
sider policy making decisions and those the results of the three surveys and discover if the
differences are not taken into account, decisions determinants of well-being are consistent among
may be taken in one direction trying to benet all the three different concepts used to represent
groups of the society and they might provoke well-being.
different results, which could be negative for Having presented the justication and the
the society as a whole. For instance, one may objective of this study, the rest of the article is
suppose that due to genetic similarities that can organized as follows: a literature review is
exist in the same country, different cities or presented and then a description of the model
regions may have the same determinants of hap- used for conducting the different surveys is
piness and the policy making should be done described. Then, the details of the application of
considering the average of the results, assuming the different surveys at the different levels of
that what is good for one city or region is good government are described and the results
for the rest. If this is not the case, resources will presented. A discussion of the results follows
be wasted and the objective of fostering well- and then, some conclusions are drawn. The
being on the population from all over the country references and the tables are presented at the end.
might not be reached.
Another issue we have to consider when
trying to foster well-being of the society as a 26.2 Literature Review
whole is what concept should be taken as the
guide for measurement and monitoring well- 26.2.1 Determinants of Happiness
being (Graham 2011). Using happiness as a pub-
lic policy goal has been criticized, even though Studies about the determinants of happiness are
the need to include subjective well-being has vast. Only on the World Database of Happiness
been recognized as important (Lora 2008). The we can nd nearly 700 references on the section
concept of quality of life has been proposed to of determinants of happiness (Veenhoven
include objective and subjective measures of 2013b). We can also nd them on journals like
well-being, but no clear denition of quality of the Journal of Happiness Studies, Applied
life or the determinants of it are already avail- Research of Quality of Life, and Social
able. In order to effectively consider what is Indicators Research, just to mention a few. In
important for citizens well-being, several efforts some books about happiness, a few authors
have been done in which peoples participation have tried to get a consensus on the determinants
on the denition of the well-being indicators has of happiness. For instance, Carol Graham (2011)
been an important part of the process of measur- lists a series of factors that are common to every
ing well-being. The process followed by The individual that generate an inuence on happi-
Jacksonville Community Council Inc. called ness. Among these factors, Graham mentions
JAX2025 (JCCI 2013b) is an example of how income, age, health, stable partnership, employ-
participation can lead to a more precise and ment and friendship. Ed Diener, considered one
focused model of well-being measurement. of the most inuential authors on the topic of
In this study, we take advantage of the avail- happiness, presents a series of factors that are
ability of three different surveys conducted at related with happiness. On the book he wrote
three different levels of government in Mexico: with his son, Robert Biswas-Diener (Diener and
country wide, state level, and municipal level. Biswas-Diener 2008), he relates happiness with
The same basic well-being indicators were health, social relationships, work, money, reli-
included on the three surveys and, to represent gion and spirituality, and culture. Sonja
the level of well-being, three different variables Lyubomirsky (2007), also renowned author on
were considered: feeling of happiness, evaluation happiness, establishes that happiness has a lot to
of the quality of life of the place, and the desire to do with genetics, circumstances, and intentional
26 Happiness and Quality of Life in Mexico: Conceptual and Geographical Considerations 465
activities. She considers that as much as 40 % of considers also a series of domains to capture the
our happiness is under our control, so the evolution of well-being: housing, income, jobs,
possibilities on increasing it depends greatly on community, education, environment, civic
what we intentionally do. On the other hand, engagement, health, life satisfaction, safety, and
Richard Layard (2005) recognizes as work-life balance.
determinants of happiness family relationships, Individual papers also deal with determinants
income, work, community and friends, health, of happiness, although most of them, with a more
freedom, and a philosophy of life. specic approach. For example, Chyi and Mao
In a comprehensive study of happiness in (2012) studied the determinants of happiness of
Latin America, Rojas and Martnez (2012) pres- the Chinese elderly. Besides de demographic
ent a series of ideas about subjective well-being variables, they explore factors like living with
and report, among other things, what makes peo- children and grandchildren and being commu-
ple from Latin America happier. Speaking about nist. They concluded that grandchildren generate
life domains, they state: A persons global well- a positive effect on the elderly population in
being can be understood based on his or her China. Malesevic and Golem (2010) investigated
well-being in different aspects of their life. the effect that macroeconomic variables, more
They cite Rojas (2007) who distinguishes seven specically government size, have on the happi-
domains based on a series of questions used to ness of several transition countries. They found
evaluate a persons well-being: living conditions, out that government size, expressed as govern-
work conditions, health, health services, nancial ment expenditures as a percentage of GDP, has a
solvency, income, neighbor relations, safety, positive and signicant effect on happiness on a
public transport, and family relationships, sample of 13 countries.
among others. An interesting project is the one Sanfey and Teksoz (2005), as quoted in
conducted by the International Well-being Group Malesevic and Golem (2010), also looked at the
(IWG 2013). They identify also seven domains macroeconomic variables in order to nd if they
for the construction of The Personal Well-being have an inuence on happiness. They use GDP
Index, which is applied in Australia and a few per capita, ination, unemployment, and the Gini
other countries. The domains considered on this coefcient to test if they are signicant
index are: standard of living, personal health, determinants of happiness. Their results are
achieving in life, personal relationships, personal mixed: ination, GDP per capita, and the Gini
safety, community-connectedness, and future coefcient are signicant; ination has a positive
security. relationship with happiness and employment is
The Canadian Index of Well-being (CIW not signicant. On the other hand, yet another
2013) is another effort that looks to dene a effort among several that try to test macroeco-
well-being construct based on a series of nomic variables as determinants of happiness is
domains. They consider the following aspects to presented by Di Tella et al. (2001), also quoted in
represent well-being: community vitality, demo- Malesevic and Golem (2010). In a sample taken
cratic engagement, education, environment, in 12 European countries they found signicant
healthy population, leisure and culture, living effects on happiness coming from ination and
standards and time use. Another one was done unemployment. Perhaps one of the most interest-
by The Economist in the year of 2005 (EIU ing results when using macroeconomic variables
2005), which suggests the following domains to to test their inuence on happiness is that the
build a quality of life index: health, family life, effect of ination is smaller than the effect com-
community life, material well-being, political ing from unemployment. Considering that ina-
stability and security, climate and geography, tion and unemployment are opposing goals of a
job security, political freedom, and gender equal- government policy, they suggest governments
ity. Finally, there is the Better Life Index just should pay more attention to the latter, if they
developed by the OECD (BLI 2013) which want to minimize the effect on happiness.
466 J.J. Garca Vega
Focusing more on the demographic variables, instruments used to measure well-being. They
we can nd studies like the one presented by Ahn present questions used by the Eurobarometer
and Mochon (2010), who explored the and the Scale with life satisfaction which are
determinants of happiness in Spain. Their results focused on the measurement of life satisfaction,
are similar to those found in previous literature. others used to measure happiness, and the ones
For instance, they found married people to be used to measure affective states, among others.
happier than the divorced and the widowed; Finally, an alternative to represent the quality
unemployed are less happy than employed; hap- of life of a community is the idea of spending the
piness increases with income at a decreasing rate; rest of the life or a given period of time on a
and good health has a positive effect on happi- certain place. For example, a survey of quality of
ness. Another study that focuses on demographic life in New York (NYC 2008) asked the ques-
variables as determinants of happiness is the one tion: In the next 5 years, do you plan to stay in
presented by Ciocchini et al. (2010). Among the New York City or do you plan to move some-
variables tested are income, spirituality, age, where else? Older people and people with no
health, crime, education, and marital status. children, as well as those who rated the quality of
They nd coincidence with other similar studies life of the city as good, were more prone to
in terms of positive relations between happiness remain in New York.
and income, health, relationship with God, and
marital status.
26.3 The Quality of Life Index
for Mexico
26.2.2 Concepts of Well-Being
Looking for new ways to measure progress, sev-
As mentioned before, selecting the variable to eral organizations and countries have initiated
measure well-being is not an easy task. projects that look to use composite indices to
Researchers tend to use happiness, satisfaction include different dimensions of well-being that
with life, well-being, or quality of life as go beyond GDP. As a matter of fact, there is
variables to indicate how much a person is initiative named just like that Beyond GDP
enjoying life or not. As Graham (2011) states, (Beyond GDP 2013) and its aim is to share infor-
when we ask people about his or her well-being, mation more widely on recent developments and
we dont spend time dening the variable to be ongoing work on indicators to assess social, eco-
used, being this happiness or quality of life. We nomic, and environmental progress. One of the
assume people know and have a clear idea of rst worldwide efforts looking for new measures
what we are talking about and dening the con- of progress was the one from the OECD, which
cept may introduce a bias on the response, as in 2004 organized a conference in Palermo that
Graham (2011) says. launched a project named Measuring Progress.
Besides happiness, the concept of quality of Three more conferences followed (Istanbul in
life is widely used to measure well-being. Lora 2007, Busan in 2009, and New Delhi in 2012)
(2008) contends that, even when happiness is a this effort that ended up generating a new tool to
comprehensive evaluation of our lives that measure progress called the Better Life Index
doesnt require other elements, happiness (OECD 2013), whose components have been
shouldnt be used as the goal for public policy. described before.
On the other hand, he considers that objective Years after the effort initiated by the OECD,
measures arent enough to evaluate well-being. the so-called Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Report (2009)
He proposes a measure that combines both, generated a very serious discussion about the
objective and subjective measures, to represent importance of human well-being and its mea-
well-being in a concept called quality of life. surement. This project was started by former
Rojas and Martinez (2012) present a detailed French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who invited
summary of a good number of different Joseph Stiglitz and, with a group of more than
20 other renowned researchers, formed the Com- rst application of the quality of life model.
mission on the Measurement of Economic Per- Mexico is a country that has around 112 million
formance and Social Progress. The report from people, as reported by the 2010 Census. The
this commission was the spark that the move- model was applied in 2008 to a sample of 1200
ment was looking for. After the publication of persons that covered the whole Mexican terri-
this report, several countries started projects tory. The results of this application were
aimed to measure the subjective well-being and published in the INEGI journal in 2011 (Garcia
to consider the generated information as a serious Vega 2010), and later on a book (Garcia Vega
input for the public policy decision making. Per- and Sales 2011).
haps the most notable, given its economy size The state survey was conducted in Colima in
and importance on the world arena, was the 2010, which is a small state located on the Pacic
United Kingdom, where an ofcial happiness Ocean in Central West Mexico. It has a little over
measurement project started in 2010. 650,000 people living there as reported by the
A year before the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Report Mexican Census of 2010. For this survey, the
was published, in May of 2008, the Center for quality of life model was applied to a sample of
Well-being Studies of the University of 1200 persons covering the 10 municipalities.
Monterrey and the Center of Social and Public Although a report with the main results and the
Opinion Studies from the Mexican Congress detailed characteristics of the quality of life of
developed a quality of life (QOL) index for the state of Colima was available, no formal
Mexico. The model was the result of a series of publication was made out of this effort.
discussions among a dozen researchers in The municipal effort to measure quality of life in
Mexico City. The components of this index Mexico was made at the municipal level in San
were dened and later a survey was applied Pedro Garza Garca in the state of Nuevo Leon in
country wide. The QOL Index for Mexico 2011. Being a small city of only around 100,000
(INCAVI) (Garcia Vega 2009) had three habitants, the sample this time was of only
objectives in mind: to provide an alternative for 600 persons, 18 years and older, face to face, and
measuring progress, to enhance democracy by with a random approach very similar to the previous
the validation of the QOL index components, described surveys. Again, no ofcial publication
and to promote accountability by making public was made out of the results of this project either.
the results of the measurement. Monitoring and
making public the results of the INCAVI would
allow everyone to see if we, as a society, were 26.4.2 The Model
progressing and advancing on the right direction;
participation of the citizens on the denition of The QOL Index for Mexico includes seven
the life domains and indicators would enhance domains and, for each domain, a series of
the democratic exercise; and advancing towards indicators that look to represent the quality of
the goals of the society would provide elements life of the citizens. To build the index, the
to evaluate the public function. top-down approach was selected by which the
denition of the domains and indicators was pro-
posed by a group of experts and later, the deni-
26.4 Methodology tion of these elements would be validated by the
citizens in a democratic exercise. This demo-
26.4.1 The Surveys cratic exercise is still to be done. The selected
domains and indicators are shown in the
Three surveys were conducted using a similar Table 26.1:
model that included basic questions to evaluate The concepts used to represent the well-being
the quality of life of different communities. The of the citizens were happiness, quality of life, and
national survey was conducted nationwide as the wishing to spend the rest of the life on the city.
468 J.J. Garca Vega
Table 26.1 Quality of life index domains and indicators

Domain Indicators
Health Perception of own health
Times you have visited the doctor in the last 6 months
Perception of the medical services
Economy How much of your food needs is covered by your earnings
How easy is to get a house (for rent or to own)
How easy is to get an adequate job
Education Schools academic level
Access to a good education for your kids
Access to cultural, sports, and/or leisure events
Security How safe is the community
How many times you have been a crime victim
How capable are the authorities to ght crime
Good government Government honesty
Government efciency
Quality of public services
Community life Weather
Quality of the environment
Quality of non-government services
How easy is to move around the city
Personal well-being Happiness level
Availability of free time
Evaluation of the quality of life of the city
How much would like to spend the rest of the life in the community
How easy is to spend time with family and friends
The rst concept, happiness, is related to an indi- Least Squares) was used to dene the
vidual perception of the evaluation of his/her life, determinants of these three concepts of well-
taken all the things into account. The second one, being. The various indicators that are contained
quality of life, is related to a perception of the on the quality of life domains (health, economy,
well-being of the community, while the third one, education, etc.) were tried as explanatory
wishing to spend the rest of the life in the city, is variables on the three surveys, looking for a
related to a community and a wish to migrate or model that could provide an explanation of the
not given the conditions of the place people live. well-being behavior of the participants on the
Hence, while the three concepts represent a form mentioned surveys. The nal explanatory
of well-being, they are not the same concept and variables that are presented on the Results
asymmetries on the results should be expected. Section are those who performed better in statis-
The exact wording of the questions used is as tical terms. All variables were measured or
follows: converted to a scale of 1 to 10, being 1 the lowest
Happiness: Considering all the aspects of your life, score and 10 the best one and the precise
how happy do you consider yourself? questions used appear at the Appendix.
Quality of life: In general, how would you rate
the quality of life of this community?
Wishing to spend the rest of the life on the city: 26.5 Results
How much do you agree with the following afr-
mation: I would wish to spend the rest of my life
on this city or community? The three studies gave enough information to
conduct an OLS regression analysis looking to
These three variables were used as dependent nd and compare the determinants of happiness
variables and a linear regression model (Ordinary for the population in Mexico, considering the
Table 26.2 Descriptive statistics (means and standard deviations) of the dependent variables
Dependent variables National (2008)a State (2010) Municipal (2011)
Happiness 8.13 (1.34)b 8.52 (1.66) 9.14 (1.04)
Quality of life 7.53 (1.34) 8.17 (1.49) 8.95 (1.14)
Wish I could spend the rest of my life here 7.59 (1.93) 8.60 (2.09) 9.02 (1.51)
a
Year of the survey
b
Standard deviation in parenthesis
Table 26.3 Descriptive statistics (means and standard deviations) of selected explanatory variables
Explanatory variables National (2008)a State (2010) Municipal (2011)
Healths perception 8.03 (1.39)b 7.84 (2.12) 8.93 (1.34)
Easy to nd an adequate medical service 7.19 (1.83) 7.84 (2.61) 8.49 (1.84)
How easy is to cover your familys food needs 6.74 (1.74) 6.30 (2.75) 8.39 (1.66)
Easy to nd an adequate job 5.48 (2.26) 4.14 (3.16) 6.74 (2.48)
Easy to nd an adequate house 6.66 (1.81) 5.63 (3.61) 7.17 (2.48)
Schools academic level 7.23 (1.54) 7.46 (2.15) 8.56 (1.51)
How safe is the community 7.40 (1.70) 6.77 (2.90) 7.57 (1.97)
Evaluation of public services 7.24 (1.42) 8.12 (1.96) 8.44 (1.61)
Quality of the environment 7.57 (1.76) 7.96 (1.88) 8.45 (1.50)
Evaluation of non-public services 7.56 (1.28) 8.20 (1.65) 8.75 (1.36)
Moving around the city 7.54 (1.70) 8.15 (2.21) 8.44 (1.76)
Having time for personal issues 6.39 (2.20) 6.49 (2.90) 8.08 (1.81)
Spending time with friends and family 7.81 (1.52) 8.44 (1.80) 8.88 (1.29)
a
Year of the survey
b
Standard deviation in parenthesis
three different concepts of well-being. As it is Table 26.3 presents the descriptive statistics
common on the studies about happiness, getting of the explanatory variables used on this analysis.
a high explanation of the variability of the degree On the explanatory variables we also nd high
of happiness was not easy. The levels of the R scores on the municipal survey, even on the
squared when analyzing happiness varied from evaluation of the safety of the city. This is espe-
0.13 to 0.23, while those for quality of life were cially surprising at times when the state of Nuevo
on the range of 0.230.40. On the other hand, R Leon was considered one of the most dangerous
squared for the variable wishing to spend the rest places to live in Mexico (US Consulate 2010).
of the life on the city ranged from 0.16 to 0.30. Also, the standard errors are small, denoting a
Table 26.2 shows descriptive statistics (means very uniform opinion from all the participants,
and standard deviations) of the dependent no matter the place they live in or the social class
variables. All the variables were measured on they belong to.
the scale from 1 to 10. First of all, the variable Scores for the explanatory variables at the
happiness shows a high score on the three state and national levels are lower than those at
surveys, which is common on surveys performed the municipal level, and they are mixed: on some
in Mexico for this variable. The score for the of them national results are better and on some
municipal survey (9.14) is remarkable high and others, the state results were better. For instance,
also is the standard error which is lower than in on the economic-related variables (nding a job,
the other two surveys. The scores of the other two a house, or covering food needs) the results for
dependent variables are also higher in the munic- the national survey looked better, while on the
ipal survey and the lowest score appears on the variables related to having time, moving around
national survey. the city or quality of the environment, the state
470 J.J. Garca Vega
Table 26.4 Comparison of the determinants for the variable happiness given the three different levels of government
Variables National State Municipal
Constant 3.119 (0.291) 4.309 (0.328) 4.556 (0.378)
Healths perception 0.184*** (0.027) 0.096*** (0.022) 0.126*** (0.029)
Schools academic level 0.068*** (0.024) 0.053** (0.022)
Quality of the environment 0.096*** (0.022) 0.057** (0.025)
Moving around the city 0.077*** (0.023) 0.051** (0.024)
Spending time with friends and family 0.211*** (0.026) 0.210*** (0.026) 0.138*** (0.031)
Female 0.174*** (0.069)
Family income 0.068*** (0.024)
How easy is to cover your familys food needs 0.044** (0.018)
Having time for personal issues 0.135*** (0.022)
Easy to attend sports events 0.035** (0.015)
Evaluation of public services 0.085** (0.025)
Efciency of the federal public servers 0.049*** (0.019)
Adjusted R Squared 0.23 0.13 0.22
Number of Observations 1131 1194 591
t Statistics in parenthesis
*Signicant at 0.10 level; **Signicant at the 0.05 level; ***Signicant at the 0.01 level
results were better. The one variable that looked and spending time with family and friends. Three
the lowest on the three surveys was how easy is variables are common to two of these levels:
to nd an adequate job with scores of 5.48, 4.14, schools academic level and quality of the envi-
and 6.74 for the national, state, and municipal ronment are common to the national and the state
surveys, respectively. levels. On the other hand, moving around the city
In general, when running OLS regression appears on the models for the national and the
analysis to explain the well-being of the municipal surveys. Being female and family
respondents considering the three levels of gov- income complete the model for the national sur-
ernment, the results for the national survey were vey, while how easy is to cover food needs, how
better than the other two surveys. The levels of easy is to attend sports events, and efciency of
the R squared were 0.23, 0.40 and 0.30 for the the federal public ofcials complete the state
three different models of well-being included on model. The variables of having time for personal
the national survey. For the state survey, the R issues and the evaluation of public services
squared results were 0.13, 0.23 and 0.16 and for appear signicant on the municipal model for
the municipal survey the R squared results were happiness too.
0.22, 0.31 and 0.25. Detailed analyses compar-
ing the results obtained for the three variables
used to describe well-being are presented
26.5.2 Dependent Variable: Quality
below.
of Life
As shown in Table 26.5, when trying to explain

26.5.1 Dependent Variable: Happiness quality of life, we nd more similarities among
the different levels of government than in any of
Table 26.4 presents the results obtained for the the other two variables used to represent peoples
variable happiness at the different levels of gov- well-being.
ernment. As we can see, there are two variables For instance, four variables (quality of the
common to the three levels: perception of health environment, spending time with friends and
Table 26.5 Comparison of the determinants for the variable quality of life given the three different levels of
government
Constant 2.02 (0.219) 3.421 (0.293) 2.584 (0.412)
Enough income to cover food needs 0.066** (0.027)
Schools academic level 0.034* (0.019)
Quality of the environment 0.071*** (0.02) 0.172*** (0.022) 0.165*** (0.029)
Moving around the city 0.112*** (0.021) 0.035* (0.018)
Spending time with friends and family 0.191*** (0.024) 0.177*** (0.023) 0.229*** (0.033)
Evaluation of medical services 0.073*** (0.028)
Family income 0.058 (0.036)
Easy to nd an adequate job 0.028* (0.015) 0.029** (0.013)
How safe is the community 0.164*** (0.022) 0.057*** (0.0149) 0.113*** (0.021)
Having time for personal issues 0045*** (0.015) 0.028** (0.014) 0.050** (0.025)
Evaluation of public services 0.108*** (0.024) 0.091*** (0.021)
Easy to attend entertainment events 0.03* (0.017)
Age 0.005** (0.002)
Academic degree 0.134** (0.065) 0.031** (0.014)
Adjusted R Squared 0.40 0.23 0.31
Number of Observations 1137 1188 577
family, how safe is the community and having This is the dependent variable that used the most
time for personal issues) appear on the three explanatory variables than any other model
levels. Moreover, three other variables are com- totaling 17 on the three levels. Out of those,
mon to the national and the state levels: moving only the quality of the environment was com-
around the city, easy to nd an adequate job, and mon to the three levels of government. Common
evaluation of public services. The academic to the national and the state levels, we nd the
degree of the respondent appears on the models variables of evaluation of public services, age,
applied to the state and municipal levels, and academic degree, while spending time with
although with opposite sign. family and friends and easy to attend cultural
Complete the set of signicant variables for events were common to the national and the
the national level the variable of easy to attend state levels. Only the variable of moving around
entertainment events, while for the state level, the city was common to the state and the munic-
two other variables are included: schools aca- ipal levels.
demic level and family income. Finally, for the To complete the set of explanatory variables
municipal level, the variables of enough income of the national model, we nd how safe is the
to cover food needs, evaluation of medical community and how easy is to get a good medi-
services, and age complete the set of variables cal service. On the other hand, a good number of
used to explain quality of life. variables appear only on the state model: hon-
esty of public ofcials, social class, number of
persons that live in the place, easy to nd an
adequate job or house to live, easy to get an
26.5.3 Dependent Variable: Wishing
adequate education for the children, and the
to Spend the Rest of the Life
evaluation of non-public services. Finally, for
on the City
the municipal model, only the variable ef-
ciency of municipal public ofcials completes
Table 26.6 shows the results of the variable
the set.
wishing to spend the rest of the life on the city.
472 J.J. Garca Vega
Table 26.6 Comparison of the determinants for the variable wishing to spend the rest of their life in the community
given the three different levels of government
Constant 0.703 (0.421) 3.531 (0.48) 2.580 (0.499)
Honesty of public ofcials 0.059*** (0.021)
Quality of the environment 0.108*** (0.033) 0.124*** (0.033) 0.224*** (0.041)
Moving around the city 0.087*** (0.028) 0.081** (0.036)
Spending time with friends and family 0.417*** (0.038) 0.254*** (0.045)
Social class 0.089* (0.052)
Number of persons that live in the place 0.070** (0.033)
Easy to nd an adequate job 0.042** (0.02)
How safe is the community 0.111*** (0.036)
Easy to nd an adequate house 0.039** (0.018)
Easy to get an adequate education 0.059** (0.024)
Evaluation of public services 0.103*** (0.041) 0.091*** (0.031)
Easy to get a good medical service 0.084*** (0.029)
Easy to attend cultural events 0.094*** (0.029) 0.102*** (0.034)
Age 0.166*** (0.041) 0.245*** (0.046)
Efciency of municipal public ofcials 0.104*** (0.028)
Evaluation of non-public services 0.114*** (0.039)
Academic degree 0.302*** (0.085) 0.192* (0.098)
Adjusted R squared 0.30 0.16 0.25
Number of observations 1092 1190 560
the city, and nding time for personal issues are

26.6 Discussion evaluated the lowest. Perception of health, qual-
ity of the environment, and spending time with
The results of three different surveys aimed to friends and family are the aspects that obtained
evaluate the well-being of Mexicans of different the highest scores. In some way, these facts
levels of government were presented on the pre- reect that Mexicans are affected more by exter-
vious section. On the descriptive statistics sec- nal factors than their own perception of the dif-
tion, we can see that the results related to well- ferent aspects that affect their happiness and
being are higher at the municipal level. Although quality of life.
surprisingly high, the results are expected since Results for the different surveys give us some
the municipality chosen for this study is insights of what we can say about the
recognized by the level of good governance, its determinants of well-being. First of all, it is com-
per capita income, and the tradition of being a mon to see that only a few variables affect the
city that works hard for the quality of life of its same well-being concept. For instance, one
citizens. The results of the state of Colima are would expect schools academic level would be
also good and better than the results at the important to evaluate the quality of life of a place
national level. Colima also has been famous for or could be an important issue to wish to spend
its standard of living and the conviction of build- the rest of their life on a community, but that was
ing a nice place to live. the case of only one result: quality of life at the
With the exception of the municipal survey, state level. Other variables that could be used to
among the explanatory variables used to under- evaluate the quality of life or the desire to spend
stand the well-being of the Mexicans the eco- the rest of the life in the community are the
nomic aspects (nding a job, covering food evaluation of public services and the possibility
needs, nding an adequate house), the safety of
of nding an adequate job or a house, but it was services, and so on) was neither a variable that
not the case for the municipal level. helped much to explain the behavior of
On the other hand, there are variables that Mexicans well-being either.
appear on almost all the cases. For example,
quality of the environment resulted signicant
for the all the models at all the levels except for 26.7 Conclusions
the model of happiness at the municipal level.
Spending time with friends and family also We have several choices to evaluate peoples
appears to be a great explanatory variable being well-being in terms of the different elements
signicant in all the models with the only excep- that exert an inuence on this concept. However,
tion of the model of wishing to spend the rest of as it was showed on this article, different
the life on the city at the state level. Moving concepts related to well-being will bring differ-
around the city is signicant on six out of nine ent results. Three different surveys containing a
cases, while evaluation of public services is sig- set of basic questions were analyzed looking to
nicant on ve out of nine models. nd common variables that could help us to
As it is in the case of other studies, health explain the well-being of Mexicans.
perception is signicant to explain the concept Happiness is high in Mexico no matter what
of happiness, while in the case of quality of life, level of geographic dimension we use. In three
having time for personal issues is also signicant different years and at three different levels of
on the three levels of government. In contrast, government, the scores obtained for the Mexican
family incomes as well as other demographic happiness compare well with the happiest
variables are not very good predictors of the countries in the world. Even when the conditions
measures of well-being used on this study, with of insecurity have changed for the bad in recent
a small exception for age, which appears signi- years, Mexicans nd a way to be happy and enjoy
cant in the model for quality of life at the munic- the life. The scores for the other variables used to
ipal level and also in the model for wishing to evaluate well-being, quality of life and the wish
spend the rest of the life on the city at the national to spend the rest of the life on the place they live,
and state levels, always with a positive resulted high as well.
relationship. The results derived from three different
A result that appears interesting is the rela- surveys show that explanatory variables for
tionship between academic degree and the wish Mexicans well-being are different when consid-
to spend the rest of the life on the community. ering different concepts related to well-being, as
This variable appears signicant on the national it was expected. Only a few variables are com-
and the state levels with a negative sign, meaning mon to the cases presented and several others are
the higher the academic degree, the least likely specic to only a well-being model or a level of
the person would like to spend the rest of his life government. As previous studies show, health
on the community. This variable (academic perception is a good predictor of happiness and
degree) is also signicant on the model for qual- spending time with friends and family and per-
ity of life at the state and the municipal levels, ceiving a good environment also help to explain
although the sign is the opposite: negative for the peoples well-being in general. In contrast,
state level and positive for the municipal level. demographic variables and other variables
The possibilities to attend sports, cultural, related to material aspects (job, housing,
and/or entertainment events are not very good income), quality of public services, or public
predictors to explain the well-being of the ofcials efciency were not good determinants
Mexicans that participated on these three surveys of well-being.
as are the cases of efciency and efcacy of Even when theory suggests that there exist
public ofcials. Evaluation of non-public common elements that help us to understand
services (banking, supermarkets, church well-being, these results show that we need to
474 J.J. Garca Vega
be aware of the characteristics of the sample we Explanatory variable Corresponding question

wish to evaluate and the concept used to repre- Evaluation of public How would you rate the
sent well-being. By analyzing the variables that services quality of public services on
affect different proxies for well-being, it is clear your community?
that quality of life is not a close proxy for Quality of the How would you rate the
environment quality of the environment?
happiness.
Evaluation of How would you rate the
Finally, if we only use the traditional standard non-public services quality of the non-public
variables to explain well-being behavior, we services on your
might miss other variables that are particular to community?
specic groups of population. We need to dene Moving around the city How easy is for you to move
around the city?
precisely what we want to evaluate to be able to
Having time for How much time do you have
choose among the different concepts we have personal issues to devote to personal issues
available for well-being evaluation. That is like exercising, studying,
why, advanced projects like the one developed etc.?
in Jacksonville, Fla. in the US (JCCI 2013b), Spending time with How easy is for you to spend
friends and family time with family and friends?
consider and promote populations participation
to dene the key aspects that affect their well-
being. Besides the advantages that bring this
action as a democratic exercise, the results
Bibliography
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policy efforts can be directed more specically to Espanoles: Factores Explicativos. Revista de
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Part V
Health and Happiness in Latin America
The Determinants of Mental Health:
Empirical Evidence from Chile 27
Ramon Florenzano and Francisca Dussaillant
27.1 Introduction happiness and well-being in development with a

view to guiding their public policies.
The question about the relationship between sub- In health, the co-existence of medical and psy-
jective well-being and health status has been put chiatric syndromes is frequent, fact that has
since antiquity. The interaction between how we important consequences in the planning of
feel mentally and our bodily functioning is national health systems. The old psychosomatic
reected in the Roman dictum Mens sana in medicine of the rst part of the twentieth century
corpore sano. Both relate to our life satisfac- has been replaced by epidemiological studies that
tion. Sigmund Freud dened mental health as the show that patients with chronic medical disease
ability to love and work, and Carl Rogers frequently present also mental health problems.
complemented it adding and play. Human In the same way, psychiatric patients or those
progress has provided for basic human needs at who abuse substances have more serious physi-
least for a part of mankind, but after those are cal health problems. Risk factors for both sets of
supplied, psychosocial growth and extramaterial problems are similar. We are a psychophysical
needs are to be met. A balanced psychosocial unit, which explains the previous assertion
development entails not only physical, but spiri- conceptually, but in practice we tend to separate
tual well-being. Big ideals and projects have the physical and the psychological realities.
been traditionally presented by religions, politi- The intertwining of physical and mental health
cal or cultural utopias. Currently, the debate on is complex, and is reected in the inuence of
well being is becoming increasingly relevant in thought processes, emotions and behaviors in the
public policy. Fundamental in these body, as well as in the impact of corporal changes
developments is the United Nations General in subjective well-being. Psychiatric symptoms
Assembly (2011) that invited countries to pur- can precede the onset of several cancers, and
sue the elaboration of additional measures that depression has an inuence in the severity of a
better capture the importance of the pursuit of myocardial infarction. The World Health Organi-
zation (2008) has signaled how depressive or anx-
ious mood can trigger a chain of adverse events in
R. Florenzano (*)
School of Psychology, Universidad del Desarrollo, the endocrine and immune systems, increasing the
Concepcion, Chile susceptibility to different physical conditions. The
e-mail: rorenzano@gmail.com increase of psychosocial stress increases the fre-
F. Dussaillant quency of common cold, and delays the wound-
School of Government, Universidad del Desarrollo, healing process. Mental disorders in general
Concepcion, Chile

480 R. Florenzano and F. Dussaillant
increase tobacco consumption, and depression health is negative: the absence of symptoms
decreases the compliance with medical implies being sane. The American Psychiatric
prescriptions. Many of the new drugs that are Association, in parallel with the World Health
used in schizophrenia increase the risk of meta- Organization, are continually updating its classi-
bolic syndrome and diabetes. A study in the catory systems, and are working now in the new
United Kingdom (Patel et al. 2007) demonstrated edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
that mental patients receive less medical follow- of Mental Disorders (DSM5) One of the diagnos-
ups and evidence based treatments. Therefore, tic axis of the present version (DSM V) has a
people with mental disorders have higher scale that measures individual functioning. The
frequencies of chronic medical conditions such Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) was
as diabetes, heart and respiratory diseases, and of initially developed by Luborsky and Luborsky
cancer and overall mortality. The WHO recom- (2006) and assesses the functioning of the
mendation is to follow closely the physical health individuals in terms of meeting its basic bodily
of patients with mental disorders. needs, interpersonal relationships, development
The dichotomy between biomedical health of gainful employment, and lead a satisfactory
and mental health is an artifact of Western medi- life. Another close approach has been the mea-
cine: in the case of Latin America, in most of the surement of psychological tension (stress) and
originary cultures previous to the arrival of several scales have been designed that are
Cristopher Columbus there was no a separation correlated not only with psychological symptoms
of both areas. In the case of Chile, the Mapuche but with medical pathologies: the higher the
people do not see a separation between mind and stress the greater the diagnosis of physical
body, nor between spiritual and material diseases. The opposite concept has also been
elements of the world: the inner and the outer developed: eustress represents the right amount
worldviews are not compartmentalized as the of vital tension that helps to develop a plentiful
ofcial Chilean health system and physicians and active life. In the last decade there has been a
do. The traditional healer (Machi) will take care growing emphasis in the positive side of those
of all ailments that the different groups of measurements: quality of life, positive psychol-
Mapuches (Chonos, Huilliches and Tehuelches). ogy, subjective well-being are all terms that have
The healing ceremonies intend to restore the been related to happiness. Well-being would rep-
contact of the ailing person with Mother Earth, resent a basic and general subjective dimension,
what is done with invocations to spiritual beings with two different aspects. One is related to the
that protect him. The Chilean health system has affective and emotional (related to mood states)
only recently recognized the helpfulness of these and other centered in the cognitive and evalua-
resources, opening an alternative medicine clinic tive facets (referring to the satisfaction of the
together with the primary care ambulatory subject with his or her own life). In Argentina,
centers close to Mapuche dwellings, in Casullo et al. (2002) has added a third dimension,
Araucania and Chiloe, two of the Chilean regions the vincular (or connectedness), that relates to
where this population group concentrates. the capacity of bonding with others.
This paper reviews several indicators of men- Diener et al. (1995), Diener and Suh 1997) in
tal and physical health, and presents data about Illinois measured transculturally life satisfaction,
their interrelation using population data in Chile. collection data in 39 countries. They concluded
that autonomy is positively correlated with sub-
jective well-being in individualistic nations
27.2 Indicators of Social Progress (USA, Australia, Germany and Finland), but not
and Health in collectivistic ones (China, Colombia, Pakistan,
South Korea, Peru, Ghana, Tanzania, Bahrain,
In a review about mental health indicators Singapore, Turkey and Japan). The orientation
(Florenzano and Dussaillant 2010), we to others is not associated with life satisfaction
commented how the usual denition of mental in most individualistic nations, but there is a
27 The Determinants of Mental Health: Empirical Evidence from Chile 481
positive correlation with happiness in collectiv- translated and adapted to be used internationally
istic ones. Competition is negatively correlated as the Quality of Life Assessment (IQOLA). It is
with life satisfaction in Norway and Finland, and used on the general population as well as
conformity is positively correlated in Colombia, patients, in descriptive and evaluation studies.
Spain and Hungary. The concept of happiness or The SF-36 survey is widely used to evaluate
subjective well-being therefore seems to vary in quality of life related to health (CVRS) at a
different cultures. global level, in different populations and in spe-
Among hispanic countries there are several cic subgroups with various diseases, detecting
studies about those subjects: Avia in Spain, the health benets produced by a wide range of
Alarcon (2009) in Peru, Cuadra and Florenzano treatments, as well as the assessment of the state
(2003) in Argentina as well as our studies in of health of individual patients. The survey
Chile. Casullo surveyed 1270 students in Buenos consists of 36 questions (items) which detect
Aires, Tucuman and in the Argentinian positive and negative states of health. It was
Patagonia, nding a high correlation between developed by way of an extensive battery of
subjective well-being and mental health questions including 40 concepts related with
measured with the SCL 90 R (DeRogatis). She health. To make it efcient, the minimum num-
replicated those ndings in other countries (Peru, ber of concepts needed to maintain the validity
Cuba, and Spain). and operational characteristics of the initial test
Velarde and Figueroa (2002) in Mexico have were selected. The nal survey covers eight of
focused in the progressive relevance of the con- the most important and broadly used concepts or
cept of quality of life, given the World Health dimensions of health, centering its content on
Organization denition of health as the state of functional state and emotional well-being. The
complete state of physical, mental and social Functional State is represented by two
well-being. They discuss how the concept went dimensions: Physical function (ten items),
from a conceptual denition towards the objec- social function (two items), role limitations
tive measurement of several dimensions that caused by physical problems (four items), role
conform the state of health. Today this is limitations caused by emotional problems (three
evaluated beyond the persons physical condi- items). Emotional Well-being includes the fol-
tion, including mental and social health. Among lowing dimensions: Mental health (ve items),
the instruments that measure quality of life we vitality (four items), bodily pain (two items).
can mention the WHOQOL, developed by a Finally, the General Health evaluation includes
WHO working party, centered in the quality of the dimension of Perception of General Health
life dened as the perception of the individual (ve items) and the change of health over time
about his position in life within the cultural (one item) which does not form part of the nal
context and the value system with respect to punctuation.
goals, expectations, norms and precautions. Other scales measure satisfaction with family
WHOQOL was developed in 15 countries, and life. In Argentina Kornblit et al. (1986) linked
has two versions: WHOQOL-100 and psychosocial risk and family vulnerability in
WHOQOL-BREF. The last one has 26 questions population samples (n 150) in San Martn de
one for each 1 of 24 facets of the WHOQOL- los Andes, a semi-rural area, and in urban Buenos
100, plus two global questions about general Aires. In Baha, Brasil, De Almeida Filho
quality of life and overall health. Its items et al. (1985) correlated parental and lial mental
have ve options of answers in a Likert type health in a representative sample of adults and
scale, and produce a prole of four areas: phys- 829 children in a low income area. They
ical, psychological, social relationships and employed QMPA (Cuestionario de Morbilidad
environmental. Another questionnaire, SF-36 Psiquiatrica de Adultos) and QMPI (Cuestionario
Health Survey (Medical Outcome Study de Morbilidad Psiquiatrica Infantil). Their results
MOS, Ware y Sherbourne 1992), was showed that the parental (father and mother)
mental health scores, family size and children University of Oxford, with the contribution of
age were the statistically signicant variables the Micro-Data Center of the University of
that predicted children mental health. In Chile, Chile. The sample of homes selected for the
Maddaleno et al. (1987) validated a perception survey is representative of Chilean households
of family functioning scale by Smilkstein, the at national and regional levels. The survey gave
Family APGAR. This screening test was preference to the heads of the selected
administered and a signicant correlation between households and their spouses, although on rare
a negative perception of family functioning and occasions (46 of the 2,052 surveyed households)
relationship problems was found. They also report the interviewee has a different role or position
a correlation between alcohol intake by fathers, (son/daughter, father/mother, brother/sister of
and mental health problems in children. Also in the head of household, etc.) Even though many
Chile, two other family functioning of the questions were answered only by the main
questionnaires, CTF y CSF (Como es Tu Familia interviewee, there is sufcient information of the
and Como es Su Familia), have been used by family group, including income, education, mar-
Valdes et al. (1997). These questionnaires were ital state and age of each member, among others.
prepared in a study developed in the 1990s at the However, only the main interviewees answered
Faculty of Medicine of the University of Chile, questions associated with well-being and there-
with the sponsorship of FONDECYT (see Appen fore the main analysis only includes them.
dix), the Pan-American Health Organization and 51.8 % of the main interviewees were women,
the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. They consist on with ages ranging from 19 to 93 years of age
two family measurement instruments, the rst (with an average of 47.6).
corresponding to a long version for research, and The analysis estimates the correlation
the second to a short one to use by clinical between psychological difculties and physical
practitioners with a special focus on primary disabilities (long term problems such as blind-
care and health. The abbreviated version was a ness, deafness, mutism, motor problems, etc.)
brief and easily applicable screening instrument and factors that predispose to somatic health
that could be interpreted obtain an estimate of the problems. A probit model was tted where the
risk which was statistically associated to deter- dependent (binary) variable indicates whether
mined perceptions of family functioning. The the subject reports psychological or psychiatric
criteria for item inclusion in the brief instrument difculties. Gender, age, education and geo-
were established by way of a factorial analysis graphical location were controlled for.
carried out on the variables of the initial model Table 27.1 shows a correlation between phys-
(What Your-Their Family is Like original ver- ical and mental health. Estimated marginal
sion). From the factors analyzed were considered effects indicate that someone with a physical
only those that better explained the variation in disability has higher probability of suffering a
outcomes. These factors were Communication- psychical ailment than those without physical
Cohesion, Roles-Rituals, Flexibility and disabilities (the difference amounts to two per-
Order-Hierarchy. cent points). On the other hand, those reporting
very bad physical health have a probability of
having psychic problems that is 3.75 points
27.3 Correlation Between Physical higher than that of those who report very good
and Mental Health health. Also, individuals reporting bad health
have 2.9 percentual points more probability of
In what follows we show a quantitative analysis having psychic problems than those who report
of the determinants of mental health, using sev- very good health. These effects are considerable
eral Chilean databases. Our rst exercise relies if we take into account that the average fre-
on data collected for the Oxford Poverty and quency of emotional problems reported in this
Human Development Initiative project of the sample is 1.12 %. Increasing the probability in
Table 27.1 Probit with dependent variable Has Psychological or Psychiatric Difficulties in OPHI Chile database,
N 1892, 2006
Coefcient (std. err) Marginal effect
Physical disability 0.707 0.019***
(0.19)
Health (reference: very good)
Good health 0.402 0.005
(0.34)
Average 0.666 0.011**
(0.32)
Bad 1.048 0.029***
(0.36)
Very bad 1.165 0.038***
(0.43)
***(p<0.01); **(p<0.05); *(p<0.1)
Table 27.2 CNAP plus data descriptives (N 2287)

Mean Std. dev. Min Max
Depression (Achenbach scale) 2.188 2.25 0 10
Disease or accident in someone in the family (never) 0.218 0.10 0 1
Life time prevalence 0.579 0.49 0 1
Last 6 months prevalence 0.203 0.40 0 1
Friends smoke tobacco (every day) 0.136 0.34 0 1
Friends drink alcohol (more than once a week) 0.075 0.26 0 1
Friends smoke marihuana (once a week or more) 0.107 0.31 0 1
Hard drugs (once a week or more) 0.034 0.18 0 1
two or three percentual points implies to dou- (that can be obtained from the questionnaire).
bling or tripling it. Our independent variables include whether
In the next analysis we used data gathered there is someone in the family who had a disease
using the CNAP Plus questionnaire, a tool that or accident (indicating deciencies in physical
explores the characteristics of adolescents and health in the family), and whether the
their families. Data was collected using a interviewees friends had consumed tobacco,
tri-stage sampling in 27 schools selected from alcohol, marihuana or hard drugs,1 expressed as
the Chilean national listing kept by the Ministry binary variables. We controlled by sex, age,
of Education. It was applied anonymously to socio-economic status and exogenous events2
2346 students between 2007 and 2009. We used that could have affected the persons affective
the adaptation in Spanish (CNAP Plus) of the state over and above physical injury in the family
CNAP scale developed in a transcultural study or substance abuse. We also included
by Barber et al. between 1999 and 2004. An interactions among the substance-use variables.
exploratory regression analysis was performed We estimated two models: model 1 controls by
in order to nd correlations between the students
individual scores and several variables related to
1
physical and mental health. Tobacco, alcohol, Given that normally students lie about own consump-
tion, reports on friends consumption, which are more
marihuana and hard drugs were also taken into
reliable, are commonly used as a proxy.
account. Table 27.2 presents the main description 2
The questionnaire asked for divorces, deaths, births,
of the data. moves, unemployment, parental ghts, new stepmother/
The dependent variable used in the analysis is stepfather, mother or father in jail, mother or father into
the score in the Achenbachs Depression scale unemployment in the last 6 months and over their
lifetime.
Table 27.3 Relationship between depression drugs among Chilean Adolescents (CNAP-Plus question-
(Achenbachs scale), antecedents of accident or disease naire study, 20072009)
and consumption of tobacco, alcohol, marihuana and hard
Disease or accident in someone in the family Model 1 Model 2
Life time prevalence 0.296** 0.242*
(0.14) (0.14)
Last 6 months prevalence 0.681*** 0.512***
(0.13) (0.13)
Friends smoke tobacco (every day) 0.621*** 0.512***
(0.19) (0.16)
Friends drink alcohol (more than once a week) 0.061 0.044
(0.24) (0.24)
Friends smoke marihuana (once a week or more) 0.628** 0.570**
(0.30) (0.29)
Hard Drugs (once a week or more) 1.083** 1.071**
(0.50) (0.48)
*(p<0.1); **(p<0.05); ***(p<0.001)
sex, age and socioeconomic status while model Achenbach depression scale has a mean of 2.19
2 includes the rest of the exogenous events. The points and a standard deviation of 2.25, with the
estimated R2 for the model 1 is 0.062 while that minimum at 0 and the maximum at 10. There-
for model 2 is 0.139. Table 27.3 shows the mar- fore, an increase of 0.5 points in the scale
ginal effects obtained in both models for the corresponds to an increase of more than 20% of
disease or accident variable and for the substance a standard deviation.
abuse variables. Our nal analysis uses data from a survey
Results presented in Table 27.3 indicate that with special focus on subjective well-being that
there is a signicant correlation between the was gathered in 2011 by UNDP-Chile in order to
presence of a health related problem in the family inform the 2013 Chilean Human Development
of the student and his depression score. The cor- Report. Historically, the different Chilean
relation is more important when the accident or Human Development Reports have tried to dig
decease is recent. Those who report a health out on knowledge of different issues of high
related event in the family have more than 0.5 relevance to the understanding of Chilean soci-
more points in the Achenbach scale scores than ety. For example, the 2010 report versed on gen-
those who report not having had one. When the der issues, the 2008 report on rurality and the
medical event is not recent, the relationship with 2013 report on subjective well-being. The speci-
the students Achenbach score is halved, but it city of the themes of the Report makes it possi-
remains signicant. ble to perform surveys that ask very detailed
With regards to substance abuse, we found questions on the issues at hand. The subjective
some interesting correlations mainly for those well-being survey is not an exception.
cases with frequent consumption. Those whose Using the UNDP-Chile well-being survey we
friends use tobacco daily have more than 0.5 performed several exercises, selecting a group of
extra points in the depression scale than those questions available in the survey that are very
that consume tobacco less frequently. Alcohol is useful for our purposes. In one of these, the
not signicantly related to depression after interviewees are asked to rate their health, in
controlling by age, sex and socioeconomic status, general terms, as very good, good, regular, bad
but marihuana and hard drugs do show signi- o very bad. Their answer is used as a measure of
cant correlations for frequent users (once a week subjective health status. They are also asked to
or more). The size of the effects is quite signi- report if they had had a physical disease or prob-
cant given that the empirical distribution of the lem that had limited their normal activity for
more than 10 days, in the last 12 months. We Table 27.4 Subjective and objective health as a predic-
used the answer to this question as a measure of tor of depressive symptomsa (Depression Index)
physical health. Another question of interest is Model 1 Model 2 Model 3
one in which respondents were asked if they were Subjective health (ref: very bad)
following a pharmacological o psychological Bad 1.296 1.100
treatment of depression, anxiety or other mental (0.97) (0.96)
health problem. Finally, we used a ve question Regular 3.815*** 3.386***
(0.91) (0.907)
depressive symptom battery to build a depressive
Good 6.256*** 5.608***
symptom index. To do so, we added their
(0.92) (0.92)
answers to each 5-point Likert item, and obtained Very good 6.756*** 6.039***
an index ranging from 5 to 25, where 25 is the (0.94) (0.94)
highest symptomatology. Had a physical health issueb
With this data we performed four different No event 2.274*** 1.299***
analyses. First, we regressed the individual (0.22) (0.21)
scores on the index of depression on the subjec- Adj. R2 0.24 0.16 0.25
tive and objective measures of health. Then, we a
Standard errors between parentheses. *p < 0.1;
did the same but using each of the ve depressive **p < 0.05; ***p < 0.01; N 2506
b
symptom questions as the dependent variable. In the last 12 months. The problem must have limited
normal activity for more than 10 days
We then estimated a Probit model where the
dependent variable indicates whether the respon-
dent is currently being treated for a mental health similar results (see Table 27.5, where we only
issue (either pharmacologically or through psy- report the results for the complete model, that is,
chological therapy). And we nally performed an the model that includes both subjective and
ordered probit analysis to search for objective health among the covariates).
nonlinearities of the relationship between health We see from the Table 27.5 that every symp-
and depressive symptoms. As controls we always tom studied is related to health, and the size and
used age, sex, marital status and whether the signicance of the coefcients is similar
respondent had children, geographical region, irrespective of the question being asked. Pairwise
zone (urban vs. rural), and socioeconomic status. comparisons of the coefcients show almost no
The next tables show the results of our esti- signicant differences. Nevertheless, examining
mation. Only the coefcients for subjective and correlations between the answers to the specic
objective health are displayed. questions, they typically ranged between 0 and
The Table 27.4 shows that a good or very 0.3. This result somehow validates the use of the
good perceived health is signicantly related to questions in the construction of the index, and the
our index of depressive symptoms. The differ- use of the index as a measure that summarizes the
ence between those who report very bad and bad information contained in the questions.
health with those reporting it being good and Next, we estimated a probit model with
very good is sizable, sometimes exceeding one dependent variable mental health treatment,
standard deviation of our depressive symptom indicating whether the respondent is currently
index (4.6 points). Having had a physical health being treated for a mental health issue. Results
issue is also signicantly related with depressive are shown in Table 27.6.
symptoms, with a smaller coefcient. Those who Table 27.6 shows that, regardless of the
did not report a health event in the last 12 months, model, the persons perception of health is nega-
impairing their normal activity for more than tively related to her chance of being under a
10 days, have a smaller score on the depression mental health treatment. Individuals reporting
index. good health have between 14 and 20 percentage
If we disaggregate the results by question of points less probability of being under treatment
the depressive symptom questionnaire we nd than people reporting very bad health. Moreover,
Table 27.5 Subjective and objective health as a predictor of depressive symptomsa (symptom by symptom)
Difculty Lack of desire to do Trouble with decision Feelings of Lack of self
sleeping things making helplessness assurance
Subjective health (ref: very bad)
Bad 0.272 0.114 0.321 0.249 0.145
(0.23) (0.22) (0.23) (0.22) (0.24)
Regular 0.635*** 0.493*** 0.799*** 0.726*** 0.732***
(0.22) (0.21) (0.22) (0.21) (0.23)
Good 1.094*** 1.014*** 1.136*** 1.191*** 1.174***
(0.22) (0.21) (0.22) (0.21) (0.23)
Very 1.180*** 1.113*** 1.237*** 1.275*** 1.235***
good (0.23) (0.22) (0.23) (0.22) (0.24)
Had a physical health issueb
No 0.378 0.270 0.208 0.261 0.184
event (0.07) (0.05) (0.06) (0.06) (0.06)
Adj. R2 0.15 0.18 0.13 0.18 0.16
Standard errors between parentheses. *p < 0.1; **p < 0.05; ***p < 0.01; N 2506
a
b
In the last 12 months. The problem must have limited normal activity for more than 10 days
Table 27.6 Physical and subjective health as a predictor high symptomatology. We estimated an ordered
of being under mental health treatment probit of this variable on perceived and physical
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 health, using the same controls as in the previous
Subjective health (ref: very bad) analyses. This allows us to estimate marginal
Bad 0.101 0.074 effects that are different for the different groups,
(0.07) (0.06) as Table 27.7 shows.
Regular 0.162** 0.113* From Table 27.7 we conclude that subjective
(0.07) (0.06) health is highly related to very low mental symp-
Good 0.202*** 0.138** tomatology. There, we see a clear gradient that
(0.07) (0.06) indicates that the higher the perceived health, the
Very good 0.271*** 0.210***
higher the probability of low mental symptom-
(0.07) (0.07)
atology. Someone with very good health has
more than 51 percentage points more probability
No event 0.116*** 0.091***
(0.02) (0.02)
of reporting low mental symptomatology than
someone with very bad subjective health. On
Marginal effects, standard errors between parentheses.
*p < 0.1; **p < 0.05; ***p < 0.01, N 2506 the other hand high and very high depressive
a
In the last 12 months. The problem must have limited symptomatology is predicted by subjective
normal activity for more than 10 days health, but the gradient we observe is much
smaller. In this case, the difference in probability
those with very good health have between 21 and of high depressive symptomatology amounts to
27 percentage points less. Physical health is also 20 percentage points (if we compare someone
related in a signicant amount with the probabil- with very good health to someone with very
ity of being under psychological o psychiatric bad health). Therefore, we observe that our linear
care. The size of the effect is smaller, but still analysis was hiding an important nonlinearity of
amounts to about ten percentage points. the relationship between depressive symptom-
Finally, in our search to better understand the atology and health. In our case, we observe that
relation between subjective and objective physi- the health gradient is closely related to low
cal health and depression, we allowed for a non- symptomatology, whereas its importance is less
linear model. We divided the depression index in the prediction of high depressive symptom-
into four levels: very low, low, high and very atology. Also, but in a lower degree, having had
Table 27.7 Health as a predictor of depressive sypthomatologya. Results of an ordered probit

Very low sympth. Low sympth. High sympth. Very high sympth.
Subjective health (ref: very bad)
Bad 0.071* 0.071 0.054** 0.088
(0.04) (0.05) (0.03) (0.06)
Regular 0.238*** 0.104** 0.175*** 0.167***
(0.03) (0.05) (0.02) (0.06)
Good 0.450*** 0.031 0.282*** 0.199***
(0.04) (0.05) (0.03) (0.06)
Very good 0.514*** 0.005 0.306*** 0.203***
(0.04) (0.05) (0.03) (0.06)
No event 0.098*** 0.025*** 0.051*** 0.023***
(0.02) (0.00) (0.01) (0.01)
Adj. R2 0.15 0.18 0.13 0.18
Marginal effects. Standard errors between parentheses. *p < 0.1; **p < 0.05; ***p < 0.01; N 2506
a
b
In the last 12 months. The problem must have limited normal activity for more than 10 days
no physical health event in the last 12 months is a questionnaire, we found that prevalence of dis-
better predictor of very low symptomatology, but ease (or accidents) in the family is related to a
adds much less to the prediction of the low, high higher the score in Achenbachs depression scale
and very high symptoms. among Chilean adolescents. The same correla-
tion appears for alcohol and substance abuse
consumption. Finally, using recent data from
27.4 Conclusions the UNDP-Chile survey, we nd a high correla-
tion between physical health and depressive
The correlation between physical and mental symptomatology. We also note that the correla-
health is a growing concern for academician tion is nonlinear, with very low depressive symp-
and health planners. The unitary nature of the tomatology being strongly related to very good
human being is recognized by the ancestral wis- health but much less evident when relating high
dom of the native peoples in the Americas, and is mental symptomatology with poor health. Using
key in the worldview presented by Aristotle in this same data we also found that there is a
the Golden Age of Athens. The alternative idea correlation between bad physical health and
of a separation of mind and body, has been being under psychological or psychiatric treat-
motive of intense philosophical debate over ment. With this kind of transversal designs, we
many centuries, but permeates our present day cannot predicate causality, but we can report that
classicatory systems. This paper reviews there is a strong statistical correlation that
aspects of measurement of the objective and sub- appears in different studies.
jective aspects of mental and physical well- Our results can be used in the development of
being, and its relationship with contextual public policies and illustrate the need to move
elements, such as families, communities and into a positive and integrated approach to health
nations. We present some empirical evidence in problems, developing joint programs that pro-
Latin America, with focus on Chilean data. In mote both physical and emotional health. The
three population databases, we nd a correlation stigma attached to mental disorders makes their
between physical disabilities and health at the detection slow. The request for psychological or
individual and family level. Using OPHI data, psychiatric help comes too often too late. A con-
we nd a clear gradient: the worse the physical clusion of these results seems to reinforce the
health, the worse the psychological one. In the importance of continuing the development of
case of adolescents, using the CNAP-Plus efforts to train physicians and general health
teams in the early detection and basic manage- Diener, E., Diener, M., & Diener, C. (1995). Factors
ment of emotional conditions. Also, our results predicting the subjective well-being of nations. Jour-
nal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69,
appear to add to the increasing evidence of the 653663.
importance to address the psychosocial Diener, E., & Suh, E. (1997). Measuting quaility of life:
components of chronic biomedical conditions, Economic, social and subjective indicators. Social
where health behaviors such as compliance with Indicators Research, 40, 189216.
Diener, E., Suh, E., Lucas, E., & Smith, L. (1999). Sub-
prescribed treatments is crucial. Research into jective well-being. Three decades of progress. Psycho-
the prevalence of medical and psychiatric logical Bulletin, 125(2), 276302.
comorbidities is another priority that emerges of Florenzano, R. & Dussaillant, F. (2010). Felicidad, Salud
the above data, as well as in designing and Mental y Vida Familiar. La Medici on del Progreso y
del Bienestar: Propuestas desde America Latina
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Pain, Emotions, and Social-Well-Being
in Mexico 28
Benjamn Domnguez Trejo, Gerardo Montero Ruvalcaba
pez Lena
Palacios, and Mara Lo
28.1 Introduction conditions like chronic poorness (Montero and

Evans 2010a), chronic pain, stress and/or illness,
There is agreement that for most of those living at (Ruvalcaba and Domnguez 2011; Viner
high income countries (HICs), physical surviving et al. 2011) and lack or lost of social and affective
has become a solved episode. Current growing nets (Eisenberger et al. 2003; Turner-Cobb
population, climate change, and non- et al. 2004). Which can explain why most of people
communicable illness together with multi-task (near 70 % of general population) surprisingly
stress embedded with digital advances has become become well adapted to whatever stressor they
their daily social concerns indeed replacing the confront along their life; returning to a path of
physical survival challenges that matter for those normality in matter of months (Bonanno 2009).
living at low and middle income countries However, there is an important percentage of peo-
(LMICs). It is a growing understanding too that a ple (around 1525 %) who needs aid, support and
large amount of contemporary social problems, in attention (Bonanno and Mancini 2008) mainly
particular those linked to well-being, quality of life, because their psychophysiological proclivity to
happiness and health issues, comes from a lack of suffer, or because their genetic vulnerability and
skills to perform some degree of self-Initiated con- even because their environmental circumstances
trol over emotions, thoughts and behaviors and consequences move them to vulnerable states.
(Muraven et al. 1998). It is part of the natural Early at twentieth century, Freud (1917) noted
adaptive-learning process to perform some the aforementioned and wrote about the necessity
mistakes when people trying to cope with these of a grief work in order to help people to recover
challenges, although we had have acknowledged from the decease of a loved one, the decrease of
that most individuals have outstanding skills to health, and other signicant losses. His century-
cope with this threats even under extreme adverse old approach conceptualized the psyche as a kind
of plumbing system for channeling subliminal life
forces. However evidence coming from psycho-
B. Domnguez Trejo (*) M. Lopez Lena logical research and neurosciences began to build
Graduated Studies and Research Division, National
alternative explanations looking, for example, at
Autonomous University of Mexico, School of
Psychology, Mexico the nature and contribution of resilience (from the
e-mail: uyuyuy1947@yahoo.com Latin re for back and salire for to leap). This
G. Montero Ruvalcaba Palacios nding frontally challenges the prevailing belief
Department of Nursing and Obstetrics, University of which held that any strong stressor left indelible
Guanajuato, Campus Irapuato-Salamanca, Guanajuato, emotional scarswhich call for Freudians grief
Mexico

490 B. Domnguez Trejo et al.
work or any other non-evidence intervention in nutrition, physical inactivity, and sedentary
order to return to normal social life or well-being, lifestyles are also commonly interrelated with
but indeed this might end up producing more harm mental health and well-being status (Oldenburg
than good. et al. 2010a; Fisher et al. 2011). Most of these
Human current life at Latin America is full of unhealthy behaviors and related diseases are
complex and challenging social events almost always more common at Latin-American
(Rodriguez et al. 2011) not only coming from countries with disadvantaged and more vulnera-
environmental and economical factors (Viner ble populations. Chronic health conditions such
et al. 2011) but from daily building of well- as cardiovascular disease, cancers, diabetes, pain
beingor lack of itsuch as being accepted or and related risk factor behaviors are becoming
discriminated, treated according to human rights more important and prevalent in LMICs.
or unfairly, and cared or devalued by others. An So integrate an heuristic theoretical frame-
issue that have been called life style (Meng work which leads these countries public health
et al. 1999). It seems that our coping style when institutions to an evidence-based understanding
faced with these events depends primarily on our of involved factors embedded in development
emotional/autonomic status according to them, and maintenance of chronic health problems is
in contrast to mostly sensorial events like being one of the most important challenges that we
injured by one aggressor or eating chile (hot should face. In this sense social neuroscience
pepper), for which our responses seem more seems to offer a wide scope to be considered.
dependent on the physical acts themselves. Even it can be said that Social neuroscience is
Recent evidence suggests that our emotional rapidly exploring the complex territory between
responses to these psychological events rely on perception and action where recognition, value,
much of the same neural circuitry that underlies and meaning are instantiated. It is just the eld
the simplest physical pains and pleasures. where we may nd the issues of welfare, happi-
Indeed, there are important differences ness and social threats. Within this eld it is
between what people consider as well-being, currently accepted a fundamental insight from
physical surviving or even health or illness states, its so called receptive studies: in most
mainly depending on what kind of life style or vertebrates, the brain employs specic receptors
economic capacity to provide themselves the or cortical regions for processing social informa-
basic or superuous items to fulll their daily tion, whether that information comes from pher-
life they have. However human beings have the omonal/olfactory, audio-vocal, somatosensory,
evolved capacity to adapt, without help, to envi- or visual cues. That is, social information is not
ronmental challenges or demands. Nevertheless simply complex multisensory perception; it is
there are a few of people who need assistance to perceived and encoded in unique ways in the
develop the adequate behaviors and adaptations. brain (Porges 1995, 2007). At the other hand
In Latin America the challenge is more complex expressive studies, long the domain of behav-
due social and cultural factors and therefore it is ioral neuroscience and behavioral neuro-
needed a different approach than in HICs. endocrinology, focused on social interactions:
communication, reproductive behavior (espe-
cially parental care and sex), agonistic actions
28.2 Importance of Emotion Study (aggression and predation), and afliative
behaviors (including social play). In this way it
Emotions and behavior are centrally important to can be said that between the receptive and
health processes and management of almost all expressive branch studies sits the great dark mat-
communicable and non-communicable disease ter of social neuroscience.
conditions. Socio-emotional key behaviors such It yield us to make the evolutionary working-
as poor hygiene, unsafe sex, tobacco use, exces- assumption that internally experienced affects
sive alcohol consumption, unhealthy diet and are universal capacities of brains in all mammals,
28 Pain, Emotions, and Social-Well-Being in Mexico 491
and that those seemingly intangible arrangement of cells for organizing social infor-
neurodynamic processes can, in fact, be mation processing, regulating the expression of
elucidated at least by triangulating among afliative behavior (Macosko et al. 2009). The
(i) sensitive behavioral measures, not only self molecular basis of social feeding in C. elegans
report (Mehl et al. 2001) and (ii) our understand- largely depends on a neuropeptide receptor,
ing of their brain substrates coming from animals encoded by the npr gene (Bono and Bargmann
models, combined judiciously with (iii) the study 1998). Social feeding is driven by neurons that
of related social-affective experiences and detect noxious chemicals in the environment
psychophysiological changes in humans (Porges (Bono et al. 2002).
1995, 2007). It should be emphasized that with- While we have much to learn about the dark
out the third component, this type of approach matter of social neuroscience, these seminal stud-
could easily be dismissed as meaningless (as it ies in C. elegans demonstrate that (1) even com-
commonly was during the behaviorist era of the plex human social behaviors and even those that
Latin American psychology history 19701990). have been presumed unique to human like well-
Now that the cognitive revolution is gradually being, may rely on surprisingly simple molecular
giving way to an emotion revolution, mechanisms, (2) neuropeptides and their receptors
investigators are progressively exhibiting a new appear to be important mediators of social
taste for the pursuit of what was once deemed behaviors (Dominguez et al. 2011), as has been
scientically unattainablesay, understanding showed by Dr. Carters ndings linking successful
what affective processes really are. New brain stress coping coming from perceived reciprocal
imaging tools and autonomic monitoring devices condence feeling with oxytocin levels working
have been a major force in this transformation. with animal and human models and (3) compara-
What happens between the stage when an tive studies may be a powerful approach for social
environmental change is encoded as social to neuroscience (Gomez et al. 2012a, b).
the stage when a go signal is given for These ndings support novel heuristical
initiating social behavior? How does the brain venues in which study cognitions, social
distinguish a friendly person from an angry inuences and emotions could lead us to improve
neighbor, juvenile from adult, novel from famil- understanding of how those factors interact and
iar, kin from unrelated peer? What are the neural contribute to achieve health or even illness states,
mechanisms that facilitate or inhibit social face as well as how health professionals and mainly
to face interaction? These kind of questions health psychologist should to face people with
require responses in order to preserve or improve chronic conditions living at LICs. But some
our social environments. Recently, researchers doubts remains without answer, mainly: Are our
from developed countries have begun to address current tools the right ones? Is it necessary to draw
these questions with human neuroimaging stud- from other quantitative elds or consider other
ies seeking to map various aspects of higher- metaphors? What theories need to be developed/
order processing of social information. In fact adapted to guide future social interventions at
some of the cellular mechanisms for the dark Latin America research? While many questions
matter of social neuroscience are being explored remain unanswered, the next few years will likely
with greatest success in a worm model the see a revolution in the study of the mind-brain
Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), an inverte- interface as tools from mathematics and complex
brate with a central nervous system (CNS) com- systems (Bassett and Gazzaniga 2011), which
posed of only 302 neurons but which engenders a have as yet only brushed the surface, take hold
surprisingly complex behavioral repertoire that of the eld of social-neuroscience. Meanwhile
includes social feeding and social avoidance Latin-American and Mexican psychological
(Chen et al. 2006). Recently it was reported the researchers have been traveling along the route
rst cellular model of social behavior in of adapt technologies and reach enough support
C. elegans, describing a focal point and paths for viability of this proposal.
Most of these initiatives have been performed psychological distinctions between these aspects
within the context of a long and strong tradition, of mind seem obvious to the most, but even these
at least in western culture, it prompt a consensus majority at well-begins to icker when one
view that brains evolved mostly to process infor- tries to distinguish the both unambiguously in
mation of ecological relevance. Yielding from the social, clinical and laboratory settings; in
this tradition, Descartes formerly established his most human social experiences, they tend to go
mind-body dualism philosophy and pinpointed I closely blended. Hence, within the context of the
think therefore I am, not I feel therefore I am. cognitive revolution, many have begun to
Proceeding this way he emphasized that the per- question the utility of this classic distinction.
sonal experience of feeling within the body was However, we would encourage not to discard it,
not part of his statement. This trend has promoted because this very distinction may help us deci-
a point of view in which feelings should be pher the neurobiological nature of the basic
subjugated to cognitive processes. affective overstating conscious existence, and
This perspective, however, ignores an impor- thereby allow us the swiftest progress in
tant consideration: Mammalians Brains are elucidating the fundamental nature of those
exceedingly expensive both to evolve and to pre-propositional experiences that we share
maintain. The adult human brain weighs about with many other mammals.
2 % of full body weight but consumes about 20 % Thus, we will assume what has recently
of total energys intake (Aiello and Wheeler become a minority view among Latin American
1995). Therefore, it is difcult to justify the psychologists, but which, in our estimation,
claim that primates, and especially humans, should remain accepted wisdom (cognitive ver-
need larger brains than other species merely to sus affective frameworks). At the same time, we
do the same ecological job of just information must emphasize that this view in no way seeks
processing (Chittka and Niven 2009). So, during to deny their remarkable blending with our rst
the late 1980s an alternative hypothesis emerged person subjective experiences, nor the fact that
to offer a distinct proposal, postulating that cognitive abilities have coevolved with affective
primates large brains reects the computational processes in many higher regions of the brain.
demands of the complex social systems that char- Regardless of ones position on this controversial
acterize their order (Byrne and Whiten 1988). issue, in practical scientic terms our key con-
Prima facie, this fact seems plausible: There is cern should be whether the cognitiveaffective
evidence that primate social systems are more distinction represents some real aspects of socio-
complex than in other species. In this perspective neuro-mental existence or whether it is a ctional
feelings are, to a substantial degree, distinct neu- parsing of neuropsychological space. We have
robiological processes in terms of anatomical, reached that focused consideration of the basic
neurochemical, and even functional criteria, affects, quite independently of the cognitive
including peripheral bodily interactions. activities with which they always interact in the
Emotional processes have several attributes intact brainmind, may promote a deeper and
including motor-expressive, sensory perceptual, more substantive understanding of the feeling
autonomic-hormonal, cognitive-attentional, and aspects of emotional processes than if we perpet-
affective-feeling aspects. A general denition of ually conate the two.
emotion should include all these characteristics, Equally important has been the recognition
phrased partly in neuro-conceptual terms (Porges that at a one genetic and subcortical-brain orga-
2007; Panksepp 1982). When we survey patients nizational level, all mammals are strikingly sim-
and volunteers about which of these attributes is ilar. Thus, when we encounter homologies in
most important, we have found the last two as the organs, including mammalian brains, we may
most reported by them, with cognitive typically be able to reveal useful general principles for
being rst among those minorities committed to the whole class of animals by devoting a great
intellectual views and affective being foremost deal of research effort to a single convenient
among the more emotionally involved. The folk- species. Although this is not to deny the abundant
species differences that exist in the details of all then we must develop special strategies to under-
systems, but to recognize that those differences stand them in neural terms. Biological solutions to
are bound to be much greater at cognitive (Hauser such problems may promote the emergence of a
2000) than basic affective levels of brain organi- solid foundation for the construction of a coherent
zation (Panksepp 2003, 2005a). For instance, social mind science as well as providing a sub-
within the information-processing models of stantive grounding for psychological, psychiatric
mind that the cognitive revolution continues to therapeutics, both pharmacological and
advance, there is an increasing, and in our estima- non-invasive. It may also encourage investigators
tion unjustied, tendency to assume that to better characterize how cognitive appraisals are
information-only strategies constitute an optimal modied by such noteworthy urges such as hun-
methodology for understanding emotions, mainly ger, thirst, suffering, etc., as well as the more
supported by self-report procedures. After all, it is transient emotional storms linked to frequent psy-
tempting to focus on the nding that neurons do chosocial stressors.
process information in remarkably similar ways Cognitive processes, on the other hand, are
regardless of their functions in the brain. Despite linked closely to rapidly ring exteroceptive sen-
the fact that nothing resembling a tabula rasa or sory systems, comparatively free of any intrinsic
unique command centercurrent pain brain affects, which allow organisms to navigate effec-
research represent an outstanding item. tively in space, time, and among the object of the
Apkarian et al. (2005) has yet been found, abun- world (often toward affective goals). In line with
dant hope persists that digital neuronal codes will long-standing traditions, the way we perceive the
be found for psychological processes as external world and our resulting propositional
instantiated in the temporal ow of action thoughts about those perceptions are what con-
potentials. Since action potentials do constitute a stitute our cognitive terrain. Those functions
universal neuronal language, many emerge largely from higher, more recently
investigators still assume that the cognitive and evolved, neocortical regions of the brain. Its
affective processes of the brain are little more than highest manifestation in our species is the capac-
variants on similar neurocomputational themes. ity to use symbols and metaphor. Affects reect
According to such views, emerging conceptual our internal feelings of goodness and badness, in
frameworks (Gomez-Gonzalez et al. 2012) such the many varieties that those evolutionarily
as affective neurosciencecoined a decade shaped neurodynamic arise, typically through
ago(Panksepp 2011) may seem redundant, organismic interactions with the outside world.
unnecessary, and at times threatening to the hege- There are evidence to believe that affective
mony of the increasingly popular cognitive feelings emerge largely from specic subcortical
computational views of brainmind functions circuits where slowly ring neural systems
(LeDoux 1999) asserting that affective feelings abound, rich in various function-specic
are, to a substantial degree, distinct neurobiologi- neuropeptides that are also abundant in the
cal processes in terms of anatomical, neurochemi- enteric nervous system of the viscera (Panksepp
cal, and various functional criteria, including 2005b, 2010b). Emotional responses, including
peripheral bodily interactions. their intrinsic affective attributes, probably
Emotional and motivational feelings are emerge from limbic regions that are more evo-
unique experientially qualia saturated and help lutionarily conserved in vertebrates than those
organisms make cognitive choicese.g., to nd that mediate cognitive capacities (MacLean
food when hungry, water when thirsty, warmth 1990; Porges 2007). Of course, there is now
when cold, and companionship when lonely or extensive blending of affective and cognitive
lusty. If affective organic processes, ancient adap- processes in many brain areas, and if conceptual
tive solutions that they are in brain evolution, are distinction cannot be cashed out scientically,
to a substantial degree distinct from those that they are bound to be counterproductivity.
mediate cognitive deliberation (even though they When we have to study people during social
obviously co-evolved in recent brain evolution), urban interactions we must be able to identify a
variety of behavioral features that illustrates that stage, improve their management, increase
some persons report feeling safe (even with patient quality of life, and assist with guiding
increasing crime rates, and pain) and can live the efcient allocation of limited health care
and work comfortably in the same environment resources (Fisher et al. 2011; Ebrahim
that triggers in other persons hypervigilant et al. 2011; Oldenburg et al. 2010b). This com-
behaviors due to poor safety settings. Moreover, pelling evidence notwithstanding, there remains
those persons who are chronically monitoring the a signicant evidence gap in relation to the
urban setting for danger cues are the same implementation of these kinds of interventions.
individuals who have difculties in create and This is a costly and urgent problem in both high
maintain social close interactions, while those income countries and LMICs. As has been stated,
with features of feeling safe can be involved on closing the gap between what we know and what
affective relationships with less stress load. we do, the gap between what we know and dont
Unfortunately, the traditional well-being do, is much larger than the gap between what
approach for assessing quality of urban life we know and dont know. The evidenceimple-
assumes that if some subjects can perform well mentation gap is even greater for more socially
in a particular urban setting every person should disadvantaged and vulnerable communities and
reach the same performance level. societies (Beaglehole and Horton 2010; Montero
Thus our society label the behaviors of 2007). While HICs in North America, Europe,
individuals, who are behavioral or viscerally reac- and elsewhere are able to allocate signicant
tive to slight changes in stimulation, as bad national resources to the delivery of health and
performers, even if the behaviors are involuntary, medical services, even where behavioral medi-
say philogenetically wired. Society assumes that cine and public health programs are not as effec-
these persons should be able to voluntarily turn tively implemented and supported as they might
these behaviors off, rather than investigate that be, most LMICs can badly afford to cope with
there is a neural substrate underlying the observed this situation. In order to scale up interventions
range of individual differences, and that those and to promote and sustain their wider integra-
differences are related with specic behaviors, tion into policy and practice, new evidence-based
feelings, health states and worlds perception. methods and approaches are needed. This chap-
In this chapter we review different emotion ter provides a series of case studies, examples,
measurements and study proposals specically and commentaries on these issues within a local
focusing on Mexican experience as researchers and Latin-American framework. First we
and clinicians, exposing our mainly outcomes describe different options to measure socio-
and applications. We describe obstacles as well emotional activity, then we focus on our
as future perspectives on this eld. Due we live in clinical-scientic work and outcomes, next we
a so called LMICs where the majority of the describe results on poverty, studies and its rela-
worlds population now lives, we suffer from a tion with health and well-being to nish chapter
double problem for health preservation: we are pinpointing our limitations for emotions study,
simultaneously confronted by high prevalence of future perspectives and mainly conclusions.
both communicable and non-communicable
diseases. More than 80 % of the global burden
of chronic disease now occurs in LMICs
28.3 Components
(Abegunde et al. 2007). This double challenge
and Measurement
is further exacerbated by the fact that most of
of Emotions
those countries have limited resources available
for prevention and management of such
To identify emotions authors commonly allude to
conditions (Montero and Evans 2008).
three different strategies:
There is a general agreement that social,
behavioral, and community interventions can be
Observable properties (say on the face, in the
effectively used to prevent many of these
voice, in the body, or in experience),
conditions and/or detect them at an earlier
interpreting this as reect of nervous activity suggest that evaluating nervous activity might
(mainly autonomic or homeostatic). provide an index of the emotional functioning.
Assessing specic causal mechanisms in the However and despite its wide use as physio-
brain, evaluating activity of different structures logical markers of emotional functioning, there is
involved in emotional process, integration and no strong support for the accuracy of these
expression (Dikecligil and Mujica-Parodi 2010). measures to identify and isolate emotional pro-
Self-report, or the use of words that people cesses. Although there is no single study of emo-
utilize to describe their emotional experience tion that has simultaneously measured facial
to bring understand of it (Larsen et al. 2008). movements, vocal signals, changes in peripheral
physiology, voluntary action, and subjective
experience, many studies have measured at
least two or three of these responses (usually
28.3.1 Somatic Markers
some combination of subjective experience,
behavior, and autonomic activity). These studies
In both of rst cases it is assumed emotions can
have reported a range of associations, from mod-
be identied objectively by attending observable
est correlations, to negative correlations among
properties allocated mainly in the body function-
experiential, behavioral, and physiological
ing (Adolphs and Spezio 2007; Barret 2006;
measures of emotion (for a review of this studies
Bradley and Lang 2007), although it is assumed
see Barret 2006). So, evidence about pertinence
that exist rich, reciprocal connections between
of use body signals to establish or measure emo-
neural periphery and central structures, in which
tional states remains controversial (Stemmler
the central nervous system both, sends and
2003) but open for innovation at the Latin-
receives input from the viscera. This raises the
American context.
possibility that the experience of emotions (i.e.,
feelings) cause peripheral changes and, on the
other hand, the more counterintuitive possibility
28.3.2 Self-Report
that the peripheral changes contribute to the
experience of emotion.
How should a social scientist interpret answers to
Nowadays different technological advances
questions about global life satisfaction, happi-
allow scientist and clinics to assess this
ness or suffering? After all, life satisfaction and
biological basis in a precise, quantitative, and
tragedies is neither a direct, veriable experience
low cost equipments and devices, so it has
nor a known personal fact like ones address or
become possible to measure a broad range of
age. It is a global retrospective judgment, which
physiological systems linked to emotional
in most cases is evoked and constructed only
challenges or process in the laboratory and clinic
when asked and is determined in part by the
(Barret 2006). In this sense, peripheral nervous
respondents current mood (autonomic state)
system responses are thought to have sufcient
and memory, and by the immediate context. For
specicity to indicate the emotional state of an
example, using a ve-item life satisfaction mea-
individual (Keltner et al. 2003; Levenson 2003)
sure, Lucas et al. (2004) reported a test-retest
and more recently with the advent of neuroscien-
correlation of 0.77 over 4 weeks. By contrast,
tic investigations, emotion scientists have also
follow-up studies for self-reported levels of edu-
begun to search for the brain markers of emotion
cation or earnings typically nd correlations of
(see Craig 2008). Mainly outcomes of these stud-
around 0.90. The signicant but lower correla-
ies have revealed that emotions are accompanied
tion for repeat measures of life satisfaction
not only with brain structures activation (like
suggests that the data may be reliable enough
amygdala) but also with physiological responses
for many purposes, but that current emotional
such as respiration, perspiration, blinking, and
state and context cause uctuations in peoples
heart rate modications (Dikecligil and Mujica-
answers from day to day. The use of self-report
Parodi 2010; Masaoka et al. 2003) this ndings
as strategy to measure and study emotional
experience has a wide reliance on psychology biases, motivational inuences and in short with
and several social elds and much of the work the fact that individuals are unreliable reporters
on the eld of emotion has been conducted with of their own affect because they engage in dis-
this kind of measures (Ryff and Singer 2003). It tortion (conscious or unconscious), sometimes
has been reached due in part of their property of responding carelessly or randomly, or even not
suggesting functional relationships between dif- actually knowing (or remembering) how they
ferent variables. In the specic case of emotions, feel, or felt (Ryff and Singer 2003).
the words people use to describe their current Statistically, self-reports of emotion tend to be
emotional states typically show consistent only modestly related to somatovisceral and
patterns (Mehl et al. 2001). Those who report behavioral aspects of emotion (Bradley and
feeling happy, for instance, are unlikely to report Lang 2007; Larsen et al. 2008). Although some
feeling sad (Larsen et al. 2008), Moreover, a high studies have shown strong links between self-
percentage of general population are able to reports of emotion experience and measures of
express their internal experience and even chil- facial behaviors (see Barret 2006), these
dren as young as 6 years of age can nd words correlations are typically small to moderate in
that describe not only their emotions, but the size, and there is some question about their con-
putative causes of it (Davis et al. 2008). sistency across studies (see Larsen et al. 2008).
For most of those under the inuence of the so As we have outlined above, study and mea-
called Neuro-mania (Tallis 2011) is common surement of emotional states has pros and cons,
to believe that our great conceptual abilities as which nevertheless and despite its difculties
humans can be reduced to is equivalent to have no avoid a prolic research-work on emo-
the neural rings in our brain. In this sense for the tional process.
neuromaniacs verbal reports are thought to serve The 2002 economic science Nobel price Dan-
as proxies or equivalents for underlying (private) iel Kahneman observes that the work he did with
physiological activity. It is frequent to nd how- Tversky along a decade challenged the ortho-
ever that although many patients may report a dox idea, among social scientists in the 1970s,
muscle neck pain no clear biological damage that people are generally rational. Tversky and
referent exist. Even when imaging measures are Kahneman discovered systematic errors in the
available, researchers have been observing that thinking of normal people errors arising not
the correspondence between autonomic activity only from the modulation effects of emotion,
and self reports of psychophysiological changes but built into our evolved cognitive machinery.
are modest at best. Mostly using self-report Looking for the emotional impact on people life
procedures economists have had a long-standing Kahneman cope with a core question: What does
preference for studying peoples revealed it mean to be happy?
preferences; that is, looking at individuals actual Along the mid 1990s, most happiness research
choices and decisions rather than their stated relied on using self-report and asking people how
intentions or subjective reports of likes and satised they were with their life on the whole.
dislikes. If people frequently display bounded But Kahneman pinpointed that such retrospec-
rationality (Gigerenzer and Selten 2001) when tive assessments depend on memory, which is
it comes to maximizing utility, then their choices notoriously unreliable. What if, instead, a
do not necessarily reect their true persons actual experience of pleasure or pain
preferences, and an exclusive reliance on choices could be sampled from moment to moment, and
to infer what people desire loses most of its then summed up over time? Kahneman calls this
appeal. experienced well-being, as opposed to the
So, it is necessary to note that self-report have remembered well-being that most social
limitations. First, not all aspects of emotional researchers had relied upon. And he found that
states can be reported at all (Bradley and Lang these two measures of happiness diverge in
2007). Moreover, criticism reect concerns with surprising ways. What makes the experiencing
self happy or unsafe is not the same as what function. Basic core pleasure/pain reactions have
makes the remembering self happy. In particu- always had objective consequences for an
lar, the remembering self does not care about individuals behavior, physiology, brain
durationhow long a pleasant or unpleasant mechanisms and eventual gene tness. In a sense,
experience lasts. Rather, it retrospectively rates both hedonic/aversive reactions have been too
an experience by the peak level of pain or plea- important to survival for pleasure/suffering to be
sure in the course of the experience, and by the exclusively subjective. For pleasure feelings,
way the experience ends. Clearly, much remains specialized, though elusive, brain mechanisms of
to be done in emotion research. But Kahnemans conscious elaboration are likely needed to convert
conceptual innovations have laid the foundation an objective liking reaction to a hedonic stimulus
for many of the empirical ndings that we expect into a subjectively felt liking experience. Human
to rely on: that headaches are hedonically harder cognitive capacity transforms and elaborates our
on the poor; that women who live alone seem to mental representations of pleasant events, adding
enjoy the same level of well-being as women richness and the capacity to savor by altering the
who live with a mate; and that a household attention we pay and the way we think about
income of about $75,000 is sufcient to maxi- pleasures (Barrett 2006b; Frijda 2007; Frijda and
mize happiness. Policy makers interested in low- Sundararaja 2007; Gilbert and Wilson 2007).
ering the misery index of society will nd much Social cognition also vastly expands the range of
to consider carefully here. events that can trigger pleasure/suffering in
Some of work which was made by our humans to include cognitive and cultural sources
national research teams in the eld of emotion (art, music, dinner parties and as well as other
and its relationships with health, illness and well- social, intellectual and aesthetic rewards) and
being, specially oriented to poverty studies from provides new top-down regulatory ways to
a psychological point of view, are sketched. In amplify or dampen a pleasure or displeasure event.
particular, poverty multidisciplinary research Pain is a multidimensional phenomenon that
represents a relevant area of study in Mexico. is characterized by clear physiological and psy-
The poverty costs are manifested at different chological elements. Various studies have exam-
levels, from personal because it attacks social ined the relationship between negative emotion
and psychological functioning of those who suf- and pain perception (Ruvalcaba and Domnguez
fer it, to the macroeconomic affecting social 2009; Campbell et al. 2003; Katon et al. 1982).
development policies in countries with Human neuro-imaging studies have examined
impoverished populations. the relationships between cognition and sensory
perception. For example, previous studies have
demonstrated that cognitive contexts such as dis-
28.4 Mexican Experience traction (Petrovic et al. 2000; Valet et al. 2004,
in the Study and Measurement anticipation, Keltner et al. 2006; Sawamoto
of Emotion and Its et al. 2000; Wager et al. 2004, empathy, Singer
Relationships with Well-Being et al. 2004, and attention, Bantick et al. 2002;
and Illness Continuum Bufngton et al. 2005; Davis et al. 1997) can
modulate the neural activities that underlie sen-
Pleasure and displeasure reactions are prominent sory perception, including pain perception. It has
in our own lives and may have had similar evolu- also been reported that emotional context (espe-
tionary functions. The underlying limbic neural cially social cues) can affect both subjective pain
mechanisms for generating affective reactions are sensitivity and the neural activities that appear to
well developed and similar in the brains of most underlie pain perception. Ploghaus et al. (2001)
mammals. It seems unlikely that so much neural reported that perceived pain intensity is
machinery would have been selected and enhanced by pain-relevant anxiety, via neural
conserved across species if it had no adaptive activation in identied brain regions. Ochsner
et al. (2006) examined the relationship between happiness (Kahneman 2011). But the attainment
individual differences in fear or anxiety sensitiv- of happiness must surely include the full capacity
ity and the patterns of neural activation thought for pleasure reactions and even adaptive coping
to underlie pain responses and demonstrated that to live with pain and threats. Some might even
this relationship is itself associated with activity suggest that true happiness or well-being be a
in particular brain regions. These imaging studies state of liking without wantingwhich with
suggest that the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) the current available neuro-scientic evidence is
acts as a central component in the modulation of currently turning a testable hypothesis.
pain perception. The ACC is a pivotal area that In our Mexican research team (Dominguez
receives various inputs that are associated with and Tepepa 2012; Dominguez et al. 1995) we
the processing of painful stimuli, and activation have framed our clinical work within the eld
which is closely associated with the perceived of psychophysiology which is a branch of psy-
degree of pain unpleasantness (Rainville 2002). chology concerned with the physiological bases
Sadness is one of the basic human emotions, and of psychological processes with the aim to under-
it is generally accepted that sadness occurs in stand, primarily in humans, interactions between
response to an aversive experience (Dominguez neural and social processes using non-invasive,
and Leija 2012). Freud, for instance, took a portable, low cost devices methods. Psychophys-
strongly mechanistic view about how happiness iology is positioned at the intersection of psycho-
state relates to pleasure (Freud and Riviere logical and medical science, and its popularity
1930). In response to his own question about and importance have expanded with the increas-
what people demand of life and wish to achieve ing realization of a pervasive interrelatedness of
in it, Freud replied The answer to this can hardly mind and body. Assessment of psychophysiolog-
be in doubt. They strive after happiness; they ical functioning opens unique ways to understand
want to become happy and to remain so. This perceptual, emotional, cognitive, and social pro-
endeavor has two sides, a positive and a negative cesses and provides insights that cannot be
aim. Its aims, on one hand, is related to absence obtained by interview, questionnaire, or behav-
of pain and displeasure, and, on the other, at the ioral observation.
experiencing of strong feelings of pleasure Individual differences in hypothalamic-
(Freud and Riviere 1930, p. 76). Freuds answer pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis functioning have
equates pleasure with happiness. According to been suggested as playing a role in vulnerability
this ancient view, the more pleasure you have to stress (Domnguez-Trejo et al. 2005; Kloet
(while avoiding displeasure), the happier you et al. 1998). In general, HPA axis dysfunction
are. To the degree that such a hedonic answer is in depression is characterized by stress hyper-
correct, brain mechanisms of pleasure might be responsiveness, an abnormal circadian secretory
virtually identical to brain mechanisms of happi- pattern, and glucocorticoid negative feedback
ness. But on the other hand, others have resistance (Herman et al. 2003).
contended instead that human happiness and Psychosocial stress, a heavy emotional modu-
well-being involves much more than mere plea- lation factor, has been linked with a range of
sure and requires additional achievements in the mental health problems including depression,
cognitive, aesthetic, moral, or other domains however the pathways and relationship between
(Cabanac 1971; Kahneman and Krueger 2006). stressful events, neurological and psychophysio-
For instance, Mexican grandmothers use to say: logical changes, immuno-competence, and
It is better to be a lions tail dissatised than a depression, are still being investigated and are
rats head satised: better to be a HICs citizen of our interest too. Our clinical studies on how
dissatised than a LMICs citizen satised. patients reply to subjective well-being/suffering
Perhaps happiness or well-being cannot be questions varies with their circumstances and
reduced to pleasure alone, and pleasure is but a other factors. We argue that it is fruitful to dis-
short lasting moment in the state which is tinguish among different conceptions of adaptive
strategy while coping with environmental cues them predominantly non-invasive, and used to
changes (well-being or the lack of it, for example record and assess different physiological systems
a pain state) rather than presume that measuring in a way which complement physiological,
only a single, unifying concept that motivates all behavioral, or self-report measures.
human choices and registers all relevant feelings Using the former psychophysiological
and experiences. There are three mainly lines of approach we have studied diverse social pro-
study which have been developed in our research cesses, such as trauma. Following our former
team, they are sketched in the next lines. stage we become involved (19751998) with
assessment and intervention with natural
disasters victims at Mexico reaching some out-
28.5 Learning from Traumas standing learnings:
and Challenging Environments
in Mexico 1. During aftermath of natural disaster not
everyone needs psychological assistance.
Psychologists as researchers and clinicians work- 2. Traumatic events for people in HICs could be
ing at closed settings, routinely ask people conceptualized as an exceptional event kind;
about the degree in which they are experiencing while in LMICs could be a natural response,
a variety of emotional and physical symptoms cause they have developed habituation to live
ranging from sadness, long lasting pain, to wet under more general adverse conditions.
hands. Historically, Mexican psychologist
(Dominguez et al. 1995, 2005, 2009, 2012) inter-
ested on studying the private experience at
closed settings, rst targeted autonomic func- 28.6 What Can We Do to Help
tioning. Around 60 years ago European and People to Overcome Negative
American psychologists initiated the study of Outcomes?
the electrodermal activity, then blood pressure,
pulse, respiration, heart activity, and brain waves Throughout the twentieth century, the psycho-
in response to cognitive tasks and emotion- logical impact of trauma has received a lot of
eliciting cues. More recently scientic interest attention during and immediately after disastrous
has shifted, and psychophysiologists today are events. However, between 3 and 6 months after
equally or even more interested in the central the event, this interest fades out from public
nervous system (Apkarian et al. 2005). attention almost completely. The study of how
The spectrum of psychophysiological traumatic events impact people from different
assessments application at HICs and at a low countries, cultures, and types of traumatic
degree at LMICs ranges from medical elds, exposures has dramatically increased in recent
such as cardiology (Figueroa and Ramos 2006); years (i.e., more than 4200 PsycINFO citations
chronobiology; psychosomatic and behavioral can be found using PTSD [Post Traumatic Stress
medicine (Rodriguez 2010; Domnguez and Disorder] as a key word). The interest in the
Montes 2000, 2004); to scientic work, such as incapacitating effects of traumatic experiences
stress and sleep research (Ayala and Mexicano is very salient in industrialized nations despite
2010). These spectrum of psychophysiological the fact that in present days these societies live
interests include, among others, research topics under highest protected conditions than in previ-
like, the relations between physiological aspects ous years; and also, that these industrialized
of neuronal activity and behavior during atten- nations live in much better conditions when com-
tional processes, sensory stimulation, cognitive pared to LMICs (in terms of their safety
tasks, emotions, stress, pain, and learning pro- standards, and emergency services, for instance).
cesses (Lopez 2012). These work is done through The psychological response to unpredictable and
a variety of measurement techniques, the most of adverse events, therefore, may be erroneously
perceived as exceptional, from an They are able to perceive them in a different

industrialized world perspective, because it manner, which positively modies the impact
engages mechanisms that are not in use in the that the traumatic experience has on them. Imme-
daily life. For instance, not having electricity, diately after a ooding disaster, survivors that
drinkable water for various days or losing a have lost close relatives are certainly upset with
home might not be so much of an extraordinary the disappearance of their loved ones during
situation for many people in LMICs. When Pauline Hurricane, at Acapulco, Mexico,
traumatized people speak of hurt feelings or 1997 (Dominguez and Tepepa 2012). However,
of being totally devastated these descriptions in an intermediate interval most of them have
are meant to reect painful experiences. reported that, for instance, my relatives are not
Researchers have long noted that some of the physically present but I have a sweet memory of
most traumatic experiences known to humankind them or life goes on. This astonish ability to
are those that involve the threat of or the actual learn from experience, and the underlying
loss of important social bonds. We have been amount of necessary brain plasticity, makes us
programmed to react in this way, as a product extremely sensitive to the environment, and this
of human evolution, when dealing with disasters can have major health-related, even pathogenic,
and long lasting health threats. effects. Suffering needs the brain to be perceived.
In the case of HICs, material losses are easier Most negative emotional states like anxiety and
to recover than in LMICs. However, the loss of pain are all controlled not only by neuro-peptides
social networks and bonds might be easier to but also by the environment, experience, interac-
recover after a disaster in the latter, than in tion, and the life of the victim in general. In this
rst-world settings. For us, as researchers- sense they cannot be measured only with peptide
therapists working with clients who have been levels or self-reports. For instance it has been
victims of disasters, it is precisely peoples social reported that urban environments at Mexico
networks what serves as a solid ground of our City some verbal insults (mentadas Spanish
interventions. Thus, our rst task has been to word used as an offensive reference to mothers
assess to what extent these social relationships marital status) may or may not have an offensive
continue have been preserved or can should them impact depending on the emotional status of the
to be rebuild after traumatic events take place. receptor. Therefore how it can be assessed when
Moreover, this response of feeling totally an insult (or any negative social threat) will have
devastated is the product of a smooth and ef- a negative or positive impact? We have departed
cient activation during extreme events regardless from the Polivagal hypothesis on auditory
of cultural or socioeconomic background. For hypersensitivities which advance that mammals
instance, after the 1985 earthquake in Mexico auditory system have evolved to dynamically
City the psychology of the immediate response lter peer generated sounds even under highly
to disasters (suffering, disorientation) did not invasive sound saturated settings according to a
become the cause of major trouble for the people phylogentically ruled strategies. Focusing on
who had to endure traumatic experiences. Rather, social interactions in order to being able to lis-
it was the inability to deal with traumatic ten, peer vocalizations must be ltered and at
memories that persist after this immediate psy- the same time other sounds should be dampened,
chological response that become the focus of our on the other hand during defensive states when
work. And it is here, with the long term traumatic noisy sounds prevail (acoustic frequencies of
effects that we have seen that our work have an nonhuman sounds) cueing social treats all the
impact on peoples well-being (Domnguez process become inverted (Porges and Lewis
et al. 2005). 2009).
We have observed that a large percentage of Following this hypothesis we have initiated a
disaster survivors have a tremendous natural tal- series of pilot eld studies to assess the viability
ent for changing their views of traumatic events. of collect conrmatory results on technological
12.0
11.0
10.0
9.0
8.0
7.0
6.0 MEN
5.0 WOMEN
4.0
3.0
2.0
1.0
0.0
VERY THREATENING THREATENING NOTHING
THREATENING LITTLE THREATENING
Graph 28.1 Men vs women differences. How Threating Is an Insult?
costs, and heuristic value of this approach to exposed to traumatic events develop PTSD
study social components of emotional factors whereas others similarly exposed do not and, as
that shape well-being and other complex social epidemiological literature on disasters has made
cognition outcomes. Preliminary results clear, this differential impact may be attributed to
(Domnguez and Tepepa 2012) from a rst our wide repertoire to learn, remember, and
group of 60 young inhabitants of Mexico City; reshape our behaviour on the basis of new cata-
both sex; ages raging from 18 to 23 years old; strophic experiences (including human-caused
with a minimum period of living residence at the events).
city of 10 years. We obtained self-reports and A traumatic experience can be viewed as a
autonomic monitoring data (Skin Temperature) supremely complex event that impacts most
using portable low cost devices; SPSS version aspects of peoples emotional, social and cogni-
15.0 was used to analyze data which suggested tive lives. The task of understanding and
some intriguing gender differences: women organizing such experience with or without pro-
reported more threating impact coming from fessional aid becomes increasingly complex as
being insulted comparing with men group the range in which the event affects at the person
(Graphs 28.1 and 28.2). becomes greater. Even though we now know that
According with Polivagal hypothesis during talking about the upsetting experience will help
social engagement perceived as threating (being to decrease intensity and give it structure, this
insulted) only high frequency vocalizations does not always become an option. Talking/
become underlined and at the same time neutral writing about such monumental experience may
sounds at background become faded which let not always possible (Dominguez et al. 1995) and
receptor perceive/assess insecure environments people may not want to or be able to even hear
(Porges and Lewis 2009). about it.
Therefore, the search for factors that can How we identify traumatized victims when
explain the differential impact of traumatic they are unwilling to talk? Skin temperature and
experiences becomes of particular interest. It is more recently Hearth Rate Variability (HRV) has
crucial to explain why some people who are been proposed as an autonomic marker index
90
89.3
88.6
87.9
87.2
86.5
85.8
85.1
84.4
83.7
83
INITIAL TEMPERATURE FINAL TEMPERATURE
Graph 28.2 Skin temp before and after report insults impact
of emotional expression, emotional reactivity physiologically regulate following the stressor

and emotional self regulation (Porges 1995, (Porges 1995, 2007). For practical purposes,
2007). Low cost devices like Derma-Therm these psychological responses can be divided
self adhesive liquid crystal has been used to into two: An easily observed safe response,
perform skin temperature monitoring together evoked by threat in order to increase surviving,
with the traditional face to face interviews Input and a rather risky and prolonged one, related to
processing areas, and the expression of emotions post-processing of the effect of trauma, i.e., to
are widespread in both the brain and the body. the ways in which we nally learn to keep
Further Damasio (2000), have distinguished breathing and live with our loss. Failure to turn
between this collection of bodily and neural off that machinery, or adapt the use of it, may
responses, and emotional state, and the represen- result in major mental and biological disorder.
tation of these changes and their effects on cog- With survivors, there may be several stressors
nition, a mental state called feeling. It has been that occur because of the death, loss of a loved
showed (Porges 2007) that the vagus nerve (cra- one, and even the overlapping of physical and
nial nerve X) provides an inhibitory regulatory social pain (Eisenberger and Lieberman 2004)
inuence on the heart, allowing heart rate to cause these stressors share the same underlying
increase rapidly through vagal withdrawal, as in system for their operation. The inability to self-
response to an stressor in ones environment. soothe and return to homeostasis may occur after
Vagal withdrawal usually occurs with an the adversity at an unconscious emotional level
increase in sympathetic activation of the heart, (Ledoux 2001) mostly at initial stages. However,
or what has come to be known as the ght-or- it can be monitored using autonomic markers
ight response. Vagal tone reects the degree to (e.g. skin temperature) as an index of emotional
which there is tonic vagal inuence on the heart, status, vulnerability and recovery.
and can be measured by assessing the extent of This can be accomplished using either high
HRV that is synchronized with respiration. Those tech devices or even more cost-effective ones
with greater vagal tone thus show greater HRV. (in which we have more and more empirical
This individual difference hypothetically allows evidence and clinical experience). Emotional
greater ability to react to the environment and to disclosure, in the form of talking (worry
dolls, or quita-muinas in spanish) or writing physiological and psychological variables; we

about the traumatic experience may evoke grief offered to a group of patients individualized bio-
sensations. A lack of physiological self- feedback training to modulate their autonomic
regulation detected by low skin temperature on activity. That was the only intervention that this
the dominant hand, or low vagal tone with experimental group have had received. Control
HRV software in turn may inuence how thera- group, in other hand, received only
peutic, affordable, friendly and opportune emo- individualized health chats.
tional disclosure results for traumatized After intervention people on rst group, but
populations. not in the second, shown decreased levels of
autonomic activity, myofascial symptoms, anxi-
ety, depression and perceived pain; thus, and on a
28.6.1 Autonomic Activity, basis of statistical analysis, we conclude that
Anxiety, Depression autonomic activity changed patterns were related
and Musculoskeletal Pain with this improvement. Moreover, we believe
that our results could evidence the role of adap-
Muscle skeletal chronic pain is one of the princi- tive reactions in setting specic physiological
pal causes of disability and use of medical activity. This activity could be responsible
services in Mexico. It has had associated high (at least in part), of symptoms development as
economical and social costs and is considered as well as of negative emotional states (e.g. anxiety
an important problem of public health with dele- and depression) that are present in chronic states
terious effects on life-quality and psychological (Dominick et al. 2012; Hyphantis et al. 2007),
well-being of patients and those whom are close but also of health as well as recovery process
to him/her (Ruvalcaba and Domnguez 2011). It (and even of well-being), just like have had
has been estimated that 27 % of adult people in been documented elsewhere (Janig 2009; Porges
Mexico could suffer this kind of pain (Bistre 2007; Ruvalcaba and Dominguez 2010; Sapolsky
2009) for that, it is necessary to develop research 2003).
work which helps to know more about this entity, Departing from these data we design other
mainly those relationships between autonomic study to determine which kind of biofeedback
activity, development and treatment of chronic training processes could be the best to obtain
muscle pain, as well as related anxiety and maximum benet at the same time that could be
depression states and even quality of life. developed by nursing personnel at rst level of
There is research work building upon the health care settings in Mexico. Again, using
assumption that adaptive responses has an impor- body-autonomic-markers (HRV), self-report
tant role on develop and maintenance of the (perceived levels of pain and relaxation) and
former aforementioned conditions (for a review standardized inventories (Becks anxiety and
see Ruvalcaba and Domnguez 2010). For exam- depression), we compared three different kinds
ple in a previous assay (Ruvalcaba and of biofeedback-based diaphragmatic relaxation
Domnguez 2011) we documented the inuence training with the aim to assess if only
of autonomic activity on permanence of chronic- modications on respiratory patterns could be
myofascial-pain symptoms, as well as on anxiety enough to set signicant autonomic changes as
and depression in those patients. Using body- well as decrements on perceived pain intensity,
markers to both, record and feedback autonomic anxiety and depression ratings, at time that
activity (peripheral temperature and Surface promotes increases on relaxation perceived
Electromyography [SEMG]), standardized levels (Ruvalcaba and Galvan 2012). The three
inventories (Becks anxiety and depression for different biofeedback training groups varied
Mexican population), numeric rating scales according to the kind of information that the
(myofascial symptoms), and self-report (per- participant have had received about his/her
ceived pain intensity) to asses different HRV modications during diaphragmatic
respiration performance. This information cognitive and physiological functioning, and its
ranged from only shown a respiratory pattern inuence can determine the onset or alleviation
that participants must match with (group A); to of many chronic syndromes including chronic
a complex biofeedback training which included muscle pain.
auditory and visual VFC feedback as well as a Contributions of emotional process on
respiratory pattern for patients to matched (group individuals health can be direct (emotion can
B). There was too a group with only auditory and causes health or illness) or indirect (emotions
visual VFC feedback (group C), as well as can inuence health behaviors), but always are
another without intervention (group C: control, mediated by autonomic activity, which in turn, is
in waiting list). affected and affect peripheral activity
All participants who received intervention (Diefenbach et al. 2008). It should be take in to
shown decreases in anxiety, depression and per- account that peripheral activity includes neuro-
ceived pain levels, besides increases in relaxation endocrine and neuro-immune systems both
perception. Whereas participants in control contributing to physical health and disease,
group did not shown almost any change on although insufcient attention has been paid to
measurements after that at the beginning of inter- the relations between specic emotions and these
vention. No signicant differences were detected critically important regulatory systems (Kemeny
between training groups to achieve those and Shestyuk 2008). We assume that human
changes. These results were congruent with pre- beings face environmental challenges and
vious studies which have been documented that dangers by integrating behavioral, emotional,
biofeedback interventions aimed to modify HRV and physiological patterns of response that
commonly promote better autonomic responses, implies the whole organism. In other words,
as well as general nervous system functioning. these patterns of responses require an integrated
Theirs benets also include reductions on both psychobiological activity that includes a pat-
negative emotional states and stress activation, at terned array of neural and peripheral changes
time that well-being sensation increases (see capable of elicit adequate emotional, cognitive
Trevor et al. 2010). In this sense, results of this and physiological states to prepare the individual
study are congruent with our previous study as a whole to respond in the most effective way
above presented in which modications in auto- to the specic situation. This is why we use to
nomic activity were correlated with changes in incorporate measurements of body markers as
emotional state and severity of symptoms. well as self-report as a core process, unavoidable
We may consider the existence of different and ordinary. Proceeding in this way leads us to
relationships between emotional state, know the phenomenology of social emotions, as
somatovisceral activity and central nervous sys- well as objective data of its somatic reference
tem functioning. This relationships include spe- necessary not only to improve assessment but to
cic peripheral patterns associated with specic design new strategies for walk on the path to
emotions (as Cannon stated early in 1927; see make predictions at short time.
Larsen et al. 2008) and undifferentiated
somatovisceral activity which produce distinct
and different emotions depending on the situa- 28.6.2 Psychological Cost of Poverty
tional context (Schachter and Singer 1962 as in Mexico
cited by Larsen et al. 2008). We assume that
those connections are reciprocal; such that the Psychological insertion in the study of poverty
central nervous system both sends and receives has been relatively recent (McLoyd 1998). In
input from the viscera in order to integrate emo- contrast, in other social disciplines such as
tional states and all adaptive responses needed Anthropology, Sociology or Economics, the
for the best organism preservation. Then analysis of poverty dates since the seventh cen-
emotions are an important element of perceptual, tury (Villarespe 2002). While the scientic
evidence on this problem in psychological terms such as economic deprivation, is considered the
shows more acceleration in the last decade key or dening aspect of children growing up in
(PsycInfo 2012), not yet has a strong tradition poverty. Many children can withstand the
in this area of knowledge. demands of one or maybe two stressors, even if
The concept of poverty in the broadest sense, they are traumatic or of longer duration. How-
has been associated with living conditions that ever, when children are confronted with a multi-
violate the dignity of people, limit their rights tude of environmental and social demands,
and freedoms, decreace their capacity to meet especially chronic and imperceptibles ones,
their basic needs and preclude their full social physical system as well as social and psycholog-
integration (Diario Ocial 2010, p. 18). The ical are more likely to develop dysfunction
concept of poverty is controversial both for its (Evans et al. 2010).
denition as for measurement. While in eco- While there are some similarities in the psy-
nomic terms has been traditionally linked with chological response to poverty regardless of
the scarcity of resources to meet basic needs and social context in which participants develop
achieve full social integration of individuals that (Montero and Evans 2008), there are cultural
suffer it. It is unclear what quality or neither features that favor the perpetuation of
quantity of the needs to reach nor the magnitude impoverished conditions. In this regard, Montero
of the shortages that must be considered to iden- et al. (2010) documented that Mexican mothers
tify a person as living in poverty. living in poverty were more conservative
World Health Organization estimates (2011) expectations on their childrens academic perfor-
that by 2012 there would be more than 1.2 billion mance and identied as trades rather than
people in the world living in poverty and professions future for them. In contrast, mothers
subsisting on $1.25 per day or less. According who were living in afuent projected future
to the Economic Commission for Latin America range and even graduate college for their chil-
and the Caribbean-ECLAC (2010), Latin Amer- dren. As shown, the expectations of the mothers
ica is the worlds most unequal region, where seem to facilitate the perpetuation of the
there are 180 million poor people, of whom conditions in which their children develop. The
59.8 % are homeless people living on less than evidence suggests that expectations as well as the
one dollar per day. Specically in Mexico is quality of the interactions between mother and
estimated that 52 million people suffer from son could have some inuence on both psycho-
lack of assets, while 53.8 % of the population logical and academic development of children.
lives with food poverty (National Council for While the impact of poverty imposes restrictions
Evaluation of Social Development Policy on child development, not least are the
CONEVAL 2010). consequences of this problem on adult function-
It is clear that poverty not only evidence lacks ing. In this regard, Montero (2006, 2011a) has
but generates costs at different levels. Among the documented the tendency of women living in
costs not yet sufciently documented are those poverty to experience more loneliness, depres-
for mental health and well-being status. sion and stress than those living in afuent
According to the psychological literature conditions.
(Evans 2006) a key factor that explains some of Although specialized evidence suggests sig-
the adverse consequences of development in nicant inverse correlations between poverty and
poverty are living in chaotic environments adequate psychological functioning, the
(Wachs and Evans 2010). Chaotic environments accumulated evidence does not seem sufcient
are meant as those where the individual is to conclusively support the psychological costs
exposed to multiple physical and psychosocial of this problem. The reason for this limitation is
stressors. The accumulation of adverse essentially in the use of indirect measures as
environments and confused social conditions, identify the poverty level as to assess the emo-
rather than mere exposure to a single stressor tional response, cognitive or behavioral of
contradictions founded in the data derived from

PERSON CONTEXT
indirect measures. For example, assessing the
PROCESS subjective perception that women have with
respect to socioeconomic status in which they
Fig. 28.1 Person and environment transactions found when compared with their peers within
components their immediate community, it was found that
these women tended to overestimate their loca-
surveyed subject. As a heuristics option to tran- tion within a 10 point scale (Montero, in pro-
scend this limitation Montero and Evans (2010) cess). That is, the women reported some degree
have proposed the social ecological perspective. of subjective well-being when compared with
Consistent with this perspective, it must obtain at their peers, although they were in a recognized
least three measures, ideally robust from: (a) the condition of poverty in economic terms. What
focal subject, (b) the socio-physical context in variables are those that allow women to adjust
which it operates and (c) of the transaction pro- their perceptions favoring a state of subjective
cess that occurs between the subject and its con- well-being despite physical deprivation in
text (see Fig. 28.1). which they live? How to explain this apparent
The social ecological approach examines the inconsistency? Is it just a rationalization of the
interrelationships between people and their envi- situation facing impoverished or indeed there is
ronment, social and physical, providing a multi- robust evidence of their sense of well-being? One
disciplinary approach and multi-level that possible option to nd answers to these questions
enriches the understanding of the issues under is the use of autonomic measures. Compare and
study. In this regard, Montero (2011b) is gauge the results derived from self-report
conducting a longitudinal study that seeks to measures contrasting with peripheral autonomic
empower mothers living in poverty conditions activity is only possible to determine whether a
with cognitive-emotional tools to reduce some rationalization of reporting the focal subject or
of the psychological costs associated with this reality gets an adaptation functional
problem in mothers and their children. Consis- deciencies of context.
tent with social-ecological approach both Consistent with the principle of two-way
variables are considered indirect measures transaction is linked to the social ecological
through self-reports (loneliness, depression), as approach (Stokols 1996), it is assumed that the
obtained through direct psycho physiological registration of the peripheral activity would vali-
indices (e.g. heart rate) and records of ambient date the focal subjects subjective report. How-
noise sound-level readings. ever caution should be taken with the
The use of physiological measures related to interpretation derived from this analysis because
the psychological costs associated with stressors a biased interpretation of the adaptive capacity of
such as poverty is just beginning. Initial studies human beings could serve as argument for the
indicated that noise signicantly elevates stress perpetuation of impoverished conditions that
in children (Johnston-Brooks et al. 1998) while undermine the ourishing of human capabilities
cardiovascular reactivity (CVR) may mediate the (Boltvinik 2007).
relationship between residential density and
damage to health in children (Evans
et al. 1998). Particularly in Mexico, have been 28.7 Limitations and Future
pioneers the Monteros research (2007, 2011a, b) Perspectives
by including measures psychophysiological
(e.g. heart rate) and environmental (e.g., noise In order to increase the scientic scope of sub-
and inner house density) as critical variables jective measures of well-being it can be consid-
(Platt 1964) in the study of poverty. It is considered to assess the pattern of their correlations
ered that the inclusion of these measures will with other social characteristics of individuals
bring light and robust ndings of the apparent and mainly their ability to predict future
outcomes. Findings coming from neuroscience low-wealth individuals still recovered some of
research and our clinical Mexican research also their pre-disability well-being.
lend some support for the view that life Study of autonomic responses with the aim to
satisfaction/well-being/pain measures are related know more about its role at development, perma-
to individuals emotional states. Having data nence and treatment of chronic syndromes, as
related to peoples emotional experiences at var- well as the related negative emotional states is a
ious times of the day (using non-invasive and low hard task to achieve in LMICs. Limitations are
cost autonomic portable devices) opens out many varied and they are not circumscribed at econom-
opportunities for improve our social behavior ical restrictions only. One important limitation is
understanding. Peoples emotional experiences related with the underlying knowledge that is
while they are engaged in different activities or necessary to understand the autonomic-adaptive
under different circumstances can be basis of emotions as well as cognitions; and its
summarized, although research in this area has relation with health, sickness or recovery. It is
to be concerned about generalizations, because necessary to increase evidence-based data about
individuals probably sort into different activities functional structures in the human brain, under-
depending on their preferences and repertoires, standing complexity of relationships between
and because of likely declining marginal utility central and peripheral nervous system, as well
of time spent in various activities. as between these structures and lymphatic and
According to Kahneman (2006) we can also immune systems. There is on psychological dis-
use this kind of data to examine the degree in cipline the theoretical models needed to under-
which various adjectives are more person-related stand and explain the above mentioned relations
or more situation-related (Mehl et al. 2001). (see Cacioppo and Decety 2003) but is necessary
Feelings of depression, being criticized and wor- that Mexican health and social psychologist
ried (summarized as Social Pain experiences) assume the challenge of lead the task of expand
had relatively larger person and autonomic the purview of health psychology beyond the
components, while feelings of frustration and Cartesian dualism, beyond a cognitive-
impatience have been more features of situations. behavioral science to include a science of the
Kanheman (2006) has reported that time use single, unique individuals adaptive responses
predicts net affect more than life satisfaction. to specic environments (social environments).
These contrasts suggest that net affect provides In other hand, it is necessary to transit from a
a window on peoples experience distinct from role of technology-consumer country to a
that captured by standard life satisfaction survey technology-developer one. To do so, it is neces-
measures. An extreme example, which is also sary accomplish the above mentioned task and
one of the often-cited observations in the litera- then, with the comprehension of the theoretical
ture, is that long-term chronic illness patients do frame, develop preventive, treatment or interven-
not report themselves as very unhappy, nor do tion programs based on autonomic modulation.
lottery winners report themselves as particularly The next stage should will prepare health
happy. This process is known as adaptation or professionals on rst attention level (nurses,
habituation. For those with severe disabilities, it social workers, psychologist and general
has been found that adaptation takes place, but is physicians) to apply trainings of autonomic
incomplete. Interestingly, Smith et al. (2005) activity at the very same time that patients start
found that the onset of a new disability causes a to experience their rst symptoms (physical or
greater drop in life satisfaction scores but only psychological) and then slow the transit from an
for those in the bottom half of the wealth distri- acute to a chronic state.
bution than for those in the top half, suggesting Based on the above arguments, it is possible to
an important buffering effect of wealth, although identify three challenges to face in the near future
in connection with the study of poverty at since the data that they shed will allow pre-
Mexico: dict the evolution or involution of the phe-
nomenon under study.
(a) Theory generation. It is essential to develop (c) Empirical involvement or practical applica-
integral explanations that consider indirect tion. The scientic knowledge that is not
variables (v.gr. indirect records) and direct applied is a mere repetition or recreation
measures (v.gr. autonomic responses) that of the intellect. Issues such as poverty or
account for complex adaptation processes chronic pain require multidisciplinary
as subjective well-being or the perception actions and commitment for their study
of chronic pain. While the generation of and a possible prevention. Consistent, cost
conceptual models should be applicable to and feasibility associated with the imple-
different contexts and populations; with mentation of specic measures, reliable
such complex issues as poverty, one must and robust are another challenge to face in
consider the cultural characteristics of the short term.
populations where it is generated. In other
words, it is not same being poor in Kinshasa Thereon is assumed that the study of poverty
(Republic of Congo, Africa) than in Beijing will be enriched by incorporating variables
(China) or Oaxaca (Mexico). While the derived from peripheral neural activity, to docu-
autonomic measures could show certain ment psychological processes robustly
regularities in terms of the possible physio- minimizing subjective interpretation of variables.
logical adaptation that could present the
people living in depauperation, the indirect
measurements are more likely to show
variations depending on the context of 28.8 Conclusion
socialization in which individuals are devel-
oping. Therefore, we must improve innova- Emotions are a theoretical construct which
tive and integrative theories that combine integrates the very core elements that are neces-
both physiological and psychological sary to be a human being. Nevertheless, there is a
components of social and cultural variables. strong western knowledge tradition in which
(b) Development of innovative methodology. It cognition are emphasized over emotions mainly
is necessary to implement original because its inferior role, supported by the idea
methodologies that account for the com- that emotion is as such more primitive, less intel-
plexity of the variables considered. Its ligent, more bestial, less dependable, and more
clearly a challenge documenting in a valid dangerous than reason and thus needs to be con-
and reliable way the correspondence trolled by this (Solomon 2008).
between self-reported and complex phe- This relationshipemotion/social behavior
nomena such as poverty or welfare, this is bidirectional and affects all health continuum,
must pass from the dependence of inferred including illness states (Diefenbach 2008) and of
variables to the incorporation of robust and course, involve cognitive processes in an intri-
straightforward measures that do not depend cate net that derivate in health behaviors, patho-
on the interpretation of the interviewee or genic environmental-agents bodys resistance,
the researcher. We will have to work on the treatment adherence and efcacy, symptoms
development of measures that are accessible duration, and so on (Quiceno and Vinaccia
both cost and in its implementation, without 2010; Ruvalcaba and Domnguez 2009). How-
detriment to its psychometric properties. ever the nature of this relationship require more
The challenge of developing innovative research, and even there are authors that pro-
methodology should promote the prognostic posed that these relationships depends on
value of the instruments that are generated, symptoms type (Charles and Almeida 2006).
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The Impact of Economic Growth
on the Prevalence of Health Problems 29
in Latin America
Maikol Elizondo-Lara and Mariano Rojas
29.1 Introduction health.1 In the short term, however, the opposite

may be true. For example, in a recent article,
There exists an abundance of literature in health Tapia-Granados and Ionides (2008) show that
economics which relates rapid economic growth economic growth in nineteen century Sweden
with the reduction in the prevalence of disease. was positively related to progresses in health, but
Normally, however, the literature does not distin- that the relationship has reversed over time and
guish whether this pattern can be observed both current economic growth is negatively affecting
in low and high-income countries, or whether it health. This indicates that even though the wealth-
is solely dictated by the speed of growth. Like- health relationship is one of the most published
wise, whether this pattern is equal between pop- topics in health economics and disciplines such as
ulation groups within a single country, and the demographics, the direction of causality between
role of the economic sector that drives growth, the two variables remains an open debate.
have not been studied. The empirical investigation of this study prin-
Two issues are studied in this article. The rst cipally uses cross-sectional data obtained from
addresses the association between rapid economic 16 Latin American countries; approximately
growth and a higher prevalence of health problems; 1000 individuals were interviewed in each coun-
for example, physical problems such as mobility or try. The data is representative at a country level,
pain, or psychological problems such as anxiety, which allow for individual country analysis as
depression and psychological distress. The second well as cross country comparison. Conducted in
looks at whether the dynamics of this phenomenon 2007 by the Gallup rm, the survey contains,
are the same between the rich and poor. among other data, information concerning the
The literature generally accepts that long term prevalence of physical and psychological health
economic growth has a positive impact on problems, socio- demographic and economic
information. Information related to the average
economic growth rate of each country was
provided by CEPALSTAT.
Using this information, differences in the
M. Elizondo-Lara prevalence of health problems that may be
Astra Zeneca, FLACSO-Mexico and UPAEP, Mexico
City, Mexico
1
M. Rojas (*) Recent contributions include: Morris and Castairs 1991;
FLACSO-Mexico and UPAEP, Mexico City, Mexico Kuate-Defo 1996; Robert 1999; Wagstaff and Watanabe
e-mail: mariano.rojas.h@gmail.com 2000; Oakes and Rossi 2003.

516 M. Elizondo-Lara and M. Rojas
associated with differences in economic growth Kuate-Defo (2005) analyse variables at the indi-
can be studied. Subsequently, the household per vidual and community level, and nd that in both
capita income is included as a variable with the groups, economic well-being helps explain
objective to measure if the interaction between health inequalities. This relationship between
economic growth and prevalence of health socio-economic variables and health is well
problems is equal between the rich and the documented in the literature from a variety of
poor. Moreover, in this empirical investigation perspectives (Morris and Castairs 1991; Kuate-
the concept of health, and not medical Defo 1996; Robert 1999; Wagstaff and Watanabe
health, is employed; meaning that the emphasis 2000; Oakes and Rossi 2003; Theorell and Vogel
is not on diagnosed disease, but rather on health 2003). The difference in terms of the physical
problems described in terms of physical and environment in low income populations, such as
physiological functions. Health problems may access to clean water, nutrition, and exposure to
be present even in cases where the individual solid waste contamination, is relevant in
does not have a clinical diagnosis of disease, explaining differences in the prevalence of disease.
and as such, the standardized clinical assessment Psychological health is also a variable that can
instrument the EQ-5D is employed. be explained by social context. In a recent study,
The chapter is structured as follows. Relevant Myer et al. (2008) nds that social context is
literature is presented in the second section. The relevant in determining the level of psychologi-
third section describes the data, the econometric cal distress experienced by individuals in
model and analysis of information, as well as the South Africa. This same result has been
most important results. Section four presents a identied in previous studies, for example John-
discussion of the most important implications of son et al. (1999) conduct a study with similar
the investigations ndings. results in the United States and Matthews and
Power (2002) for the case of Great Britain.
Bjelland et al. (2008) identify that a low level
29.2 Theory and Literature Review of education is signicantly associated with anx-
iety and depression. Friedman and Thomas
29.2.1 The Relationship Between (2007) determine that the latest Asian crisis neg-
Economic Variables and Health: atively impacted mental health in indicators such
Empirical Studies as sadness, fear, anxiety, sleep, feelings of
fatigue and exhaustion, tenderness and physical
Lifestyle and working conditions are two of the pain. Various investigations have worked on the
most important factors that affect health; for assumption that poverty has a negative effect on
example, the effect of variables such as the dis- psychological health (Kuruvilla and Jacob 2007;
tribution of income and economic development Acharya 2001). The consequences of poverty on
itself are studied in Millar and Hull (1997), levels of psychological distress arise through the
Theorell and Vogel (2003), Franks et al. (2003), difculties in meeting essential needs such as
and Frijters et al. (2005). Franks et al. (2003) food and shelter. There exists a strong relation-
speak on self-reported socio-demographics ship between the subjective well-being of an
differences in the United States, and nd that a individual and the satisfaction of their basic
low socioeconomic status is associated with needs (Veenhoven 1988, 1991).
lower levels of self-reported health and higher
mortality. Similarly, Frijters et al. (2005) uses
evidence collected in Germany to study the 29.2.2 Negative Consequences of Rapid
causal effect of income on health. In a recent Growth Dynamics
investigation, Fotso and Kuate-Defo (2005)
examine the effect of economic well-being The argument to associate rapid economic
variables in developing countries. Fotso and growth with a reduced prevalence of health
29 The Impact of Economic Growth on the Prevalence of Health Problems in Latin America 517
problems necessarily involves achieving living context of rapid economic growth. Durkheim
conditions that favour better health through (1960, 1963) introduced the concept of anomie
practicing a healthy lifestyle, epidemiologically in order to argue that rapid social change can
healthy environments, better nutrition, and adversely affect psychological well-being of
access to health services during situations when people; this has recently been conrmed in stud-
illness does occur. In the case of medium to high ies regarding economic transition and implemen-
income countries, however, this argument may tation of pro-market reforms (Genov 1998;
have less force as these conditions are already Bulmahn 2000; Namazie and Sanfey 2001; Lai
present. As stated above, in a recent article, Tapia and Lee 2006). While this concept applies to the
-Granados and Ionides (2008) show that eco- general population of a country, it may have
nomic growth in nineteen century Sweden was particular impact on those with few tools to facil-
positively related to progresses in terms of itate adaptation or change, e.g. low levels of
health; however this relationship has reversed education or education in low-productivity tasks
over time, and current economic growth may be that tend to disappear with a countrys rapid
generating harmful effects on health. In the growth. Finally, a fourth, methodological con-
United States, periods of rapid economic growth straint refers to the denition of health used in
in recent decades have coincided with increases research. In the traditional denition of the
in mortality (Easterlin 1999; Haines et al. 2003). World Health Organization, the term health
Further research has documented pro-cyclical encompasses a state of complete physical, mental
uctuations over recent decades in mortality and social well-being of the individual, such that
rates using data for Spain (Tapia-Granados health can be seen as a life experience that is
2002), Germany (Neumayer 2002) and OECD impaired by problems that are not necessarily
countries (Gerdtham and Ruhm 2002). Ruhm diagnosed as disease, e.g. mobility or psycholog-
(2003) studies how health state and use of medi- ical distress. Normally, however, studies focus
cal care uctuate cyclically with macroeconomic on the impact of economic growth on the preva-
conditions in the United States. lence of diagnosed physical or psychological ill-
To positively associate economic growth with ness (see for example Delno and Simmons
a lower prevalence of health problems has vari- 1999; Suhrcke and Urban 2006; Bell
ous conceptual constraints. The rst is related to et al. 2003; Gollin and Zimmermann 2007), and
whether economic growth is a result of not on health problems that may go undiagnosed
improvements in productivity or increases in as a disease, as is the case of mild functional
the time spent working by each individual. This problems in mobility or emotional state.
is directly linked to whether an individual has These factors suggest two topics of study. The
more or less time to dedicate to activities that rst, speaks to whether a rapid economic growth
promote good health, such as exercise, recreation rate is necessarily associated with a lower preva-
and social contact. A second constraint is the lence of health problems, though not necessarily
correlation between lifestyle habits and income diagnosed diseases. The second, as to whether
level. For example, Contoyannis et al. (2004) this dynamic is similar when comparing poor and
nd that sleeping well, exercising, and not smok- wealthy individuals.
ing have a large effect on the probability of
reporting excellent health. Moreover, habits
such as sedentary or low physical activity are 29.3 Survey and Data Description
associated with fewer years in the formal educa-
tion system, which in turn is associated with 29.3.1 Survey
lower income (Park and Kang 2008). A third
constraint concerns the adaptability of The principle data source of the investigation is
individuals regarding changes that arise in the The Gallup World Poll Master Questionnaire
Latin America 2007, which includes information Questionnaire2). Responses are binary, where
on the following 16 countries: Argentina, 1 indicates a poor psychological health status
Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, and 0 indicates a good psychological health.
Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, These variables are made operational by
Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru constructing a single indicator of emotional
and Uruguay. The survey provides data using state for which the reduction by principal
approximately 1000 personal interviews per components for binary variables method is
country and is representative at the country employed (using a polychoric correlation
level. As such, the data may be used to make matrix). To build the emotional status indicator,
person-level and country-level comparisons. The the rst principal component of the set of
specic information used in the research is variables is selected and re-scaled for a continu-
described in the following sections. ous variable from 0 to 100, where 0 is the best
emotional state and 100 the worst possible emo-
tional state possible. The rst component
29.3.2 Physical and Psychological explains 52 % of the variance of the seven
Health variables.3
Information related to health status was collected

using the standard EQ-5D EuroQol Group format 29.3.3 Economic Variables
(The Euroqol Group 1999; or www.euroqol.org;
Weinstein 1988). The EQ-5D distinguishes In order to study the impact of economic growth
between ve dimensions of health: mobility, per- on an individuals health, data from CEPAL4 was
sonal care, usual activities, pain/discomfort, and used. The average real GDP growth rate was
anxiety/depression. For each of the dimension, taken from the last 5 years since the implementa-
there are three levels of severity: no problems, tion of the Gallup Questionnaire (20022006).5
some problems, and extreme problems. This arti- Secondly, the theme of the chapter is to assess
cle combines the levels of severity so that each whether the dynamics (direction) of the impact of
dimension represents a binary variable that takes economic growth on health is similar between
the value of 1 when the person has some or the poor versus the wealthy. To classify
extreme health problems or 0 when the person individuals as wealthy and poor, the study used
has no problems. It was found that the variables the following criteria:
of pain/discomfort, and problems in usual
activities are the two most prevalent physical Poor: household per capita income lower than
health problems in each country. Comparatively, 2.5 USD/day.
the dimension of personal care was found to have Middle class: household per capita income
the lowest prevalence of some and extreme lower than 2.5 USD to 12.5 USD per day.
problems.
The rst four dimensions of the EQ-5D relate
2
to physical health, whereas the fth concerns More information on the survey and its methodology can
be found at: http://www.well-beingindex.com
psychological health. In the Gallup survey, psy- 3
Information related to the prevalence of physical and
chological health is also measured based on a set psychological problems, as well as a description of the
of questions associated with the emotional and emotional-state Index, are presented in Table 29.3 in the
affective state experienced by the individual on Appendix. The variables use to construct the emotional-
the day preceding the interview. The question- state index are described in Table 29.4 in the Appendix.
4
CEPALSTAT (http://www.cepal.org/estadisticas/bases/).
naire obtains information on the following 5
The choice of 5 years was arbitrary. Sensitivity tests
variables: enjoyment, anxiety, sadness, boredom,
were conducted and no signicant differences were
depression, anger, and love (The Gallup found in an increase or decrease in the period of
Healthways Well-Being Index 12 years.
Wealthy: household per capita income greater Table 29.1 Correlation between economic growth and
than 12.5 USD/day. prevalence of health problems among sub-populationsa
Poor Middle class Wealthy
The same criteria were applied in all countries Mobility .032 .016 .031
included in the analysis and personal income data Personal care .049 .013 .069
was taken from the Gallup questionnaire. Data Usual activities .032 .009 .039
was made comparable between countries follow- Pain/discomfort .028 .007 .001
Anxiety/ .019 .005 .019
ing adjustments according to Gasparini
depression
et al. (2008). Income is expressed in dollars per Emotional state .072 .031 .028
month, adjusted for purchasing power parity, and a
Correlation between variables at a micro level (complete
as such, the variable is comparable across sample)
countries. The monthly per capita family income
on average is 267 USD. Table 29.5 provides
descriptive information of categories built using and negative when calculated for those classied
these criteria. Approximately 22 % of as wealthy, suggesting that economic status is
respondents are classied as poor, or roughly associated with more health problems in the
2,700 people, while 20 % are classied as poor and less health problems in the wealthy.
wealthy. The strongest correlations were found in the
Table 29.5 in the appendix also shows a dimensions of usual activities and personal care,
description of the data on economic growth and and emotional state. This information is shown in
household income for each country. Table 29.1.
These results imply that the relationship
between economic growth and health is not the
29.3.4 Socio-Demographic Variables same for all income levels; in some cases the
impact can be positive and in other cases it may
The Gallup questionnaire provides a comprehen- be negative.
sive socio-demographic dataset at the individual
level. The full sample consists of individuals
with an average age of 38 years, 55 % are
women, 43 % have completed primary school 29.4 The Impact of Economic
as their highest level of education in the formal Growth on Health
system while 12 % have higher education. In
terms of marital status, 39 % of the respondents 29.4.1 The Econometric Model
were married and 33 % single, and 61 % of the
respondents live in urban areas. Econometric models were employed to establish
the empirical relationship between economic
growth and health problems. These models esti-
mate the impact of economic growth on health
29.3.5 Correlation Between Economic status differentiating between persons of average
Growth and Health Between or high income compared to low income. The
Population Groups following equations describe these relationships:
The correlation between prevalence of health ds*i Xi 1 Dyi cei 1 Dymi *cei
problems and economic growth rate indicates 2 Dyr i *cei ; i jK k
different patterns for middle class and wealthy
individuals. The correlation is positive when cal- k 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
culated for the population categorized as poor 29:1
Table 29.2 Impact of national economic growth on the incidence of health problems. Estimated coefficientsa
Dependent variablesb
Explanatory Personal Usual Pain/ Anxiety/ Emotional
variables Mobility care activities discomfort depression state
Real GDP growth .005** .0023** .0037 .019** 0.010 3.617***
(rg)
rg*middle income .0040** .0020** .0060*** .0127*** .0114*** 1.487***
rg*upper income .0045* .00295** .00723*** .0221*** .01321* 2.501***
(wealthy)
Source: Table 29.7 in appendix
*P < 0.1, **P < 0.05, ***P < 0.01
a
Marginal effects for an individual with the following characteristics: male, 40 years old, married, completed secondary
education, household per capita income of 260 USD per month and lives in a big city
b
The rst ve columns refer to binary variables where 1 means that the person has some or extreme health problems
(probit models). Emotional state is shown using a continuous variable from 0 to 100 where 100 is the worst possible
emotional state
eei Xi 1 Dyi cei household per capita economic growth and

1 Dymi *cei 2 Dyr i *cei income are included.
i 29:2

dski 1 ds*ki > 0 , and the estimation is probit; 29.4.2 Results
dsi is a vector of K variables of health state
(mobility, personal care, usual activities, pain/ Equations 29.1 and 29.2 have two objectives.
discomfort, anxiety/depression) estimate an The rst objective is to study whether differences
equation for each of these dimensions of health. in economic growth rates generate differences in
The dependent variable of Eq. 29.2 (eei) is the the prevalence of illness. The second is to study
index of emotional status that takes its value whether differences in the pattern of incidence of
from a scale of 0100, where 100 is the worst illness caused by economic growth affect more
emotional state, and given that it is a continuous the poor or the wealthy classes. Heteroske-
variable the estimation is made using Ordinary dasticity robust standard errors are estimated for
Least Squares (OLS). The binary variables Dmi tests of statistical signicance.
and Dri indicate respectively if the individual is One methodological consideration of a probit
of middle or high income (the reference category model, is that the estimated coefcients of
is to be poor). The variable cei refers to the rate of non-interacting variables provide information
average economic growth (20022006) of the regarding the direction, and not the magnitude,
country where the individuals lives. The Xi is of the marginal effects. Comparatively, in the
the vector of socio-demographic variables case of interacting variables the estimated
(female sex, education, marital status, area of coefcients do not provide information on the
residence, age, age squared, household per capita direction or magnitude of the marginal effects.
monthly income and country of residence). In order to measure the size or direction of the
Finally, interactions between the variables of impact of interacting variables it is necessary to
calculate the marginal effects. In order to do so, 29.5 Discussion

specic explanatory vectors were dened: male,
40 years of age, completed secondary education, The results of this research suggest unaccounted
married, living in a big city, with a monthly costs of economic growth. For example, a clear
household per capita income of 260 USD. pattern of a higher incidence of physical health
Table 29.2 shows the relevant marginal effects.6 problems is discernible in countries with high
It was found that the marginal effect of a rates of economic growth. We nd, however,
percentage point growth in real GDP is not neu- that this pattern is not the same between the
tral with respect to the probability of having wealthy and the poor. The results suggest that, in
health problems, and that the impact depends terms of the prevalence of physical health
on whether the person is wealthy or poor. problems, rich people benet more from eco-
If the individual is poor, the marginal effect of nomic growth than the poor. In countries with a
an additional percentage point in real GDP higher growth rate there is a higher prevalence of
growth rate on the probability of having a health disease, but the increase in prevalence is lower
problem is signicant for the dimensions of among rich people. For psychological health,
mobility, self-care, pain/discomfort and emo- countries with a higher rate of economic growth
tional state. However, although signicant, the are also associated with a higher prevalence of
absolute values are small. For example, in the disease, in this case, emotional problems and anx-
case of mobility, a 10 % increase in the rate of iety/depression. As with physical health, however,
real GDP growth translates into a 5 % increase in deterioration in emotional indicators in countries
likelihood of health problems, and a 19 % of fast economic growth has less impact on the
increase when considering pain/discomfort. wealthy.
The impact of one percentage point in real The results shown in the literature, together with
GDP growth can increase or decrease the likeli- the results of this research, suggest three
hood of health problems depending on the conclusions. The rst is that it is well established
income of the person. For example, in the dimen- that poorer countries have worse health indicators,
sion of personal care, an increase of 10 % in and that in these countries a direct consequence of
economic growth translates into an additional revenue growth is improved health conditions,
0.3 % in the probability of health problems if either via better access to consumer products
the individual is middle income. If the individual related to health care or by improvements in living
is of low income, however, the likelihood of conditions. Second, while tempting, the same
health problems is reduced by 0.6 %. Results in reasoning does not apply to middle and high-
the dimension of pain/discomfort are similar, income countries. Third, this impact of economic
where the impact of 10 % growth in GDP growth is not equal between wealthy and poor
translates into a higher likelihood of having individuals within countries; generally, high-
health problems among people with low and income individuals benet from an accelerated
middle incomes, and a higher chance of health rate of economic growth through reduced risk of
problems when the individual is of high income. incidence of physical and psychological health
In all physical and psychological dimensions, problems.
it was found that the probability of the individual It is possible that these patterns of interaction
experiencing health problems is lower as income between economic growth and health are
increases. affected by the Latin American context of, for
example, a highly unequal income distribution,
poor improvements in labour productivity and
unhealthy lifestyles that are associated with per-
6
Table 29.7 in the Appendix shows the estimated sonal income growth. These, however, remain
coefcients for all variables. hypotheses to be empirically corroborated.
522
Appendix
Table 29.3 Prevalence of physical health problems in Latin America
Mobility Personal care Usual activities Pain/discomfort
Country Poor Middle class Wealthy Poor Middle class Wealthy Poor Middle class Wealthy Poor Middle class Wealthy
Peru 17.3 11.4 10.1 06.3 02.5 01.6 15.1 08.6 03.3** 43.1 31.7 25.4**
Panama 07.8 06.6 03.9 04.8 01.9 00.7** 07.8 06.0 02.3** 15.0 12.4 11.7
Argentina 06.1 11.1 07.4 02.0 03.6 01.1 14.2 10.0 07.7 24.4 27.7 25.1
Ecuador 12.1 06.0 01.0*** 07.8 02.4 00.0*** 13.9 06.7 01.0*** 25.4 19.6 6.5***
Costa Rica 15.2 10.0 05.9** 02.1 02.4 01.3 08.6 07.3 05.4 30.4 22.3 13.2***
Colombia 12.3 08.8 08.9 01.6 01.5 00.0 14.8 08.0 07.2** 33.0 26.7 24.3*
Honduras 06.0 09.7 12.6 06.0 05.5 07.0 09.4 10.0 05.6 21.5 16.9 18.3
Uruguay 05.8 07.9 07.9 03.9 03.2 01.4 07.8 10.4 07.4 21.5 23.7 22.7
Chile 22.5 15.0 08.3** 08.4 05.9 02.0** 19.7 12.8 06.8*** 50.7 42.9 24.6***
Nicaragua 13.5 10.1 07.9 06.1 03.3 03.6 17.9 09.5 05.7 35.0 25.3 21.7***
Mexico 12.0 08.6 18.5 03.5 04.0 16.1*** 11.0 08.8 20.1** 25.5 21.3 26.6
Brazil 22.0 13.1 11.5** 01.5 03.2 02.0 21.2 11.6 09.5*** 42.5 37.6 28.6***
Bolivia 16.24 11.5 08.7 05.5 03.3 03.5 13.7 08.5 05.2* 38.0 32.7 28.0
Guatemala 10.6 07.5 04.1 06.0 05.5 02.0 08.3 06.8 04.1 18.1 15.0 08.3*
Paraguay 05.8 04.8 05.5 00.9 01.4 01.5 09.3 05.2 05.5 31.3 16.6 13.3***
El Salvador 07.7 06.3 04.8 02.7 04.0 00.0 06.3 06.6 01.5 20.7 16.6 09.6**
All countries 12.1 09.3 08.1*** 04.6 03.3 02.5*** 12.5 08.6 09.9*** 29.9 25.4 20.6***
Source: Gallup world poll master questionnaire Latin America 2007
Note: An asterisks denotes a statistically signicant between wealthy and poor populations * P < 0.1, **P < 0.05, ***P < 0.01
M. Elizondo-Lara and M. Rojas
Table 29.4 Prevalence of psychological health problems in Latin America

Anxiety/depressiona Emotional stateb
Country Poor Middle Wealthy Poor Middle Wealth
Peru 28.9 24.4 23.7 34.6 28.59 17.8***
Panama 4.21 04.9 07.0 16.9 14.97 11.6**
Argentina 30.6 26.6 21.1 35.0 25.14 18.87***
Ecuador 21.5 14.0 7.6*** 32.3 22.03 18.2***
Costa Rica 23.9 17.4 9.5*** 29.4 21.52 14.6***
Colombia 24.7 20.2 17.0* 35.0 25.98 20.0***
Honduras 17.2 11.4 09.8 20.6 20.71 16.0
Uruguay 23.5 20.8 23.7 24.0 22.86 21.1
Chile 36.6 29.5 21.4** 43.4 27.52 18.9***
Nicaragua 23.6 24.4 11.5*** 29.0 26.50 20.6***
Mexico 20.0 12.5 27.4 22.6 20.73 14.6***
Brazil 23.6 26.0 25.6 27.9 22.25 18.6***
Bolivia 38.0 32.2 29.8 41.7 30.46 26.9***
Guatemala 17.4 11.4 22.9 18.9 19.90 19.6
Paraguay 21.0 15.3 09.4*** 19.7 15.25 17.0
El Salvador 09.5 07.9 03.2 23.6 20.02 17.4***
All countries 21.8 18.7 17.4*** 28.1 22.73 18.16***
Source: Gallup world poll master questionnaire Latin America 2007
* P < 0.1; **P < 0.05; ***P < 0.01
a
Dimension ve of the EQ-5D: indicates some or extreme anxiety/depression
b
Emotional state: shows values on a scale of 0100, where 100 is the worst emotional state. An asterisks denotes a
statistically signicant between wealthy and poor populations
Table 29.5 Psychological health-related questionsa

Code Description Response
Did you experience any of the following feelings during the most part of yesterday?
Enjoy How about enjoyment? 0: yes, 1: no
Worry How about worry? 0: no, 1: yes
Sad How about sadness? 0: no, 1: yes
Bored How about boredom? 0: no, 1: yes
Depression How about depression? 0: no, 1: yes
Anger How about anger? 0: no, 1: yes
Love How about love? 0: yes, 1: no
EQ-5D: some or extreme anxiety/depression 0: no, 1: yes
a
Gallup-healthways well-being index questionnaire: http://www.well-beingindex.com/methodology-questions.html
Table 29.6 Descriptive statistics by country: percentage of people by income categories and economic growth
Observations per category of Average household per
income (%)a capita monthly income
Middle Middle Average economic Number of
Country Poor income Wealthy Poor income Wealth growth rateb respondents
Argentina 7.22 53.0 39.7 48.4 215.8 748.0 3.93 912
Bolivia 31.9 58.8 9.2 40.4 168.3 724.9 1.35 864
Brazil 14.9 61.6 23.4 47.2 198.7 737.4 1.79 991
Chile 9.43 65.2 25.3 48.5 187.4 890.2 3.24 868
Colombia 16.3 52.0 31.6 43.0 197.0 877.2 3.34 939
Costa Rica 7.28 58.0 34.6 53.3 213.4 824.9 3.59 926
Ecuador 29.4 60.8 9.7 47.1 166.8 584.6 3.65 1026
El 35.6 55.5 8.8 43.7 160.9 718.8 0.94 959
Salvador
Guatemala 27.1 62.9 9.8 48.4 175.4 577.8 1.04 910
Honduras 21.2 65.7 13.0 44.3 177.4 643.4 3.31 858
Mexico 25.1 59.3 15.5 43.3 181.2 686.7 1.89 921
Nicaragua 25.3 59.2 15.3 41.8 181.2 718.9 1.99 977
Panama 21.8 61.3 16.8 47.1 185.3 644.5 4.10 931
Paraguay 25.3 58.9 15.7 41.6 186.8 653.6 1.03 939
Peru 36.7 55.6 7.6 39.6 167.1 639.7 4.44 898
Uruguay 9.6 52.3 38.0 49.6 205.5 767.8 3.29 820
All 21.8 58.8 19.2 44.1 185.5 748.2 2.68 14,739
countries
Source: Household income: Gallup world poll master questionnaire Latin America 2007
Economic growth: CEPALSTAT http://www.cepal.org/estadisticas/bases/
Notes: aPoor: household per capita income of less than or equal to USD 2.5 per day. Wealthy: household per capita
income greater than or equal to USD 12.5 per day. bAverage real GDP growth in 2,000 dollars rate, 20022006
Table 29.7 The impact of socioeconomic variable on the incidence of poor physical and psychological health. Estimated coefficients
29
Dependent variablesa
Independent variables Mobility Personal care Usual activities Pain/discomfort Anxiety/depression Emotional state
Income *1000 .089 .142** .142 .109* .155** 2.433***
GDP growth rate (growth_gdp) .077** .159*** .053 .062** .031 3.617***
Average income *growth_gdp .042*** .073*** .068*** .037*** .034** 1.487***
Wealthy*growth_gdp .048* .135*** .086*** .068*** .040* 2.501***
Female .086** .043 .110*** .274*** .214*** 3.950***
Age .013** .006 .011** .022*** .017*** .306***
Age squared .151*** .172** .129** .000 .0973* 2.572***
Primary education (reference: without formal education) .168*** .276*** .269*** .097** .043 3.251***
Secondary education .333*** .256*** .370*** .241*** .036 4.193***
Superior .269*** .195** .297*** .258*** .045 4.491***
Married .172*** .148** .075 .057 .064 2.473***
Separated .163* .134 .165* .059 .141** 3.184**
Divorced .072 .077 .097 .089 .221** .187
Widowed .000 .053 .070 .059 .101 1.397
Civil partnership/common law marriage) .027 .078 .001 .051 .019 1.188
Small town (reference: rural) .024 .114 .074 .079 .074 2.338***
Large city .099 .254*** .166*** .077* .018 2.163***
Suburb in large city .016 .398*** .163** .074 .102 1.258
Mexico (reference: Brazil) .070 .600*** .144* .273*** .259*** 1.791
Costa Rica .238*** .131 .194** .453*** .306*** 4.568***
Argentina .295*** .168 .037 .275*** .003 2.277*
Bolivia .065 .248 .119 .047 .273*** 11.436***
Chile .111 .115 .033 .014 .052 1.735
Colombia .311*** .493*** .202** .281*** .189*** .976
Ecuador .405*** .032 .171** .524*** .384*** 2.829**
The Impact of Economic Growth on the Prevalence of Health Problems in Latin America
El Salvador .367*** .164 .418*** .565*** .760*** .416

Guatemala .148 .501*** .202 .539*** .330*** .779
Honduras .238** .280** .128 .553*** .466*** 6.094***
Nicaragua .008 .243* .048 .073 .053 3.437***
Panama .432*** .155 .300*** .774*** .960*** 12.409***
Paraguay .503*** .180 .345*** .491*** .360*** 3.600**
525
(continued)
526
Dependent variablesa
Independent variables Mobility Personal care Usual activities Pain/discomfort Anxiety/depression Emotional state
Uruguay .617*** .269* .269*** .550*** .143* 2.907**
Constant 1.86*** 2.45*** 1.667*** 1.259*** 1.193*** 11.697***
Obs. 11,420 11,420 11,420 11,420 11,420 11,420
F chi2 (probability) .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000
Pseudo R2 .1534 .1468 .1368 .1163 .0602 .0643
*P < 0.1, **P < 0.05, ***P < 0.01
a
The rst ve columns represent binary variables, where 1 signies that the individual has some or extreme health problems (probit model). The emotional state variable is
continuous from 0 to 100 where 100 is the worst emotional state possible (MCO model)
M. Elizondo-Lara and M. Rojas
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Health Policy, 16(3), 199208. Journal of Health Economics, 7(3), 289290.
Part VI
The Importance of Subjective Well-Being Indicators
The Distance Between Perception
and Reality in the Social Domains 30
of Life
Eduardo Lora
30.1 Introduction economists, psychologists, and sociologists, to

measure and explain the gaps between perception
The object of study of the fast-growing science of and reality: health, employment, the sense of
subjective well-being is not just happiness and security, and social ranking. The main sources
life satisfaction in general, but also all those of data used by the researchers are opinion
aspects of peoples lives that inuence how surveys administered by international
they view themselves and their role in society. organizations such as Gallup and
As occurs with sensory perception, the way Latinobarometer and by national statistical
individuals perceive the social domains of their ofces and research institutions (often
lives is the result of complex interactions complemented and contrasted with objective
between some aspects of reality and the mental data from other sources). Although Latin Amer-
models and shortcuts used to process and inter- ica is the main focus in this chapter, references
pret that reality (Pinker 1997, 2002). are made to ndings elsewhere, especially to
Since perceptions are not direct reections of emphasize common patterns.
reality, they do not necessarily correspond to the The distance between perception and reality is
objective measures used to describe reality.1 often striking. For instance, the percentages of
Mismatches between perception and reality in individuals who respond yes to the question,
the social domains of life are extremely common Are you satised with your health? across
but, as is the case with sensory mismatches with countries (in Latin America or elsewhere) bear
reality, they tend to follow certain patterns. almost no relation to the most widely accepted
These patterns are beginning to emerge from health indicators, such as life expectancy and
the incipient but promising research in this area. infant mortality rates. Similarly, a vast majority
This chapter focuses on four social domains of Latin American workers81 %, according to
where some inroads have been made, mainly by Gallup data2respond afrmatively to the ques-
tion, Are you satised with your job? despite
the (objectively) bad working conditions, as
1 measured by indicators such as informality rates
Furthermore, some objective measures may also be
subjective inasmuch as they are constructs based on the
subjective criteria of experts.
2
E. Lora (*) All of the perception data mentioned in this paragraph
Center for International Development, Harvard come from the Gallup World Poll of 2006 for Latin
University, Cambridge, MA, USA America. Further details are presented in the relevant
e-mail: eduardo.a.lora@gmail.com sections below.

532 E. Lora
and coverage of social security. Although as few techniques (Krosnick 1999; Schaeffer and
as 42 % of all Latin Americans afrm that they Presser 2003). With respect to reason (4), self-
feel secure walking at night in [their] neighbor- reported data is necessary to study perceptions
hood, which sounds reasonable given the high and how they are formed, and to understand why
crime rates in the region, feelings of insecurity they may differ from objective data. When
are stronger in some of the more secure countries discussing self-reported data it is important to
and, even at the neighborhood level, those explicate the possible cognitive, affective, or
feelings usually bear no resemblance to objective motivational mechanisms underlying the
crime data. Equally striking is the fact that, in response process (Chan 2009, p. 331) in order
rich and poor countries alike, the vast majority of to identify the gaps with objective (non-reported)
people consider themselves to belong to the mid- data, the possible measurement problems, and
dle class, while fewer than 6 % classify them- the biases that may contribute to the gaps.
selves among the richest third of the population.3 Expectations that depend on cultural values
Although there may be myriad possible condition how individuals judge many aspects
reasons for the mismatches between subjective of their lives. What is good or poor health, or a
and objective data, relatively few factors are good or a bad job, depends on how much
found to have strong explanatory power, and salience, or weight, the objective health or
those can be linked almost invariably to some working conditions have in a persons judgments
type of psychological bias. Many of the reasons and on the reference levels used by individuals to
that are not important in explaining the gaps are compare their situation with what they consider
those favored by statisticians and economists. to be achievable or acceptable. Those weights
Self-reported data are often dismissed as lacking and reference levels may vary substantially
reliability for four main reasons (Chan 2009): across nations and across socioeconomic groups
(1) systemic reporting errors (in one variable), within nations, as they are inuenced by tradition
due to wording or order of questions and various and by the norms and roles assigned by society to
types of response tendencies (acquiescence, cen- each gender, class, or group. The ensuing cultural
tral tendency); (2) correlation between those differences (often erroneously called biases)4
reporting errors in the dependent and explanatory may be more pronounced in some social
variables intervening in the model; (3) social domains, like health across nations, or job satis-
desirability responding; and (4) the supposed faction across socioeconomic groups within a
superiority of data collected from non-self-report country.
measures vis-a`-vis self-reported data. As argued Many of the objective factors that intervene in
by Chan, although each of these reasons contains peoples judgments about their health, jobs, and
kernels of truth, each has been elevated to a other aspects of their lives may not be captured
myth, without sufcient regard to the importance by the indicators regularly used by governments
of the problem and the possible solutions. In or analysts (which are often constructs based on
most cases, problems (1) and (2) can be handled criteria established by experts or by conven-
with standard econometric techniques. Problem tion).5 And many factors that inuence
(3), the tendency to intentionally respond in a individuals perceptions in the social domains
way that is considered socially desirable (or in of their lives may be entirely subjective, in the
other strategically biased ways), has been sense that they cannot be veried by an external
demonstrated not to be as pronounced as the
proponents of the social desirability theory
4
initially held, and can also be mitigated with Since cultureas well as personalityrefers to those
factors that construct what individuals are and how they
appropriate survey designs and econometric
see themselves and the world around them, perception is
necessarily shaped by those factors.
5
And, as such, may be said to be subjective or cultur-
3
See the exact wording of this question below. ally biased.
30 The Distance Between Perception and Reality in the Social Domains of Life 533
observer. Feelings of identity and trust, for exam- enhancementare especially relevant to under-
ple, which pervade perceptions of job quality and standing the distance between perception and
personal security, among others, cannot be reality in all the social domains of life. If opti-
inferred externally. Such feelings may radically mism can be dened as the tendency to see
alter the way some objective conditions inuence everything through a positive lens, self-
satisfaction in some social domains. For exam- enhancement is peoples tendency to see them-
ple, workers who identify with their employer selves as better than the average (Alicke 1985;
derive satisfaction from exerting more work Guenther and Alicke 2010; Thaler and Sunstein
effort, while those who do not identify with 2008). The inuence of optimism in perceptions
their rms lose utility when exerting effort of the social domains of life has often been
(Akerlof and Kranton 2005, 2010). corroborated using survey data, including by
Mental shortcuts, or heuristics, are a psycho- some of the studies of Latin America discussed
logical resource used by individuals to deal with below.7 However, since the measure of optimism
difcult questions (Kahneman 2011), such as most commonly used is relative (that is, the
some of the standard satisfaction questions to individuals tendency to respond in a more, or
be discussed in this chapter.6 In particular, safety less, positive way than the average of the
perceptions, and risk assessments in general, are interviewees), this bias does not help to explain
strongly inuenced by the affect and availability any systematic differences between subjective
heuristics: instead of responding to a question and objective indicators. Furthermore, almost
such as, How safe is this neighborhood? invariably, the inclusion of optimism as an
interviewees substitute a related and easier ques- explanatory variable in perception regressions
tion, such as, Do I often see gangs in my neigh- does not substantially alter the inuence of
borhood? or Have I heard of any crimes other variables.
recently? Evidence of biases consistent with Since self-enhancement is a pervasive psy-
the affect and availability heuristics in safety chological tendency, it is surprising that it does
perceptions is compelling in Latin America and not show up in the social domain where it might
elsewhere. Evidence for other potentially impor- be most likely to appear, that is, perceived social
tant biases, however, is merely suggestive. The ranking. Perceived social rankings are strongly
so-called endowment effect, loosely dened as skewed toward the middle of the scale, not the
the universal tendency to attach to ones top. However, in other social domains, some
belongings a higher value than to those same evidence of self-enhancement is found when
belongings when they are not in our possession comparing individuals assessment of their own
(Kahneman et al. 1990; Kahneman and Tversky conditions with their assessment of the situation
1986; Kahneman 2011) and the related tendency of the country as a whole in the same domain
to value highly those life aspects that demand (IDB 2008). For instance, while 81 % of Latin
effort, are costly, or painful (Aronson and Mills Americans express satisfaction with their jobs,
1959; Gerard and Mathewson 1966; Tavris and only 35 % are satised with what their govern-
Aronson 2007) are two sources of bias suggested ment is doing to increase the number and qual-
by the implicit valuations given by individuals to ity of jobs available. Similarly, while 85 % of
many of their assets when assessing their social Latin Americans are satised with their health,
ranking. only 61 % are satised with the availability of
Apart from these psychological biases, two quality health care in the city or area where
other closely related biasesoptimism and self- they live.
6 7
For a broader psychological perspective of survey In my own econometric studies, I have assessed the
response issues see Tourangeau et al. (2000). A brief inuence of optimism on job satisfaction (Chaparro and
overview of the literature on the psychology of survey Lora 2013), on health satisfaction (Lora, 2011), and on
response is provided by Farrall et al. (2009, pp. 5359). subjective social rankings (Lora and Fajardo 2013).
534 E. Lora
Without exception, people in all world regions America covered by the 2007 poll, Chileans are
and in all Latin American countries covered by the least satised with their health, even though
the Gallup World Poll hold a higher average objective health indicators in Chile are among
opinion of their own personal situation than the best in the region. Beyond Latin America, it
they do of the situation of society as a whole in is even more intriguing that health satisfaction in
the ve aspects of life assessed by the IDB study some of the countries most affected by the
(general satisfaction, economic satisfaction, HIV-AIDS epidemicsuch as Tanzania,
health satisfaction, job satisfaction, and housing Zimbabwe, Botswana, South Africa and
satisfaction). This can be taken as suggestive of Kenyareport health satisfaction coefcients
the presence and importance of self- of 70 % or more. The satisfaction coefcient for
enhancement biases in the social domains of Kenya (82 %) is equal to Britain and is one
life under examination, even though the percentage point higher than the United States
questions asked to assess satisfaction at the per- (Deaton 2010).
sonal and the societal level are not strictly A fundamental problem with subjective
equivalent. assessments of health is that they depend on
personal expectations of good health. These, in
turn, depend on social and cultural environments,
30.2 Health Perceptions which may render cross-national and other inter-
group comparisons invalid. The interpretation of
The percentage of Latin Americans who say they the scales used in the surveys may also vary
are satised with their health is very high across cultures and groups.8 Nonetheless, subjec-
85 %according to the 2007 Gallup World tive assessments of health are valuable sources of
Poll. This is not signicantly different from information. In some aspects of health, such as
other regions of the world, with the notable pain and discomfort, the subjective perception is
exception of Eastern Europe and Central Asia the only valid source of information. In other
(see Fig. 30.1). The surprising homogeneity in aspects, external observation and individual per-
percentages of satisfaction in the large regions of ception can coincide or provide complementary
the world and the large differences between information. Other health problems or
countries of similar levels of development chal- deciencies, such as hypertension, cannot be per-
lenge simplistic interpretations of how health ceived and are only detectable by external obser-
perceptions are formed. vation. Consequently, to fully characterize any
Countries with very different income levels or individuals health, both self-perception and
with appreciably different objective health external observation are essential, which is also
conditions report similar percentages of health the case for summary measures of population
satisfaction. The simple correlations (without
controlling for other variables) in country-level
8
data between health satisfaction and income Sommerfeld et al. (2002) and Salomon et al. (2004).
Jurges (2007) has found that an important part of cross-
levels or life expectancy are low (0.22 and 0.19,
country differences in self-reported health in ten
respectively). In Latin America, Guatemala is European countries can be attributed to differences in
one of the countries with the highest levels of response styles, possibly reecting differences in beliefs,
health satisfaction, despite its poor mortality values, and expectations. Lindeboom and van Doorslaer
(2004) and van Doorslaer and Gerdtham (2003) have
indicators and enormous disparities in various
found evidence of reporting differences across age-sex
health indicators, especially between the indige- groups but not across socioeconomic groups in Sweden
nous and non-indigenous populations. With a and Canada, while Milcent and Etile (2006) provide evi-
94 % satisfaction coefcient, Guatemalans rate dence of reporting differences by income but only in the
middle categories of self-rated health. Groot (2000)
their health better than almost any other country
analyzes the impact of age biases in the United States
in the world, with only two exceptions: Kuwait and nds that the scale of reference of a subjective health
and Costa Rica. Among the countries of Latin measure changes with age.
Fig. 30.1 Health

satisfaction in Latin
America and in regions of
the world (Source:
Authors calculations based
on Gallup (2006 y 2007)
health. Health perceptions are relevant for under- with Yes or No (henceforth health satisfac-
standing the importance individuals assign to tion), and Using a scale from 0 to 10, in
various aspects of their health, their aspirations, which the best state you can imagine is marked
and their understanding of what is or is not good 10 and the worst state you can imagine is marked
health. Therefore, they are also useful for public 0, indicate how good or bad your own health is
health policy design, monitoring, and evaluation. today (henceforth health status). Although the
Given the strong inuence of values and results of both questions across countries are
expectations that vary across cultures, interna- correlated, the match is far from perfect, as can
tional comparability of health satisfaction be seen in Table 30.1. It should be expected that
measures is problematic. People of different the lower an individual rates herself on the health
cultures may rate their health on the basis of status scale, the higher the probability that she
different criteria. These differences can be will declare herself unsatised with her health.
highlighted by comparing across countries the But if individuals in one country are much more
responses to two similar questions that were tolerant of their health problems than those of
included in the Gallup Poll of 2007 for the another country, more individuals from the low
Latin American countries: Are you satised rungs of the scale in the rst country will declare
with your health? which can be responded to themselves satised with their health.
536 E. Lora
Table 30.1 Health satisfaction measurements national averages

Health satisfaction [0,1] Health state [0,10]
Costa Rica 0.936 8.47
Guatemala 0.930 7.84
Venezuela 0.926 n.a.
Panama 0.895 8.01
Honduras 0.883 7.47
Guyana 0.873 7.38
Mexico 0.867 7.81
Belize 0.864 7.53
Argentina 0.860 7.50
Uruguay 0.848 7.29
Brazil 0.847 7.40
Colombia 0.842 7.65
El Salvador 0.841 7.24
Dominican Republic 0.833 7.60
Bolivia 0.826 6.57
Paraguay 0.807 7.31
Nicaragua 0.805 7.20
Ecuador 0.800 6.51
Peru 0.790 6.38
Chile 0.684 6.66
Source: Lora (2011)
Note: The correlation between the two measures is 0.778
Consider Fig. 30.2, which compares tolerance to health problems is among the
Guatemala and Chile. The gure shows the populations of each country).
estimated probabilities with a probit regression Figure 30.3 gives the measures of intolerance
(for the individuals of each country) of the health for all Latin American countries. Chile is the
satisfaction variable (which only takes values country with the highest intolerance, followed
from 0 or 1 for each individual), where the by the other countries in the extreme south of
explanatory variable is health status (which the continent (Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and
takes discrete values from 0 to 10). In Paraguay) and Mexico. At the other extreme, the
Guatemala, tolerance of health problems is most tolerant countries are all Central American
higher than in Chile, so the probability of being (Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, and Pan-
satised with health is substantially higher from ama). These results suggest the inuence of cul-
low levels of the 010 scale. In order to compare tural differences in assumptions and beliefs about
levels of tolerance among all countries with a health, which render cross-national comparisons
simple measure, the steepest part of the curve invalid. Comparisons of individuals
for each country can be taken as a critical toler- within countries are also more reliable in some
ance level because this is the point where an countries than in others, as suggested by the
increase (or decrease) of a level on the 010 scale heterogeneity of responses reected in the con-
has the highest impact on the probability of being dence intervals for Chile and Guatemala.
satised (or dissatised) with ones health. (The Since comparability between countries is lim-
width of the condence ranges, which also ited by cultural factors that are difcult to isolate
appear in the gure, reects how heterogeneous and measure, a cross-country analysis provides at
Probability (health satisfaction = 1 | Health state)
0.97 0.97
1.0 0.95
0.92
0.88 0.89
0.9 0.82 0.79
0.8 0.73
0.7 0.64
0.61
0.6
0.49 0.46
0.5 Chile
0.37
0.4
0.29 Guatemala
0.3
0.16
0.2
0.08
0.1 0.04
0.0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Health State (scale 0-10)
Fig. 30.2 Relation between health satisfaction and intervals. The Y-axis predicts the effect of a
self-rated health status. Chile and Guatemala persons self-reported health status on the likelihood
(Source: Authors calculations using Gallup World that they will report they are satised with their
Poll (2007). Note: dotted lines are 95 % condence health)
Chile
Paraguay
Uruguay
Colombia
Brazil
Argentina
Mexico
Guyana
Peru
Nicaragua
Ecuador
Bolivia
Dominican
El Salvador
Panama
Guatemala
Costa Rica
Honduras
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
Intolerance measure
Fig. 30.3 A measure of health intolerance (Source: Lora (2011). Note: The intolerance measure is the interval in which
the slope of the relation between health satisfaction and health status reaches a maximum)
538 E. Lora
Table 30.2 Moderate and extreme health conditions (EQ-5D components) by income quintile (Percentages of people
declaring each condition)
Income quintile Totals for individuals with Totals for
Health condition Lowest 2nd 3rd 4th Highest income information whole sample
Mobility problems 13.3 11.4 9.6 8.3 7.6 10.1 9.94
Moderate 13.0 11.0 9.4 8.0 6.9 9.7 9.57
Extreme 0.3 0.4 0.3 0.3 0.7 0.4 0.37
Self care problems 4.8 3.6 4.2 2.3 2.8 3.6 3.78
Moderate 4.7 3.4 3.9 2.1 2.4 3.3 3.52
Extreme 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.2 0.5 0.2 0.26
Limitations to 13.4 11.2 9.1 7.7 6.4 9.6 9.53
perform usual
activities
Moderate 12.8 10.6 8.7 7.4 5.9 9.1 8.99
Extreme 0.6 0.6 0.5 0.3 0.5 0.5 0.54
Pain 31.5 28.7 25.8 23.7 19.6 26.0 24.95
Moderate 26.9 25.6 23.2 20.9 18.2 23.1 22.18
Extreme 4.6 3.1 2.6 2.8 1.4 2.9 2.77
Anxiety 21.9 21.4 18.9 17.0 16.4 19.2 18.31
Moderate 18.5 18.5 16.5 15.1 14.2 16.6 15.80
Extreme 3.5 2.8 2.3 1.9 2.1 2.5 2.51
Source: Lora (2011)
best a blurry picture of the factors that inuence 18.3 % mentioned anxiety (15.8 % moderate,
perceptions of health. As discussed in Deaton 2.5 % extreme), 10 % said they had mobility
(2010) and Lora (2011), health satisfaction problems (9.6 % moderate, 0.4 % extreme),
across countries is not associated (in a statisti- 9.5 % mentioned physical limitations in their
cally signicant way) with any of the best known daily activities (9 % moderate, 0.5 % extreme),
objective health indicators. It is associated with and 3.8 % referred to problems with looking after
income per capita, but the effect is very modest, themselves (3.5 % moderate, 0.3 % extreme).
and it is inversely associated with economic According to the econometric estimates in Lora
growth. However, health perceptions at the indi- (2011), the conditions that most affect the rating
vidual level (within countries) do reect health that individuals give their own health (on a 010
conditions in a remarkably clear and consistent scale) are, in descending order: extreme pain,
way. The Gallup World Poll of 2007 for Latin moderate pain, extreme anxiety, and extreme
American countries included the set of questions limitations on performing daily activities. These
on health conditions known as EuroQol 5D, or are followed in importance by moderate
EQ-5D, a standardized instrument that inquires limitations on performing daily activities, mod-
about the presence of health problems in ve erate anxiety problems, and moderate mobility
dimensions: mobility, self-care, usual activities, problems. Other conditions do not have a statis-
pain/discomfort, and anxiety/depression. This tically signicant effect (possibly because of the
method of self-assessment reveals that the most low number of people in the sample with those
common health problems reported by Latin conditions).
Americans are pain and anxiety (see Table 30.2): Importantly, the frequency of health problems
when polled, 25 % of the respondents said they across income groups reveals normal
suffered pain (22.2 % moderate, 2.8 % extreme), gradients, with poorer individuals reporting
more health problems (although some extreme low-income levels and increased access to treat-
problems do not have a well-dened gradient, ment or help at high-income levels.
which could be due to the low number of people Furthermore, health satisfaction depends on
that declared them).9 A more careful economet- individuals income level, even after taking into
ric analysis conrms the existence of signicant consideration the impact of health conditions.
normal gradients for all moderate conditions and Not only do the poor experience and recognize
for extreme conditions of pain and anxiety, after ailments with higher frequency than the rich, but,
controlling for age, sex, and xed country after taking into account the impact of those
effects. Therefore, within Latin American ailments on their health satisfaction, poorer
countries, the poor, much more than the rich, individuals are also found to be less satised
suffer from and recognize a range of deciencies. with their health and to place themselves lower
In only two casesextreme problems of mobil- on the health status scale.
ity and looking after oneselfthe opposite result Therefore, the empirical evidence for Latin
is obtained. These are cases in which cultural America does not provide support for the widely
differences could play a role in making the poor held hypothesis that the poor are more tolerant of
less aware of certain ailments, but the result must their health problems; if anything, the opposite
be taken as very tentative as it could be due to the holds. Although there may be some cultural
small size of the sample of people with these differences across socioeconomic groups within
ailments. countries, those differences have a rather limited
The fact that the socioeconomic gradients of inuence on how self-perceived morbidities are
most of the conditions reported in EQ-5D are reected in health satisfaction and self-rated
normal and signicant does not rule out the pos- health status. While international comparability
sibility that lower socioeconomic groups may of health perceptions is problematic due to
have a greater tendency to tolerate certain health important differences in health values and
deciencies, even if they recognize their pres- expectations, comparability within countries is
ence. Contrary to this widely held view, the low- clearly possible.
est levels are not more tolerant to their health Health perception data may have several
ailments and problems. If anything, the opposite important uses. It can help identify health
holds, according to the econometric analysis in inequalities within populations, as shown in this
Lora (2011). The Latin American poor seem to section. Health perception data may also be use-
suffer more when they have limitations on ful for policymakers to help them monitor
performing their daily activities and when they changes in the health of a given population
feel extreme anxiety, which may reect the (along with objective indicators, such as mortal-
greater demands of physical work in the ity rates). Comparability across time may be
prevented by changes in health beliefs,
aspirations and expectations. However, these
9
changes are likely to have more inuence on
Health perceptions of the general populations of Latin
health satisfaction and self-rated health than on
American countries have been the subject of very few
studies. Suarez-Berenguela (2000) calculated socioeco- the health problems surveyed by the EQ-5D
nomic gradients of health-assessed health status in Brazil, instrument.
Jamaica, and Mexico and of self-reported symptoms of The cost of collecting data on all these
illness or accident in those same countries, plus Ecuador
dimensions of health through surveys that are
and Peru. He found normal gradients, although they were
substantially less steep than the objective indicators of representative of the entire population of a coun-
morbidity or mortality. Dachs et al. (2002) studied try is very low (especially if the questions are
inequalities in self-reported health problems in 11 Latin attached to a regular household survey). The uses
American countries. They found that inequalities
of that data for health policy decisions should
(by quintiles) were small, which they attributed to cultural
and social differences across socioeconomic groups in the make the initial investment worth pursuing. The
perception of health. health proles provided by the EQ-5D
540 E. Lora
instrument may inform debates on priorities for measures are 0.66 and 0.73,10 respectively, which
health service delivery and may help rebalance are remarkably high in light of the low correlations
health expenditures to address problems, such as often found between perceptions and objective
anxiety and pain, which show high prevalence indicators on other dimensions of well-being,
rates and exact a heavy toll on quality of life such as health. Furthermore, the association
(Graham et al. 2011). Simple measures of popu- between job satisfaction and productivity is robust
lation health, such as indices based on the EQ-5D to a large set of controls (Chaparro and Lora 2013).
instrument (see Lora 2011 for actual Job satisfaction across countries worldwide is
computations), could help focus the public dis- not correlated in a robust way with any aspect of
cussion on health policy on a regular basis, in the the labor legislation codes considered in Botero
same way that data on GDP growth, price ina- et al. (2004), the most comprehensive compila-
tion, or unemployment does for macroeconomic tion of labor legislation available in the literature.
and labor policies. What have made these eco- In Latin American countries, job satisfaction is
nomic indicators relevant and visible are not their not at all associated with the share of the working
renement and technical soundness, but their population that is either self-employed or
conceptual simplicity and regular computation employed in rms of fewer than ten workers,
and discussion. Because of their relevance, they often considered synonymous with informality
have attracted scrutiny and research efforts, and poor-quality employment.11
which have contributed to their gradual improve-
ment and comparability across countries
and time.
30.3.1 The Value of Independence
Since cultural differences with respect to what

30.3 Job Satisfaction constitutes a good job may obscure the relation-
ship between job satisfaction and objective
Workers in Latin America report high levels of
employment conditions, most empirical litera-
job satisfaction. According to data from the 2006
ture on the subject uses individual-level data,
Gallup World Poll, on average 81 % of the
rather than national averages, to explore the
workers in the region are satised with their
determinants of job satisfaction. Thanks to the
jobs, a percentage slightly lower than that in
growing inuence of the science of happiness,
Western Europe and North America but higher
economists have recently devoted considerable
than in the other world regions (Fig. 30.4). The
attention to understanding how working
countries with the highest job satisfaction in
conditions inuence job satisfaction.12
Latin America are Guatemala, Costa Rica, and
Blanchower and Oswald (1999) found that job
Venezuela, where the percentages of those
satisfaction is higher among the self-employed,
satised with their jobs are higher than in many
supervisors, and those with secure jobs. Using
developed nations like the United States or the
United Kingdom. Although, as a general ten-
10
dency, the higher a countrys income per capita, The two measures are, respectively, total factor produc-
the higher the percentage of workers that declare tivity computed as a residual from a Cobb-Douglas pro-
duction function with capital and education-augmented
themselves to be satised with their jobs, work labor, and a measure of labor productivity where labor is
satisfaction in Latin America is signicantly augmented by education. These productivity calculations
higher than what that pattern would imply (IDB come from Daude and Fernandez-Arias (2010).
2008).
11
The correlation is 0.004 for the 18 Latin American
countries with data on self-employment and employment
Worldwide job satisfaction is more strongly
in rms of less than ten workers in 2007 (or closest year)
associated with productivity than per capita computed by SEDLAC from ofcial household survey data.
income. The simple correlations between job 12
Warr (2003) provides an excellent summary of this
satisfaction and two national-level productivity literature.
Western Europe
North America
Latin America and the Caribbean
East Asia and Pacific
South Asia
Middle East and North Africa
Europe and Central Asia
Sub-Saharan Africa
Guatemala
Costa Rica
Venezuela
Brazil
Panama
Honduras
Colombia
Mexico
Bolivia
Paraguay
Uruguay
Nicaragua
Guyana
Belize
El Salvador
Ecuador
Jamaica
Argentina
Chile
Trinidad and Tobago
Peru
Dominican Republic
Haiti
0 20 40 60 80 100
Percentage satisfied
Fig. 30.4 Job satisfaction (Source: Authors calculation based on Gallup 20062007)
quit data in a household panel, Clark (2001) work (such as income and working hours) and
established the following ranking of job his results hold for individuals who change
characteristics in job satisfaction: job security between self-employment and wage employ-
and pay are the most important, followed by use ment, he attributes the result to procedural
of initiative, the work itself, and hours of work. benets from being independent. In his view,
This ranking differs markedly across different individuals prefer independence to being subject
labor market groups (p. 223). Frey (2008) to hierarchical decision-making. Hierarchy
found that self-employed workers are more generates procedural disutility because it
satised with their jobs. Since his regressions interferes with innate needs for self-
control for a number of important aspects of determination (Frey 2008).
542 E. Lora
Studies for Latin America conrm that self- generalizations across countries and highlight
employed workers are no less satised with their that voluntariness or levels of job satisfaction
work than their counterparts in salaried positions. can vary among both the informal self-employed
Using detailed data for Chile, Ecuador, El and the informal salaried sectors across and
Salvador, and Honduras, the IDB (2008) found within countries (2007, p. 96).
that self-employed workers are equally or more
likely to declare themselves satised with their
jobs than salaried workers of similar
30.3.2 Feeling Good at Work
characteristics (age, education, gender, health,
and marital status). In a separate study for
Objective working conditions do not map
Argentina, no signicant differences in job satis-
directly to higher or lower job satisfaction
faction were found between formal and informal
because subjective judgments on what is a good
workers of similar characteristics, using several
or a bad job are strongly inuenced by psycho-
denitions of informality, not just self-
logical factors. Three hypotheses have been put
employment (Pratap and Quintin 2006). Only in
forward to explain the discrepancy. First, cultural
Chile are salaried workers more likely to be
differences in the way people perceive subjective
satised with their job than the self-employed.
questions about satisfaction may make simple
In agreement with these ndings, in the countries
cross-country comparison misleading, as
included in the IDB study, micro-entrepreneurs
Kristensen and Johansson (2006) have
are less likely to want to switch jobs than salaried
demonstrated for seven European Union
workers. Quite starkly, while a large majority of
countries using anchoring vignettes.13 Second,
salaried workers report a preference for self-
the lower-and-upper-bounds hypothesis states
employment, only a minority of self-employed
that peoples evaluations of the quality of their
workers would like to move to salaried positions.
jobs are inuenced by what they consider to be
Salaried workers provide three main reasons why
minimum acceptable working conditions and by
they would prefer to be self-employed: higher
what they perceive as the best working
earnings, more exibility, and not having a boss.
conditions they can aspire to reach in the labor
Judging by their job satisfaction levels, pref-
market. Both the lower and the upper bounds are
erence for self-employment among salaried
probably used as references to judge the quality
workers is stronger in poor countries (Guatemala
of the jobs, as found by Poggi (2010) in a study
and Honduras) and among those working in
using data for European countries and by Mas
small rms. It is unclear what makes small-rm
(2006) using police force data in the United
workers less satised with their jobs
States. Although these bounds are not indepen-
(in comparison to both the self-employed and
dent of the objective working conditions, they
large-rm workers of similar characteristics),
are strongly inuenced by other factors, such as
but it is not due to differences in wages or work-
societys prescriptions about the role of each
ing conditions such as job stability, work sched-
gender or of different social groups (Akerlof
ule, or mandatory benets. As the IDB study
and Kranton 2000). For instance, in the United
concludes, These results strongly suggest that
Kingdom, womens job satisfaction is more
the relationship between job satisfaction, rm
inuenced by work-life balance than mens
size, and access to benets does not always cor-
(Asadullah and Fernandez 2008). But such
respond to the conventional wisdom, and the
results can vary considerably from country to
13
country (IDB 2008, p. 157). Similarly, after While in the standard ordered probit model, Denmark
discussing the differences in job satisfaction and Finland are ranked at the top of the seven countries,
when vignettes are used as anchors to re-scale the model,
between different types of workers in the Domin-
Scandinavian countries are ranked lower and the
ican Republic and Colombia, Perry Netherlands is found to have the highest level of job
et al. caution against simpleminded satisfaction.
prescriptions may differ from one country to the In general, perceived job insecurity damages
next. For the United Kingdom the effect of hours job satisfaction, as found consistently in several
worked on job satisfaction is negative, while in studies (Chaparro and Lora 2013; IDB 2008;
France no such effect is found (Clark and Senik Lopez et al. 2010). However, aspirations of
2006). And third, according to the identity work stability have been found to differ across
hypothesis, workers judge their jobs more posi- groups of workers in ways that do not reect the
tively when they identify themselves with their actual probabilities of unemployment of those
organization. Insidersthose who identify with groups. For instance, the IDB study found that,
their rmlose utility when they put low effort in all countries, the perception of job insecurity is
rather than high effort, and the opposite happens higher among salaried than self-employed
to outsiders, who do not identify with the rm workers, even after controlling for individual
(Akerlof and Kranton 2005, 2010). It follows that and job characteristics. It may well be that the
insiders are more likely to be engaged in their self-employed feel more in control of their job
work and to be more productive than outsiders. situation than the wage earner, or that the self-
Insiders require less monetary compensation and employed do not aspire to, or ignore, the benets
less supervision than outsiders to exert effort. A associated with a secure job. However, another
related literature by organizational psychologists study using the Gallup World Poll data for the
and business consultants has emphasized the Latin American region found that salaried
importance of engagement for job satisfaction workers afliated to social security declare them-
and productivity (Buckingham and Coffman selves worried about losing their jobs more often
1999; Harter et al. 2002). According to this than unafliated ones, and men do so more often
view, engagement can be measured with a than women. According to the same study, per-
small number of dimensions of the quality of ceived job insecurity is not signicantly
the work environment, as perceived by the correlated with the expected probability of
employees. unemployment of the individuals (Menezes-
Empirical studies for Latin America lend cre- Filho et al. 2009). Expectations of access to
dence to the lower-and-upper-bounds hypothesis social security and other labor benets and the
and to the identity hypothesis, although much valuation that workers attach to those benets
more research is still needed. (No study has also seem to reect social norms and
addressed the cultural hypothesis.) In a study expectations. The IDB study found that having
for Honduras, L opez Boo et al. (2010) found access to a pension plan contributes to higher job
that, in contrast to developed countries, where satisfaction but only for workers with education
job satisfaction is higher among women working above a certain level, and depending on the coun-
part-time, Honduran women are more satised try. Although more rigorous tests are wanting,
with their jobs when they work full-time rather taken together these ndings lend support to the
than part-time. In a poor country such as hypothesis that aspirations and social norms con-
Honduras, working part-time is considered a lux- dition workers assessments about the quality of
ury, as evidenced by the fact that partnered their jobs and the relative importance of objec-
women with children, poor women, or women tive working conditions.
working in the informal sector, when working With respect to the identity/engagement
full-time, are more likely to report higher job hypothesis, Lopez et al. (2010) found that job
satisfaction than single women, partnered satisfaction in Honduras increases with the per-
women without children, non-poor women, or ception that the job offers opportunities for
women working in the formal sector. These advancement and is well remunerated, and
ndings lend support to the hypothesis that decreases if the job is considered stressful,
peoples evaluations of their works are monotonous, or unstable. Although they do not
conditioned by their aspirations and by the roles constitute proof, these ndings are consistent
prescribed by society to different groups. with the hypothesis that engaged workers are
544 E. Lora
more satised with their work. A more direct by taking into consideration the factors that actu-
conrmation of the identity/engagement hypoth- ally contribute to workers wellbeing and not just
esis is offered by Chaparro and Lora (2013), who those that raise wages and fringe benets, or
found that, among a representative sample of those that allow workers to reduce effort. Simi-
salaried workers from 18 Latin American larly, rms should tailor their human resource
countries, job satisfaction, income, and produc- management practices to help workers feel
tivity are higher for those workers who have the more engaged and identied with the rm.
opportunity to do what they do best every day, Managers need not be concerned with how
who feel that someone at the workplace workers evaluate their job in general, but rather
encourages their development, and who consider with those specic aspects of the work environ-
that their opinions count. These three dimensions ment that contribute to engagement and identity.
of the work environment are part of the set of Thus, a good understanding of the factors that
12 questions used by the Gallup Organization to inuence job satisfaction may help unions and
measure how conducive the work environment is rms nd common ground for improving labor
to keeping employees engaged (Harter productivity and workers wellbeing.
et al. 2002).
Understanding the reasons for the gaps often
found between job satisfaction and the conven- 30.4 Perception of Insecurity
tional indicators of job quality may be useful for
policymakers, workers, and rms alike. Labor When urban areas of Latin America are com-
policies should put more emphasis on those pared with other regions of the world in various
aspects of the labor code that encourage workers dimensions surveyed by the Gallup World Poll of
to make use of their capabilities and talents 2006, an extended perception of insecurity
(which, indirectly, will also encourage appears as the weakest point in the regions cities
individuals to further their education and train- (IDB 2008). Only 41.6 % of Latin Americans
ing, and to join and remain in the labor force), feel safe walking alone at night in their
and not necessarily on those aspects that are neighborhoods, a percentage not far from that
conventionally associated with high-quality of the former communist countries of Europe
jobs. As empirical ndings show, peoples and Asia and the countries of Sub-Saharan
needs and aspirations may differ across countries Africa, but substantially lower than that of other
and socioeconomic groups. This suggests a need regions of the world (Fig. 30.5). Latin American
for exibility in legislation, which should allow countries have the highest homicide rates in the
for individual choice and should refrain from world, as shown in the same gure, and the
establishing mandatory benets that may not be second highest victimization rate after
valued equally by all types of workers. However, Sub-Saharan Africa (based on the Gallup World
labor policies should not be dictated by subjec- Poll responses of the percentage of people who
tive data on job satisfaction, because low report having had money stolen from them or
aspirations or myopia may operate as a barrier having been mugged in the previous 12 months).
to enhance labor force capabilities, raise produc- Perceptions of insecurity, which include the
tivity, and prevent important risks, such as work feeling that one is unsafe walking alone at night,
accidents, illness, and destitution in old age. the presence of gangs, and drug trafcking, have
Establishing and enforcing minimum wages and the largest impact on Latin Americans satisfac-
minimum labor standards may be justied even if tion with their own cities, according to estimates
they initially reduce job satisfaction among those reported by the IDB (2008) based on Gallup data.
workers who do not immediately benet from The combination of high frequency and impact
these measures. suggests that safety is the problem that most
Labor organizations can strengthen their affects the quality of life in Latin American cit-
bargaining muscle and their convening power ies (IDB 2008, p. 193). This conclusion is
North America
East Asia and Pacific
South Asia
Middle East and North
Western Europe
Sub-Saharan Africa
Eastern Europe and
Latin America
Mexico
Panama
Honduras
Colombia
Peru
Nicaragua
Guatemala
Costa Rica
Uruguay
El Salvador
Dominican Republic
Venezuela
Ecuador
Paraguay
Bolivia
Argentina
Chile
Brazil
0 20 40 60 80
Safety Perception Walking Alone at Night (percentage of people)
Fig. 30.5 Safety perception vs. homicide rates (Source: UNDOC (2011) and IDB (2008))
supported by the assessments of life satisfaction well-being, emotions, and beliefs. Di Tella and
determinants in several cities. N opo (2008) pointed out that, in general, those
Reporting of crime victimization is higher who report being victimized and those who
among people with higher incomes, according report the presence of gangs and drug dealing in
to data from the Latinobarometer and the Gallup their neighborhoods are less likely to have felt
World Poll (Gaviria and Pages 2002; Di Tella positive emotions (enjoyment and laughter) and
and N opo 2008). This pattern is not observed in are more likely to have felt negative emotions
the rest of the world, where victimization rates (anger, worry, sadness, boredom, or depression)
are fairly similar across socioeconomic strata or physical pain the day before. Those who have
within countries (Di Tella and N opo 2008, not been victimized trust the local police more,
based on Gallup data). feel safer walking alone at night, have better
Patterns of self-reported victimization and perceptions of the educational opportunities
perceptions of insecurity are directly linked to offered by their country to children and to those
different aspects of individuals perceptions of who want to get ahead through hard work, are
546 E. Lora
more satised with the efforts of their country to (2006) found that actual neighborhood crime
address the needs of the poor, and are more likely rates (including homicides and assaults) had a
to think that their country is a good place to start positive effect on perceived risk of assault, but
a new business. Similarly, Corbacho not on perceived risk of robbery or perceived
et al. (2012), using Gallup data and propensity nighttime insecurity. In a study of crime
score matching to control for observable perceptions in Bogota, where robberies declined
characteristics and overt bias, found that having markedly between 2010 and 2012 and homicide
being mugged reduces trust in the local police rates dropped by half in a decade, Ardanaz
(and, to a lesser and less robust extent, trust in the et al. (2013) found that only 11 % of people
judicial system, in friends, and in business living in the city perceived that robberies had
networks). declined, and the percentage of people who
Although crime rates and the perception of reported being concerned about crime increased.
insecurity are both very high in Latin America, The gaps between risk perception and objec-
safety perceptions are not signicantly correlated tive crime indicators are not unique to Latin
with homicide rates across countries within the America. In Germany, where police-recorded
region. Some of the countries where the popula- crime statistics show a decline in total offenses
tion feels the safest, such as Honduras and in the decade before 2003, surveys revealed the
Colombia, have very high homicide rates, while publics belief that crime had increased (Pfeiffer
feelings of insecurity are widespread in Chile, et al. 2005). In Ireland, beliefs about crime prev-
Argentina, and Bolivia, where the objective alence have been found to be independent of
measures are less alarming. Simple cross- ofcial crime rates and personal experience of
sectional correlations between perceptions of victimization (OConnell and Whelan 1996).
insecurity and victimization or crime rates using Heuristics, or mental shortcuts, exert a strong
national averages are generally very low and not inuence on the perception of insecurity. Four
statistically signicant (Maris and Ortega 2013). types of heuristics have been corroborated in
Concern about crime has increased since the empirical studies for Latin American countries:
mid-1990s in the whole region. While 5 % of two of them are affect heuristics and two are
the Latin Americans interviewed by availability heuristics. As Kahneman (2011,
Latinobarometer in 1995 considered crime to be p. 139) explains, the affect heuristic is an
the most important problem in their country, in instance of substitution, in which the answer to
2010 and 2011 it was considered the most impor- an easy question (How do I feel about it?) serves
tant problem by over a quarter of those as an answer to a much harder question (What do
interviewed, ahead of unemployment, which I think about it?). The two affect heuristics
used to be top on the list of concerns supported by empirical evidence on security
(Fig. 30.6). The growing concern about crime perceptions are the heuristic due to proximal
contrasts with trends in actual crime rates in cues and the heuristic due to feelings of trust.
several countries. In Colombia, for example, The availability heuristic is dened by
where the share of individuals who think crime Kahneman (p. 129) as the process of judging
is the most important problem has increased from frequency by the ease with which instances
below 5 % in the early 2000s to more than 10 % come to mind. The two types of availability
in 2010, homicide rates have fallen from 56.3 per heuristics assessed empirically are availability
100,000 inhabitants in 2003 to 34 in 2010 due to recent direct or indirect victimization,
(Sanchez et al. 2012). and availability due to exposure to objective
The apparent disconnect between perceptions information. A summary of the empirical
and reality in security issues is also observed in ndings on these heuristics is provided below.
local-level data. In a study on intra-urban In addition to heuristics (or in combination with
differences in perceived risk for the metropolitan them), the perception of insecurity is inuenced
region of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, Rodrigues
35
29 29
30 Crime
30 28
27
25
24
% of People
25 23 23
21 21 21
20
19 19
20
17 17
16 16
19
14 18
15
15
9 9 Unemployment
10 8 8 8
7 7 7
5
5
0
1995 1996 1997 1998 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
Fig. 30.6 Concern about crime and unemployment in Latin America. In your opinion, what is the most important
problem in the country? Source: Latinobarometer
by socio-demographic factors that are not perceive or are exposed to more incivilities are
discussed here (see Vilalta 2012, for a survey).14 more fearful.16
Judgments of risk, such as the perception of Using survey data from Gallup, Corbacho
insecurity, are based on feelings that can be et al. (2012) found that the presence of gangs
elicited by proximal cues that may or may not has a strong impact on the feeling of safety in
reect real threats, as has been demonstrated in Latin America as a whole. In the case of Mexico,
eld experiments.15 Reminders of risk act as Vilalta (2012) conrmed that incivilities have a
proximal cues to elicit fear of crime. This is the strong inuence on the perception of security.
basis of the broken windows theory of crime The incivilities considered (street quarrels, alco-
put forward by Wilson and Kelling (1982), which hol consumption in public spaces, and gang pres-
suggests that incivilities such as grafti, trash, ence) were combined in a single measure. For the
and gang presence elicit crime fears and erode metropolitan area of Belo Horizonte, Rodrigues
trust. Abundant evidence for developed countries concluded that [b]y far, the strongest predictor
lends credence to the hypothesis that those who of [the three measures of] perceived risk
[is] perceived disorder (2006, p. 256). In this
study, perceived disorder was measured using a
14 standardized index constructed from factor anal-
Essentially, the perception of insecurity is stronger
among women and older people, presumably because ysis of three survey questions regarding the pres-
they are more vulnerable, in spite of the fact that these ence of street children, drug dealing, and gangs
groups are less prone to be crime victims. Individuals with in the neighborhood.
more education and higher incomes are found in some
A second type of affect heuristic that
studies for developed countries (but not for Latin Amer-
ica) to be less fearful of crime. inuences the perception of security is the feel-
15
To test the importance of proximal cues, Lee ing of trust. This heuristic is consistent with the
et al. (2010), at the peak of the u pandemic fear of
2009, arranged for participants in a eld experiment to
encounter a sneezing person before answering a set of
16
questions about different types of risk. Those exposed to See a brief survey in Vilalta (2012) and a discussion of
the cue considered that the risk of an average American the literature in Farral et al. (2009, pp. 91101). Addi-
to die before the age of 50 from a crime or accident was tional evidence is reported in Wyant (2008) for
41.2 %, while those not exposed to the cue estimated that Philadelphia, United States; and in Russo et al. (2011)
risk at 27.9 %. for Italian counties.
548 E. Lora
strong association between perceptions of secu- exposure to certain media, especially television,
rity and trust in police and other institutions is found in some studies to be associated with
found in surveys for Latin America (Di Tella those feelings. However, the international evi-
and N opo 2008; Corbacho et al. 2012). In his dence in this respect is not conclusive, according
study for Mexico, Vilalta (2012) found that the to Vilalta (2012), who summarizes the results of
level of trust in the local police strongly six previous studies and tests the hypothesis in
inuences the perception of security (measured his own study for Mexico, where no signicant
with an ordinal scale), and in the study for Belo association is found between perception of secu-
Horizonte, Rodrigues (2006) found that the per- rity and media use.19
ceived legitimacy of the police in the neighbor- Given the gap between the perception and the
hood signicantly reduced the perceived risk of reality of crime, a relevant issue is whether
robbery and perceived nighttime insecurity, providing objective information on the probabil-
though not the perceived risk of assault. ity of crime events can narrow such a gap.
Memories of victimization, both direct (when Ardanaz et al. (2013) used an experimental
the interviewee has been the victim) and indirect approach to test whether the provision of infor-
(when other household members have been mation affects citizens crime perceptions. In the
victimized), which are activated in surveys, context of a victimization survey in Bogota, a
seem to inuence the perception of security, in sub-sample of interviewees randomly chosen
a classic example of the availability heuristic. received a yer containing objective information
The empirical evidence in support of this hypoth- on the decrease in homicides and robberies. The
esis for the developed world is strong and very study concluded that information can have sig-
consistent (Vilalta 2012).17 The few studies nicant effects on peoples perceptions, increas-
available for Latin America also lend support to ing the share of people who report feeling safer
the hypothesis. For the region as a whole, using by 30 %, improving ratings of police effective-
Gallup data, Di Tella and N opo (2008) found that ness in dealing with robberies by 5 %, and reduc-
individuals who have not been crime victims feel ing the share of individuals who distrust the
safer walking alone at night. Maris and Ortega police by 11 %. The authors also found that
(2013), using Latinobarometer data, found that the impact on the improved perception of safety
crime victims prioritize insecurity signicantly persisted several weeks beyond the information
more than non-victims. Similarly, for Mexico, treatment. A later stage of the study will assess
Vilalta (2012) found that direct or indirect the extent to which the effect of information on
victims of crime report higher levels of perceived feelings of safety erodes over a longer period and
insecurity.18 whether behavior is modied as a result.
Memories of crimes may inuence feelings of The presence of large gaps between objective
security declared in surveys even when the indicators and opinion surveys may lead to a lack
victims are not related or known to the inter- of public and political support for security
viewee. This seems to be the reason why policies or to a lack of responsiveness by the
authorities to the concerns of the citizenry.
There is no point in forcing one position over
17
OConnell and Whelan (1996) found that the percep- the other, as neither the objective indicators nor
tion of crime prevalence in Ireland is independent of
the feelings of security of the population sepa-
personal experience of victimization. However, the
small sample of this study (623) casts some doubt on the rately describe the real security situation. As
conclusion, given the relatively low frequency of crime Kahneman (2011, p. 145) concludes in his dis-
events in the sample. cussion on the issue: Democracy is inevitably
18
However, in one of three samples used in the study
(covering the metropolitan area of Mexico City, January
2011), only indirect victimization was found to be
19
associated with high signicance with feelings of For an exhaustive discussion of the theoretical and
insecurity. empirical literature see Farral et al. (2009).
messy, in part because the availability and affect carried out in Europe (Riffault 1991), the
heuristics that guide citizens beliefs and Philippines (Mangahas 1995), Russia (Ravallion
attitudes are inevitably biased, even if they gen- and Lokshin 1999, 2002), and South Africa
erally point in the right direction. Psychology (Posel and Casale 2011). A second alternative,
should inform the design of risk policies that recently applied in Argentina by Cruces
combine the experts knowledge with the et al. (2013), is to pose precise questions about
publics emotions and intuitions. an individuals perception of her place in the
income distribution. The question is worded as
follows: There are 10 million families in
30.5 Perceived Social Ranking Argentina. Of those 10 million, how many do
you think have an income lower than yours?
Most Latin Americans believe that they belong to The third alternative is to ask specic questions
the lower-middle fraction of the social ranking in about self-perception of class, such as Are you
their countries. On a scale of 110, Latin middle class?, as was done for Chile by Nunez
Americans on average rate their social position (2005). Regardless of the alternative chosen, all
at 4.2, roughly two of every three Latin measures show a similar bias toward the middle
Americans classify themselves on rungs of the income distribution and a strong reluctance
3 through 5, and only about 6 % consider them- by those objectively belonging to the top income
selves to be on the four highest rungs (see groups to place themselves subjectively among
Table 30.3). These results come from the Gallup the rich.20 In the study for Argentina, the mode of
Poll of 2006 of 16 Latin American countries, the perceptions distribution is found in the fth
which included the following question: Please decile. Almost half of the respondents place
look at this card. Imagine at one end are located themselves in the middle quintile, as many
the richest people of [COUNTRY] and at the respondents at the top and the bottom of the
other end are located the poorest people of objective distribution display substantial nega-
[COUNTRY]. Taking into consideration your tive and positive biases, respectively. Likewise,
current personal situation, could you please tell in Chile, individuals below the median overesti-
me in which cell you place yourself? mate their relative position while individuals
Table 30.3 also shows where those in each above the median underestimate it, and nearly
objective income decile (of their own countries) half of the individuals who belong in the very
place themselves in the ladder-subjective ques- top of the income distribution identify with the
tion. The mode is rung 5 for all deciles, except middle socioeconomic groups. In all of the stud-
the two lowest ones, where the mode is rung ies, the highest correspondence between actual
3. Although objectively richer people place and perceived class status is among the poor, but
themselves on higher rungs, the distribution of mismatches between objective and subjective
responses is not close to a hypothetical NW-SE rankings are also frequent.
45-degree diagonal, as would be the case if the Subjective social rankings are important in
subjective and the objective classications peoples lives: perceived social ranking is
matched perfectly. The fact that responses are associated with subjective well-being, which is
strongly biased toward the middle rungs may be signicantly stronger than objective measures
inuenced by a host of psychological factors. based on reported income (Posel and Casale
However, social rankings are rmly based on a 2011). Efforts to ascend in the perceived social
clear understanding by most people of their
sources of wealth, as discussed below.
20
The ladder question is one of three alternative This is also the case outside Latin America. For
instance, only 6 % of all individuals ranked in the richest
ways that have been used in surveys to elicit
third of South Africans in terms of actual per capita
perceived social rankings. With some variation, household income perceive that they are among the
the ladder question has been used in surveys richest third.
550 E. Lora
Table 30.3 Objective and subjective social rankings compared

Objective social ranking (by decile of the income distribution)
Subjective social ranking 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Total
The poorest 7.8 5.5 + + + + + + * * +
1 12.2 8.8 7.8 5.4 5.7 5.0 + + + + 5.5
2 17.6 13.9 11.2 11.2 9.9 8.7 6.3 5.3 + + 8.7
3 18.5 21.0 19.0 18.1 17.5 19.0 13.2 14.1 13.8 8.4 16.3
4 17.5 19.3 20.9 21.9 21.2 21.3 22.9 21.3 18.9 14.0 19.9
5 17.2 20.8 24.1 24.7 25.1 26.2 29.7 31.2 30.2 30.7 26.0
6 + 5.8 7.1 8.6 9.9 9.6 12.9 12.4 15.7 18.8 10.1
7 + + + + 5.1 + 6.3 7.5 9.4 13.3 5.0
8 + + + + + + + + + 6.4 +
9 * * * * * * * * * + *
The richest * * * * * * * * * * *
Source: Adapted from Lora and Fajardo (2013)
Note: The data in each column add up to 100 %, bold numbers are the modes by column, grey cells represent the
diagonal
+Between 1 and 5 %
*Less than 1 %
ranking through consumption of some goods with Johanna Fajardo (Lora and Fajardo 2013)
may distract individuals from more satisfying using the Gallup data was that individuals judg-
activities, and may in the end prove illusory ment of their social ranking is affected in a sta-
(Frank 1985). tistically signicant way by their human
Preferences for redistributive policies respond capabilities (age, education, health status),21 dif-
to individuals beliefs about their own positions ferent forms of relational capital (family, friends,
in a social ranking and about what determines religion), and material conditions of life, which
such positions (Alesina and La Ferrara 2005; include not only income but also a variety of
Cruces et al. 2013; Gaviria 2007; Senik 2009). physical and nancial assets, as well as
Those who perceive that their social position has perceptions of economic vulnerability. The
declined have more positive attitudes towards results are striking because they are entirely in
redistribution (Guillaud 2011), while those who line with the predictions of standard economic
perceive having experienced higher mobility are theory, which seldom happens with subjective
less supportive of redistributive policies (Gaviria data. The ndings are consistent with previous
2007). And when the perceptions of social posi- work, such as that by Ravallion and Loshkin
tion, which are often biased, are corrected by (2002) for Russia, which found that perceived
informing the interviewees of their actual social social ranking is inuenced not just by income,
position, their attitude toward redistribution but also by marital status, family size and com-
changes correspondingly (Cruces et al. 2013). position, education, health, employment status,
Perceived social ranking and the gap between and ownership of several assets (car, freezer,
perceived and objective social ranking may also washer, television, and VCR).
inuence consumers aspirations and decisions In our study we also addressed the question of
as well as work attitudes and effort. what makes so many people think that they are
To be sure, the bias toward the middle of the middle class, when objectively, on the basis of
subjective social ranking scale is not due to their current income only, they are not. The same
peoples ignorance of what constitutes wealth. set of factors that are associated with the self-
Individuals in all income groups recognize that
social ranking is determined not just by current 21
Measured with a summary index of the ve health
income, but by all forms of wealth. Indeed, a conditions assessed through the EQ-5D instrument
striking nding in my own econometric work described in the health section above.
ranking of individuals along the social ladder Assets that do have monetary value may be
was used to shed light on the issue. We found implicitly valued extremely highly: access to
that having (or not) at least completed secondary running water, telephone service, television,
education helps to explain why some people that and computer are each valued as equivalent to
are objectively poor classify themselves as mid- nearly 100 % of income, while owning an auto-
dle class (and why some rich people see them- mobile is valued as equivalent to 77 % of
selves as middle class). Not having children income, and a washing machine is worth subjec-
makes some objectively poor people see them- tively 63 % of current income.
selves as middle class (and having children make Possible psychological explanations for the
some rich people see themselves as middle high value implicitly attached by individuals to
class). Among the material conditions of life, their assets are the endowment effect and cogni-
variables such as access to nancial services, no tive dissonance. The endowment effect hypothe-
concerns about nances, owning an automobile, sis holds that a persons willingness to accept
and owning a washing machine make some poor compensation for an asset they possess is greater
people classify themselves as middle class (and than their willingness to pay for it if they did not
lack of those things make some rich see them- possess it (Kahneman et al. 1990; Kahneman and
selves as middle class). Access to running water, Tversky 1986; Kahneman 2011). Cognitive dis-
access to telephone service, and having a televi- sonance is the state of tension that occurs when-
sion and freezer increase the odds that a poor ever a person holds two cognitions (ideas,
person sees herself as middle class, while not attitudes, beliefs, opinions) that are psychologi-
having a computer raises the odds that someone cally inconsistent (Festinger 1957; Harmon-
who is rich sees herself as middle class. Jones and Mills 1999). To deal with this tension,
These ndings offer clues to the main psycho- life aspects that demand effort or are costly or
logical biases that inuence subjective social painful tend to be seen through a more positive
rankings. Although most people may be aware lens and are more highly valued (Aronson and
that social rankings depend on a host of forms of Mills 1959; Gerard and Mathewson 1966; Tavris
wealth, the valuations they give to each capabil- and Aronson 2007). However, these remain
ity or asset are strongly inuenced by psycholog- hypotheses, since no empirical work has yet
ical and social factors, above and beyond their been done to test their validity in relation to the
actual monetary values. For instance, there is no formation of subjective social rankings.
monetary value for considering religion to be Subjective social rankings are necessarily
important or for having friends to rely on,22 dependent on the reference points used by
but these relational assets are valued implicitly individuals to rank themselves with respect to
by a typical individual as equivalent to 57 % and others in society. The bias toward the middle
169 % of her current income, respectively.23 rungs in subjective social rankings may be the
result of the choice of reference points.24 In his
study for Chile, Nunez (2005) found that this is
22
Admittedly, however, some people may derive pecuni-
ary benets from their relation with others or their partici- 24
As pointed out by a commentator, it may also be due to
pation in social or religious organizations. a social desirability bias, as interviewees may feel
23
These computations make use of the fact that, since ashamed to declare themselves relatively well-off or
income affects subjective social ranking, the effect of rich. The same commentator suggested an alternative
any other variable on social ranking can be expressed in explanation: by placing themselves subjectively in the
terms of income. The actual calculations presented in this middle rungs, individuals mitigate the disutility
paragraph are based on the coefcient estimates in Lora associated with inequality, which results from feeling
and Fajardo (2013, Table 5) for a hypothetical 30 year-old envious of those who are richer and from feeling regret
woman who lives in Brazil, has one child, a high educa- for having more than those who are poorer, as argued by
tion level, is employed, has friends and religious beliefs, Fehr and Schmidt (1999). These hypotheses have not been
and lives in a house with access to all public services. tested in this context.
552 E. Lora
indeed the case: both upper- and lower-income Taken together, the extant literature indicates
individuals have a distorted view of the incomes that self-rankings of social position offer a
of the other groups. Upper-income individuals distorted picture of actual income rankings and
believe that the incomes of the poor are higher of income distribution. Self-rankings tend to con-
than they actually are, while most of the popula- centrate around the lower-middle points of the
tion in the bottom four quintiles tends to under- scales. While self-rankings are strongly
estimate the income of the uppermost group. In associated with individuals incomes,
the study by Cruces et al. (2013) for Argentina, capabilities, and assets, they are also inuenced
the biases in perceptions of the respondents own by the subjective valuations attached to those
income ranking were found to be signicantly capabilities and assets, by peoples beliefs about
correlated with his relative position within the the income distribution in their societies, and by
reference group (as proxied by area of residence), the reference points they use to place themselves
lending support to the hypothesis that the choice on the social ladder.
of reference points affects subjective social
rankings. Finally, in my work with Fajardo for
16 Latin American countries, we found that the 30.6 Conclusion
standards of reference used in each country
depend on the level of socioeconomic develop- The large gaps between objective and subjective
ment of the country. This is a counterintuitive indicators in the social domains of life may be a
nding, since it implies that individuals judge rich source of information to understand how
their relative position in their societies taking perceptions are formed, to identify important
into consideration the absolute level of socioeco- aspects of peoples lives that have been neglected
nomic development of the society. As a result of in the ofcial indicators, to inform the public
the absolute level bias, in more developed debate on social policies, and to shed light on
countries fewer poor people tend to erroneously the political attitudes that citizens and politicians
classify themselves as middle class, and more adopt on key social issues.
rich people tend to dene themselves as middle Although research on the factors explaining
class. In other words, the more developed the the gaps is still in its infancy, it is a promising
country, the stronger the downward bias in the endeavor. This chapter offered an overview of
subjective classication. This suggests that in the main empirical ndings with a focus on Latin
more developed societies, individuals may be America, in four social domains: health satisfac-
better informed about the living conditions of tion, job satisfaction, security perceptions, and
the rich (but not so much of the poor), and/or subjective social rankings. The overview put
that aspirations of reaching the higher rungs of emphasis on the psychological factors that con-
the wealth ladder are stronger than in poorer tribute to explain the gaps and help understand
societies. how individuals form their perceptions in those
Outside of Latin America, Norton and Ariely areas.
(2011) assessed the relationship between per- Different psychological biases contribute to
ceived and actual income distribution of society explain the gaps in the different domains. Biases
as a whole. They asked a nationally representa- associated with cultural values, which affect the
tive online sample of individuals to estimate the choice of reference points and the weights
current distribution of wealth in the United States attached to different aspects of a domain, are
and compared the responses with the actual dis- very relevant with respect to health and job satis-
tribution. Their results revealed that respondents faction. Cultural differences across countries are
dramatically underestimated the current level of pronounced in health, while cultural differences
wealth inequality in the United States, believing across socioeconomic groups are more apparent
that the wealthiest quintile held about 59 % of the with respect to job satisfaction. The choice of
wealth, when the actual number is closer to 84 %. reference points seems to be less culturally
dependent in the formation of subjective social Botero, J., et al. (2004). The regulation of labor. Quarterly
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A Perceived Human Development
Index 31
Marcelo Neri
31.1 Overview comparability of results such as HDI rankings,

which are a benchmark in the multidimensional
The three main explanatory variables of life satis- social indicators toolbox used in practice. Each
faction addressed in this study namely income, of these three dimensions corresponds to well-
health and education correspond to the three established groups of social policies. The quali-
components of the Human Development Index tative data at hand may help to throw light on
(HDI). The pioneering report from the United how current or potential beneciaries perceive
Nations Development Programme published in the processes and outcomes associated with edu-
1954 put forward the idea that per capita income cation, health and income policies. We will also
should not be the single indicator used to measure add the working conditions dimension to the
standard of living. This was followed by an exten- analysis. Access to work and its perceived qual-
sive array of literature that converged to form the ity (i) are also subject to direct governmental
Human Development Index (UN 1990), which policies, (ii) occupy a central role in the happi-
assembles other components related to wellness determination literature and (iii) t well
being besides income. This paper proposes within a life-cycle perspective, which is the
incorporating perceptions on income, health and basic framework of analysis used here.
education into HDI methodology, which will lead We will follow the literature that assesses
us to the Perceived Human Development Index quality of life dimensions with the life cycle as
(PHDI). One advantage of this approach is the a natural framework of analysis by using age as
one of the main variables analyzed here. Each
Study nanced and carried out in the framework of the component of the HDI is closely related to a
Latin American and Caribbean Research Network of the particular phase in the life cycle. The cycle
Inter-American Development Bank that also provided begins with the bulk of formal education that is
access to the Gallup World Poll used here. I would like
experienced in the early life cycle, when there is
to thank the excellent support provided by Luisa
Carvalhaes, Samanta Reis, Carol Bastos, Gabriel both a window of higher learning productivity
Buchmann, Ana Andari, Rodrigo Ramiro and Tiago than later and also more time ahead to recover
Bonomo. I would also like to thank the comments the cost of human capital investment in terms of
provided by Jere Behrman, Carol Graham, Leonardo
labor earnings and health outcomes. The sec-
Gasparini, Ravi Kambur, Eduardo Lora and Mariano
Rojas. The usual disclaimer applies. ond phase is related to the income-generating
period mostly accrued from work that is largely
M. Neri (*)
Center for Social Policies/Getulio Vargas Foundation determined by previous educational decisions.
(CPS/FGV) and EPGE/FGV, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil This intermediary phase will also ensure the
e-mail: marcelo.neri@fgv.br

558 M. Neri
material resources for the retirement period in country level on the formation of individuals
terms of nancial wealth, health services, etc. perception on income, education, work, health
We will also check the importance of working and life satisfaction. These exercises provide
conditions vis-a`-vis income for non-elderly useful insights about the workings of
adults. Finally, the bulk of health problems beneciaries point of view to understand the
observed in any given society occur mostly in transmission mechanism of key social policy
the last phase of the life cycle period, and is at ingredients into perceptions. In particular, the
large determined by specic public policies so-called PHDI may provide a complementary
(i.e. the state supply of health services) as well subjective reference to the HDI. Finally, we
as income and educational decisions adopted in also study how ones satisfaction with life is
the past. established, measuring the relative importance
The impact of objective income measures on given to income vis-a`-vis health and education.
subjective indicators will also be at the center of Estimating these instantaneous happiness
this analysis. Despite its limitations, per capita functions will help to assess the relative weights
income-based social indicators such as standard attributed to income, health and education in the
inequality and poverty measures based directly HDI, which is a benchmark in the multidimen-
on household surveys are at the core of the social sional social indicators toolbox used in practice.
debate in Latin America and are the mainstay for The paper is organized as follows: in the
economists with respect to social issues. An second section we construct a PHDI across
income unit of measurement (adjusted for PPP) Latin American countries by extracting the prin-
is also a useful gure to compare with other costs cipal components from a rich array of special
and benets involved in public policy and indi- questions added to the World Gallup Poll by
vidual decision-making. the current project. The third section explores,
In sum, the objective of the paper is to build a directly from individual level observations, the
Perceived Human Development Index (PHDI) relationship between PHDI components on the
framework by assembling the HDI components, one side and income and age on the other.
namely indicators on income, health and educa- Section 31.4 explores the relationship between
tion on their subjective version. We propose here objective and subjective human development
to introduce a fourth dimension linked to components using the full Gallup World Poll.
perceptions on work conditions, given its role in In Sect. 31.5 we use life satisfaction as a
the happiness literature and in social policy metric to extract the weights attributed sepa-
making. We study how perceptions on rately to the HDI. We implement the same strat-
individuals satisfaction with income, education, egy to the PHDI components and we nd
work and health are related to their objective reasonably close weights between objective
counterparts. We use a sample of Latin America and subjective human development. Our main
and Caribbean (LAC) countries where we take conclusions will be left to the nal section of
advantage of a larger set of questions on the four the paper.
groups of social variables mentioned included in
the Gallup World Poll by the Inter-American
Development Bank (IADB). We emphasize the 31.2 Constructing a Perceived
impacts of objective income and age on Human Development Index
perceptions. These two variables are particularly (PHDI)
relevant in terms of the design of income
policies. Complementarily, we also use the full 31.2.1 Motivation
sample of 132 countries where a smaller set of
variables can be included, which provides a Latin American, in particular Brazilian, research
greater degree of freedom to study the impact institutions have little tradition in collecting data
of objective HDI components observed at on social perceptions. They had been somewhat
31 A Perceived Human Development Index 559
procuous in the elaboration of empirical studies At rst, the analysis of the priorities of the
that promote the formulation, implementation global population through the questionnaire My
and evaluation of public policies. However, World from the United Nations show that the
only recently has it been involved in the genera- global priorities are quality of education,
tion of primary data on peoples perceptions. improvement of health services and quality
Advances are needed to bring our practices of jobs, in that order.1
closer to the frontier of research of social
perceptions.
A system of subjective indicators main pur- 31.2.2 Conceptual Framework
pose is to present a panel of social indicators to
promote monitoring actions of the State and soci- In the framework proposed by Veenhoven (2000)
ety. The eld of research organizes how the and Rojas (2007) that will guide the whole IADB
population perceives the quality of different pub- Quality of Life project (see Table 31.1), we
lic services put at their disposal by the State, also should take into account the interaction between
including motivations for use, difculty to access two dimensions. First, whether the indicator
and the degree of importance attributed to each. refers to inner or outer perceptions of the
On the top of that end variables read satisfaction individuals and second whether it is related to
with their respective state overall measures such life chances or life results. This framework can
as happiness or more specic such as health be applied to overall Quality of Life (QoL)
status. This approach may aid the State to better Indicators such as life satisfaction or adapted to
comprehend and act in a more effective manner classify any qualitative indicator such as those
to citizens demands, as well as provide related with the HDI components. For example,
instruments for society to demand actions more the perceived health status of an individual is a
in line with their needs and wants from their result indicator while access to health services is
governing body. clearly a chance indicator. Similarly, access to
It is hoped that merging objective data health services maybe asked at the individual or
analyses with subjective perceptions of the pop- inner level (i.e., if he or she has access to good
ulation, can be an important instrument to aid the quality services) or at the outer level (i.e., how is
formulation of public policies in our continent. the access of people in general in the country
The approach can be applied in a similar manner (or city of residence) to health services).2 As we
to an ample set of public policies and theoretical are going to see the division between inner and
elements of the economics of happiness. As the outer quality are not only intuitive but do arise
relation between income and well-being
measured by subjective happiness is not direct, 1
The My World single question survey orders 16 policy
new perspectives are needed. priorities of the population with a view to dening the new
This text consolidates some of this research Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for the post-2015
using a human development index framework. It period, when the term of the current goals ends. In the
Brazilian case, the questionnaire in My World was
presents social perceptions collected in the eld
incorporated in its questionnaires by IPEA. IPEA was
and deals with impressions of the population awarded in 2013 by the United Nations (UN) for giving
regarding themes that are fundamental to the the main contribution among countries of Latin America
development of the country such as health, edu- and the Caribbean to the My World research. The results
show that there is an inversion on the order of the rst two
cation, income and related issues such as poverty
priorities, with health appearing in 85.5 % of the
reduction and labor. questionnaires and education in 81.8 % of them. The
To be sure it contributes to the discussion by third component is related to income. In any case, the
developing a Perceived Human Development three most prominent elements both in Brazil and in the
world represent the three components of the HDI.
Index (PHDI), using the components of the 2
An advantage of the international data set used is to
Human Development Index (HDI) that is,
allow to test the relationship between inner and outer
income, health and education in their subjec- related aspects of life at individual level and country
tive versions. levels.
560 M. Neri
Table 31.1 The four qualities of life

Outer quality Inner quality
Life chances Livability of environment Life-ability of person
Life results Utility of life Satisfaction with life
Source: Veenhoven (2000) and Rojas (2007)
naturally from the empirical exercises performed calculate a score for each subject on a given
while the splitting chances from results are well principal component. Each subject actually
grounded on the capabilities versus functioning measured would have scores on each one of the
literature proposed by Amartya Sen. new components, and the subjects actual scores
on the original questionnaire items would be
optimally weighted and then added up to com-
pute their scores on a given component.
31.2.3 Principal Components Analysis:
In reality, the number of components
Method
extracted through a principal component analysis
is equal to the number of observed variables
Principal component analysis (PCA) is a useful
being analyzed. This means that an analysis of
methodology when you have data on a number of
a questionnaire with many items would actually
variables and believe that there is some redun-
result in as many components as the number of
dancy in them which means that some of the
items. However, in most analyses, only the rst
variables are correlated with one another, possi-
few non-redundant components account for
bly because they are measuring the same dimen-
meaningful amounts of variance, so only these
sion. Given this apparent redundancy, it is likely
rst few components are retained, interpreted,
that, for example, different items in a question-
and used in subsequent analyses. The remaining
naire are not really measuring different
components account for only trivial amounts of
constructs; more likely, they may be measuring
variance and therefore would not be retained and
a single construct. In the present case, for
further analyzed in general.
instance, a high perceived health and a high
The rst component extracted through a prin-
perceived income could largely mean both an
cipal component analysis accounts for a maximal
intrinsically optimistic view of reality as a
amount of total variance in the observed
whole.
variables. Under typical conditions, this means
The methodology consists in reducing the
that the rst component will be correlated with at
number of variables and involves the develop-
least some of the observed variables, and may be
ment of measures on a number of observed
correlated with many. The second component
variables and into a smaller number of articial
extracted will have two important characteristics.
variables called principal components that
First, this component will account for a maximal
will account for most of the variance in the
amount of variance in the data set that was not
observed variables. In essence, a principal com-
accounted for by the rst component. Again
ponent analysis aims at the reduction of the
under typical conditions, this means that the sec-
observed variables into a smaller set of articial
ond component will be correlated with some of
variables, by making some redundant variables
the observed variables that did not display strong
into single new variables that can be used in
correlations with the rst component. The second
subsequent analyses as predictors in a multiple
characteristic of the second component is that it
regression or in any other type of analysis.
will be uncorrelated with the rst component.
Technically, a principal component can be
Literally, a calculation of the correlation between
dened as a linear combination of optimally
components 1 and 2 would amount to zero. That
weighted observed variables. In performing a
is the general rule: the remaining components
principal component analysis, it is possible to
that are extracted in the analysis display the same Xp the subjects score on observed variable p.
two characteristics: each component accounts for
a maximal amount of variance in the observed For example, assume that component 1 in the
variables that was not accounted for by the pre- present study was the satisfaction with health
ceding components, and is uncorrelated with all component. You could determine each subjects
of the preceding components. A principal com- score on principal component 1 by using the
ponent analysis proceeds in this fashion, with following ctitious formula:
each new component accounting for progres-
sively smaller and smaller amounts of variance C1 :44X1 :40X2 :47X3 :32X4
this is why only the rst few components are :02X5 :01X6 :03X7
usually retained and interpreted. When the anal-
In the present case, the observed variables (the
ysis is complete, the resulting components will
X variables) were subject responses to the
display varying degrees of correlation with the
questions about perceptions; X1 represents ques-
observed variables but will be completely uncor-
tion 1, X2 represents question 2, and so forth.
related with one another.
Note that different regression coefcients were
The observed variables are standardized in the
assigned to the different questions in computing
course of the analysis, that is, each variable is
subject scores on component 1: to the rst
transformed so that it has a mean of zero and a
questions were assigned relatively large regres-
variance of one. What we mean by total vari-
sion weights that range from .32 to .47, while the
ance in the data set is simply the sum of the
last questions were assigned very small weights
variances of these observed variables. Since they
ranging from .01 to .03.
have been standardized to have a variance of one,
Obviously, a different equation, with different
each observed variable contributes one unit of
regression weights, would be used to calculate
variance to the total variance in the data set.
subject scores on component 2 (satisfaction with
Therefore, the total variance in a principal com-
income, for instance). Below is a ctitious illus-
ponent analysis will always be equal to the num-
tration of this formula:
ber of observed variables being analyzed, and the
components that are extracted in the analysis will C2 :01X1 :04X2 :02X3 :02X4
partition this variance. If there are six :48X5 :31X6 :39X7
components, for instance, the rst component
might account for 2.9 units of total variance; The preceding shows that, in creating scores for
perhaps the second component will account for the second component, much weight would be
2.2 units, and so on, with the analysis continuing given to the last questions and little would be
in this way until all of the variance in the data set given to the rst ones. As a result, component
has been accounted for. 2 should account for much of the variability in
Below is the general form for the formula to the satisfaction with income items; that is, it
compute scores on the rst component extracted should be strongly correlated with those three
(created) through a principal component items.
analysis: The regression weights from the preceding
equations are determined by using a special
C1 b11 X1 b12 X2 . . . b1 p X p type of equation called an Eigen equation. The
weights produced by these Eigen equations are
Where optimal weights in the sense that, for a given set
of data, no other set of weights could produce a
C1 the subjects score on principal component set of components that are more successful in
1 (the rst component extracted) accounting for variance in the observed
b1p the regression coefcient (or weight) for variables. The weights are created in order to
observed variable p, as used in creating prin- satisfy a principle of least squares similar (but
cipal component 1
562 M. Neri
not identical) to the principle of least squares health and work simultaneously. The other way
used in multiple regressions. is by separating, a priori, questions by these four
different sectors in order to calculate separate
PHDI components, that is, a desired output of
31.2.4 Empirical Strategy this analysis, since this division is useful for the
institutional organization of social policy.
Following Kenny (2006) and others suggestion, We apply these two ways to two spatial
we decided not to include objective variables in environments: Latin America and the World.
the PCA exercises performed in order to allow We start at the LAC level analysis using
later comparisons between objective and subjec- questions designed by the IADB in the Gallup
tive indicators. Since the HDI is the main refer- World Poll. One operational advantage of this
ence used in the multidimensional social welfare regional data set is the large number of questions,
literature, we decided at this point to use its 28 in total, related to each of the PHDI
proposed structure in three separate components components. This regional environment also
and compare with their respective subjective ver- offers the possibility of using the objective
sion. We have also introduced the work HDI-related variable directly, namely PPP
conditions question in order to later test its rele- adjusted per capita household income. The
vance and whether the connection between spe- global context provides us with a less rich set of
cic PHDI components change at distinct phases variables but it provides more degrees of free-
of the life-cycle: education for younger dom to estimate regressions with cross-country
individuals (children and teenagers 15 years of variables. In sum, we will use the LAC context to
age and below), working conditions for explore the impact of objective income and age
non-elderly adults (between 16 and 64 years of variable calculated at a micro-level on different
age) and health conditions for the elderly (those PHDI components. The same type of exercise
with 65 or more years of age). between objective and subjective variables will
Monetary indicators are the most widely used be estimated at the world level using as explana-
reference in the empirical social welfare, tory variables aggregated HDI components and
inequality and poverty literature and they seem PHDI variables.
appropriate as an integrating variable of different
strands of the literature (either as a gure or a
weighting variable in the aggregation of 31.3 Results of the Principal
perceptions across individuals). Besides adopting Components Analysis (PCA)
widely used per capita income-based and HDI
components references used in practice, the four The PCA allows choosing the appropriate
selected ingredients are in general assigned spe- weighting system for different welfare indicators
cic budgets and sector-specic policies within used within each sector-specic exercise
each country. In sum, the choice is to separate performed. The rationale is to allow for the opti-
subjective and objective indicators to enable mal weights determination associated with each
direct comparisons between them divided into attribute. To achieve this, one should derive a set
four separated groups of sector-specic of new attributes called factors which are a
indicators. One could view the PHDI approach linear combination of the original variables
here as synthesizing the perspective of present or from the available perceptions. A system of
potential beneciaries with respect to chances weights associated with the original attributes is
and results created by education, work, health derived in order to reproduce their full range of
and income policies. variability.
We apply the PCA analysis in two ways. We We work with a total of 28 questions for Latin
extract the principal components combining all America. We use a Principal Components Anal-
sector-specic questions for income, education, ysis (PCA) in order to reduce the dimension of
the problem. We start by calculating its principal (v) The next component mixes three disability
components and combining all these variables in (IADL or ADL) related questions to be
a preliminary test to see what the data tell us labeled as Inner Permanent Health
without any sector-specic restriction. component.
Only at this point the outer perceptions started

31.3.1 PCA Latin America: Mixing All to enter more consistently the list of components,
Subjective Questions indicating a preponderant variance explanatory
power of the inner questions.
This exercise (not shown here) indicates that
even without any type of restriction with just a (vi) The following component may be called
few exceptions there is a surprisingly clear split Outer Human Capital Access component,
of variables according to Inner and Outer mixing three questions on access to educa-
dimensions and according to the type of sector- tion and health facilities within cities or
specic l policies (i.e. chances or results related) countries.
that we would expect. We provide a brief (vii) The next is similar to the previous one but
description in the next exercise in order to combines information on satisfaction with
increase the depth with sector-specic splits. As education and health policies and may be
we have seen in the explanation about PCA labeled as Outer Human Capital
methodology, components that explain a bigger Satisfaction.
share of the variance appear rst. (viii) The eighth component combines two outer
perceptions questions on income depriva-
(i) The rst factor was the Inner Health com- tion and work -related policies satisfaction.
ponent; it includes only inner health (ix) The nal component mixes two questions
variables with respect to momentary on outer health and work-related chances.
perceptions such as the two questions on
self-report health status and two questions
on feelings of pain and anxiety.
31.3.2 PCA Latin America: Splitting
(ii) The second factor, Inner Income Depriva-
Subjective Questions into
tion, was labeled here with four questions.
Sector-Specific Ingredients
Two of them are related to income insuf-
ciency to cover shelter and food expenses,
The next exercise splits the set 28 PHDI related
one on hunger experience and other on
variables into four groups of PHDI ingredients
feelings related to income. This type of
proposed in order to generate separate sector-
component will present a negative sign in
specic indexes. The questions were divided as
the correlation with life satisfaction
follows: 8 for income, 5 for working conditions,
measures.
12 for health and 3 for education. We start by
(iii) Next component mixes ve questions on
calculating its principal components for each of
outer perceptions on income and work
these four groups of PHDI ingredients proposed:
conditions. According to our interpretation,
this is the only exception to a question about
the perception on the movements of indi- 31.3.2.1 Income and Work Ingredients
vidual standard of living. This is the only The income and work group of factors presented
exception of all 28 questions in the present in the next two tables were each split in pairs of
PCA exercise and will remain as the sole inner and outer principal components, which
exception in the other exercises. corroborates the conceptual framework used in
(iv) The following, Inner Work component, the project.
combines two similar questions on job Income. Questions that are signicant for the
satisfaction. rst vector are related to the current or future
564 M. Neri
Table 31.2 Income. Factor construction

Rotated factor pattern
Factor1 Factor2
Fincome Feelings about your household s income living comfortably or 60 * 23
getting by on present income
Economic4 Do you believe the current economic conditions in (response in Sa) are 11 75 *
good or not
Economic5 Right now do you think that economic conditions in (response in Sa)as 6 77 *
a whole are getting better or the same?
Poor Are you satised or dissatised with efforts to deal with the poor? 11 61 *
Standard Right now do you feel your standard of living is getting better or the 34 44 *
same?
Shelter Have there been times in the past 12 months when you did not have 66 * 6
enough money to provide adequate shelter or housing for you and your
family?
Hungry Have there been times in the past 12 months when you or your family 73 * 2
have gone hungry?
Food Have there been times in the past 12 months when you did not have 83 * 5
enough money to buy food that you or your family needed?
Source: Authors estimates from the Gallup World Poll 2007 microdata
Printed values are multiplied by 100 and rounded to the nearest integer. Values greater than 0.4 are agged by an *
Factor1 Income_dep_in
Factor2 Income_out
level of income or deprivation faced by the indi- a more permanent individual health results while
vidual either in the present or in the past; the the last factor captures aggregate health chances
second vector questions are related to the results (Table 31.5).
found either presently or forward looking within
the country (Table 31.2).
Work. The inner work factors are related to
31.3.3 Perceived Human Development
the questions on the individual job satisfaction
Indexes for LAC and the World
and opportunities created while the second work-
Levels
related outer factor captures ingredients such as
prospects, timing and the quality of policy efforts
Table 31.6 presents the values for all the PCA
to improve aggregate working conditions
components for the American countries in the
(Table 31.3).
sample for which data is available. Note that
these were calculated with separate sector-
31.3.2.2 Health and Education specic restrictions. The next step was to stan-
Ingredients dardize these indicators using the HDI method-
Education. Education should perhaps be viewed ology, which sets the worst level in the sample as
more as a chance than a result in itself. The Gallup 0 and the highest as 1.
questionnaire does not contain inner questions on The next step is to understand how the subjec-
individual perceptions but rather on aggregate tive factors related to income, work, health and
conditions. The sole education factor among the education inner and outer conditions are
three questions used can be perceived as an outer correlated with objective socio-demographic
chance related component (Table 31.4). conditions at a micro and aggregated levels. We
Health. The 12 health variables used were use Latin American sample of countries where
split in three factors. The rst is related to inner we took advantage of a larger set of questions on
present health conditions, the second is related to the four groups of social variables to estimate the
Table 31.3 Work. Factor construction
Factor1 Factor2
Work Are you satised with your job or the work you do 96 * 5
Work2 In your work do you have an opportunity to do what you do best every 96 * 3
day?
Work5 Can people in this country get ahead by working hard or not? 4 61 *
Economic3 Thinking about the job situation in the city or area where you live 13 69 *
today would you say that it is now a good time or a bad time to nd a
job?
Jobs Are you satised or dissatised with efforts to increase the number and 2 72 *
quality of jobs?
Factor1 Work inn
Factor2 Work _out
Table 31.4 Education. Factor construction

Factor pattern
Factor1
Education Are you satised with the educational system or the schools 63 *
Education2 Is education in this country accessible to anybody who wants to study regardless of 73 *
their economic situation or not?
Learn Do most children in this country have the opportunity to learn and grow every day 76 *
Factor1 Education_out
Table 31.5 Health. Factor construction

Factor1 Factor2 Factor3
Walk Mobility (have no problems walking around) 34 72 * 3
Selfcare Self care (have no problems with self-care) 7 82 * 0
Activities Usual activities (have no problems with performing my 36 74 * 1
us work study housework family or leisure activities)
Pain Pain/discomfort (have no pain or discomfort) 69 * 29 1
Anxiety Anxiety/depression (not anxious or depressed) 58 * 8 6
Healtha How good or bad your own health is today 73 * 14 8
Health Are you satised with your personal health 71 * 8 6
Care In your city or area where you live are you satised or 5 3 75 *
dissatised with the availability of quality health care
Healthac Are healthcare services in this country accessible to any 3 1 66 *
person who needs them regardless of their economic
situation or not
Health2 Not have health problems that prevent you from doing 58 * 25 3
any of the things people your age normally can do
Healthp2 If you had to go to a hospital because of an accident or 5 6 33
illness who would take care of the cost of your
assistance? Public or Private
Medical Do you have condence in each of the following or not? 1 4 76 *
How about health care or medical systems?
Factor1 Health inn
Factor2 Health_inn_permanent
Factor3 Health_out
566
Table 31.6 Latin America PHDI from principal components per country
Country Observations Income_dep_inn Income_out Work_inn Work_out Health_inn Health_inn_permanent Health_out Education_out
Argentina 1000 0.80 0.67 0.56 0.41 0.51 0.75 0.63 0.25
Belize 502 0.80 0.34 0.60 0.38 0.78 0.38 0.53 0.66
Bolivia 1000 0.36 0.78 0.65 0.65 0.12 0.78 0.41 0.58
Brazil 1038 0.79 0.70 0.76 0.25 0.65 0.53 0.25 0.27
Canada 1010 1.00 1.00 1.00 0.97
Chile 1000 0.77 0.58 0.46 0.54 0.66 0.60 0.50 0.52
Colombia 1000 0.47 0.33 0.37 0.66 0.78 0.45 0.30
Costa Rica 1002 0.73 0.76 0.51 0.72 0.95 0.50 0.94 0.99
Dominican 1000 0.20 0.40 0.27 0.34 0.77 0.73 0.67
Republic
Ecuador 1061 0.36 0.67 0.60 0.35 0.39 0.95 0.20 0.23
El Salvador 1001 0.16 0.26 0.00 0.10 0.66 0.73 0.41 0.50
Guatemala 1000 0.83 0.46 0.32 0.47 1.00 0.55 0.29 0.36
Guyana 501 0.76 0.27 0.54 0.24 0.62 0.63 0.80 0.69
Honduras 1000 0.06 0.57 0.10 0.77 0.35 0.42 0.59
Mexico 999 0.57 0.75 0.51 0.52 0.65 0.00 0.47 0.00
Nicaragua 1000 0.00 0.45 0.29 0.50 0.22 0.63 0.59 0.70
Panama 1000 0.55 0.56 0.40 0.47 0.93 0.70 0.57 0.80
Paraguay 1000 0.66 0.00 0.62 0.00 0.61 1.00 0.00 0.00
Peru 1000 0.13 0.34 0.16 0.30 0.00 0.85 0.12 0.14
Uruguay 1004 0.66 0.69 0.40 0.33 0.53 0.83 1.00 0.68
Venezuela 1000 0.79 1.00 1.00
Max 1038 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
Min 501 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
M. Neri
correlations with objective income and age on Bolivia; the minimum level 0 was reached in
perceptions. Complementarily, the full sample Peru) to 0.95 (same level as observed in Costa
of 132 countries where a smaller set of variables Rica; Canada is not in the Sample and Guatemala
can be included, which provides greater degrees is in the top). The other inner health component
of freedom to study the impact of objective HDI associated with perceptions on more permanent
components observed at the country level on the disability related to health conditions does not
formation of individuals perception on income, present a monotonic relation with income.
education, work, health and life satisfaction. The outer perceptions of the PHDI components
present a less clear pattern when it comes to
income. Table 31.7 presents an OLS regression
31.4 The Formation of Perceptions correlation using these factors as endogenous
on Human Development variables to isolate the per capita incomes impact
in Latin America on the principal components at the microdata
level. These regressions include dummies for gen-
31.4.1 The Correlation Between der, city size, position in the household, the pres-
Objective Income and the PHDI ence of children, elderly plus a continuous age
Components term and xed country effects. The individual
income perception is expressed here in terms of
Besides the geographical dimension, we also deprivation so higher income reduces perceived
pursue here two complementary lines of inquiry deprivation and increases inner work and health
taking advantage of the microdata: the income components. The outer perceptions present much
impact on these perceptions and the life-cycle smaller income correlations, as in the case of outer
patterns of these perceptions. Starting with the income and education conditions, or
former, we present the raw relationship between non-signicant correlations as in the case of
income percentiles (PPP adjusted moving aver- outer work and health conditions. This smaller
age of 5 percentiles) and each of the standardized impact on outer perceptions is clear in the
principal components factors extracted, PHDI Graph 31.1ad and Table 31.7 may be appreciated
components hereafter. as a sign of consistency of the expectations across
Graph 31.1ad show that inner components individuals located in different points of the very
are generally positively correlated with objective unequal LAC income distribution.3
income while outer components present more
diverse and less marked patterns. Inner income
perceptions start in the rst 5 percentiles at a
31.4.2 The Life-Cycle Pattern of PHDI
level of 0.4, which is below the level of
Components
Nicaragua, the worst perceived performance.
The top 5 percentiles coincide with the inner
The age effect on PHDI components is quite diverse
perception levels found in Canada.
as presented in Graph 31.2ad. Once again outer
The inner working conditions follow the same
components are less sensitive to age than inner
path, ranging from 0 (the level found in El
components and even less so than in the income
Salvador) in the rst 5 income percentiles to 1 in
sensitivity discussed above. The most direct impact
the 5 top percentiles (which corresponds to the level
of age on perceptions is observed on the inner health
of inner working perceptions found in Canada).
components that can be taken as the perception of
The rst inner health perception index
the life-cycle itself. Both inner health components
presents a positive correlation with objective
move from 1 between 16 and 20 years of age to 0 in
income found in both income and working
inner perception components. It also presents a
similar range to the inner working conditions 3
The reader can analyze similar results for the each of the
perception, going from 0.10 in the rst main questions related to PHDI for LAC and the questions
5 percentiles (similar to the 0.12 reached in that are available for the world in Appendix.
568 M. Neri
a b
1.40 1.20
1.20
1.00
1.00
0.80 0.80
0.60
0.60
0.40
0.20 0.40
0.00
0.20
6
10
14
18
22
26
30
34
38
42
46
50
54
58
62
66
70
74
78
82
86
90
94
98
-0.20
0.00
-0.40
18
6
10
14
22
26
30
34
38
42
46
50
54
58
62
66
70
74
78
82
86
90
94
98
-0.60
income_inn income_out health_inn health_out health_inn_permanent
c d
1.20 0.60
1.00 0.55
0.80 0.50
0.60 0.45
0.40 0.40
0.20 0.35
0.00 0.30
6
10
14
18
22
26
30
34
38
42
46
50
54
58
62
66
70
74
78
82
86
90
94
98
6
10
14
18
22
26
30
34
38
42
46
50
54
58
62
66
70
74
78
82
86
90
94
98
-0.20
work_inn work_out education_out
Graph 31.1 (ad) Objective income and perceived capita household income percentile (PPP adjusted)-
human development indexes components-Latin American centered moving average 5 percentiles (Source:
Countries standardized principal components and per Microdata from the World Gallup Survey 2007)
Table 31.7 Correlation between per capita income and sharply after this age period, reaching 1.5 around
PHDI principal components OLS regression analyses 80 years old while the other inner health percep-
American countries 2007 tion is around 0.27 at this age. The outer health
Coefcient P-value perception component is much more stable than
Inner PHDI components the inner health perception components. There is a
Income_dep_inn 0.00059 <0.0001 slight improvement of outer health after 50 years
Work_inn 0.00038 <0.0001 of age, which may indicate that more intensive
Health_inn 0.00032 <0.0001 users of health services have more positive
Health_inn_permanent 0.00006 0.005
perceptions.
Outer PHDI components
The inner working conditions component
Income_out 0.00011 0.000
Work_out 0.00005 0.134
presents a hump-shaped life-cycle format that
Health_out 0.00003 0.314 resembles Franco Modigliani story. It crosses the
Source: Authors estimates from the Gallup World Poll
horizontal axis of null inner work PHDI equiva-
2007 microdata lent to average El Salvadorian working conditions
Income_dep_inn corresponds to an inner perception perceptions at the age of 21 and 68. The peak at
income deprivation coefcient 1 average Canadian perceptions is reached at the
age of 41. There is a sort of plateau between the age
the so-called third age (at 60 years of age). The of 30 and 55, where the index is always above 0.8.
basic difference is that the perceptions related to Talking about outer perceptions on work
more permanent health problems deteriorate more conditions, the worst level around 0.4 is
a b
Income_dep_inn (pda) x GDP id work_inn (pda) x GDP id
1.00 y = 1.1389x - 0.0938 1.00

y = 0.8103x - 0.0362
0.50 0.50
0.00 0.00
0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00 0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00
-0.50 -0.50
-1.00 -1.00
Standard Error 0.09874755 Standard Error 0.0983352

c d
Income_out (pda) x GDP id work_out (pda) x GDP id
1.00 1.00
0.50 0.50
0.00 0.00
0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00 0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00
-0.50 -0.50
y = 0.2393x + 0.3038
y = 0.2192x + 0.3633 -1.00
-1.00
Graph 31.2 (ad) Gross correlation between aggregated PHDI and respective HDI component (Source: Authors
estimates from the Gallup World Poll 2007 microdata and Human Development Report)
Table 31.8 Relation between disaggregated PHDI PCA and respective HDI component regression analyses
Income Income Work Work Health Health Education
dep inn out inn out inn out out
Constant + specic HDI 2.12 0.50 0.99 0.45 0.38 0.95 0.92
component 0.02 0.02 0.02 0.02 0.02 0.02 0.02
Constant + HDI components 1.01 1.34 0.79 1.09 0.44 0.39 0.09
0.04 0.04 0.04 0.04 0.04 0.04 0.03
Cte + HDI component + socio- 0.91 2.13 1.18 1.33 1.90 2.79 0.64
demogracsa 0.06 0.07 0.06 0.06 0.09 0.09 0.05
Source: Authors estimates from the Gallup World Poll 2007 microdata and Human Development Report
a
Regressions include dummies for presence of children, for elderly, gender, position in the household and HDI
components
observed in middle-aged individuals while the cycle proles are quite erratic. Better inner income
peak in the perceptions is reached by younger perceptions are observed at early and later ages.
or older individuals 0.6 around ages of 20 and
77 years. Outer education perceptions do not
present a clear trend, but uctuate between 0.45
31.5 The Formation of Perceptions
and 0.65 until 68 years of age and increase some-
on Human Development
what at later ages reaching the peak of 0.68 at
around the World
around 77 years of age. Contrary to outer health
perceptions those with less access to the service
The sets of results here show the robustness of
have better outer education perceptions.
expected correlation signs between objective
Finally, although inner income perceptions
HDI and subjective PHDI components. In the
uctuates much more than outer income
Table 31.8 we use the non-standardized PCA.
perceptions, both composite variables of the life
For example, we ran regressions of the inner
570 M. Neri
and outer health components against health HDI evaluation of alternative economic policies and the
component. In the case of the work related PHDI solution of empirical puzzles that conventional
components, where there is no HDI counterpart, economics nd difcult to explain. Concerning
we use the GDP as its corresponding objective this last aspect, probably the most striking paradox
indicator. We use different specications with in need of an explanation is the very weak correla-
respect to controls. The rst line uses a constant tion found in many studies between income, the
regression besides the respective HDI compo- most worshiped variable in economics, and happi-
nent. The second line adds the two other HDI ness. It was a well-established nding5 that several
components in the regressions. The third line countries that experienced a drastic rise in real
adds socio-demographic characteristics at an income since WWII did not see an increase in the
individual level to the second line regressions. self-report subjective well-being of the population,
The results show statistically signicant which has even fallen slightly. At a given point in
associations between HDI and PHDI respective time, higher income is positively associated with
components with the right sign. That is, a negative peoples happiness, yet over the life cycle, across
sign for income deprivation and HDI income index countries and over time this correlation is very
and a positive association for all others. The only weak, what is known as the Easterlin paradox. As
exception is the objective and subjective education we are going to see later this view was recently
index (third line of the table) that presents a nega- challenged by the recent empirical results
tive but statistically non-signicant sign. presented by Deaton (2007) that also explore the
The aggregate HDI and PHDI respective Gallup World Poll used here.
components also present a positive relationship This fact motivated economists to reach a step
shown results of this line is presented in the set of beyond the standard economic theorys objec-
Graph 31.2ad. In sum, the set of results are con- tivist position, based only on observable choices
sistent with the expected correlation coefcients made by individuals. In the traditional approach,
between PHDI sector-specic ingredients and its individual utility depends only on tangible
corresponding objective HDI ingredient. goods, services and leisure, and is inferred
almost exclusively from behavior (or revealed
preferences). The axiomatic revealed-preference
31.6 Life-Satisfaction approach holds that the choices made provide all
and the Subjective Weights the information required by simply inferring the
of the Human Development utility of individuals. According to Sen (1984)
Components the popularity of this view may be due to a
peculiar belief that choice (. . .) is the only
31.6.1 Conceptualization human aspect that can be observed.
of the Determinants of Life Stemming from a work by Easterlin (1974), and
Satisfaction having become substantially relevant in the late
1990s when economists started to contribute
If one agrees, as most people would, that happiness with large-scale empirical analyses of the
can be considered the ultimate goal in a persons determinants of happiness in different countries
life and that what matters most for everybody is to and periods6 the economic interest in the assess-
achieve satisfaction with life, it follows that eco- ment of individual subjective welfare grew
nomics should be about individual happiness. The considerably.
study of satisfaction with life4 has an intrinsic
interest as well as other motivations, such as the
5
4
Subjective well-being, happiness and satisfaction can be See Richard Easterlin (1974), Blanchower and Oswald
used interchangeably and is the scientic term in psychol- (2000), Diener and Oishi (2000), and Kenny (1999)
6
ogy for an individuals evaluation of her experience about For a general survey on happiness research see
life as a whole. Kahneman (2011) and Frey and Stutzer (2002).
A subjective view of utility recognizes that bring happiness (that is, long-run life satisfac-
everybody has his own ideas about happiness tion), but he also uses the same data set we use
and good life and that observed behavior is an in this paper, namely the Gallup World Poll,
incomplete indicator for individual well-being. which is rich in content and cover a wider num-
This methodology involves the belief that ber of countries than previous surveys, enabling
individuals happiness can be captured and the comparability of results. We also explore
analyzed by directly asking people about how here countries xed effects and empirical
satised they are with their lives. Hence, the possibilities offered by microdata availability
variables of interest are based on the judgment worldwide. The theoretical and empirical
of the persons directly involved, following a structures of Deatons paper are quite useful for
premise that people are the best judges of the the purposes of this paper. The interpretation
overall quality of their lives, and thus no strategy based on a standard intertemporal model
could be more natural and accurate than to ask incorporating explicit income and survival rates
them about their well-being. The main idea is is quite appropriate for the HDI structure used
that the concept of subjective happiness allows where income and life expectations do occupy a
us to capture human well-being directly, instead central role.
of assessing income, or other things which are Deaton (2007) paper does not make any direct
not truly what most people want but, instead, a reference to the HDI; nevertheless, the empirical
means through which one can attain happiness. specication of the determinants of life satisfac-
Following Frey and Stutzer (2002), subjec- tion uses not only the main variables of the origi-
tive well-being is a much broader concept than nal HDI such as per capita GDP and life
decision utility, including experienced utility as expectation but the functional form used in the
well as procedural utility, and is for many people paper for the log of GDP is the same one used in
an ultimate goal. They argue that, for most the HDI.7 Education HDI component that is not
purposes, happiness or reported subjective well- present in Deatons framework may impact more
being are satisfactory empirical proxies for indi- directly on the budget constraint than the
vidual utility. Since people assess their level of achieved happiness levels and will be
subjective well-being in relation to incorporated into the empirical framework.
circumstances and other people, past experience,
and future expectations, they suggest that this
measures can serve as proxies for utility.
31.6.2 Sector-Specific Weights
Besides, since the main purpose of measuring
of the HDI and Life Satisfaction
happiness is not to compare its levels in an abso-
lute sense but rather to identify its determinants,
One common criticism to the HDI is the fact that
as it will be done in our work, it is necessary
weights given to each of its income, health and
neither to assume that reported subjective well-
education components are arbitrary. This
being is cardinally measurable nor that it is inter-
sub-section addresses this issue taking advantage
personally comparable. Furthermore, according
of questions on present life satisfaction extracted
to Diener and Oishi (2000) based on many
from the Gallup survey as endogenous variable.
studies which found a high correlation between
The estimation of a happiness function using
reported happiness and smiling, and others that
aggregated HDI components as explanatory
found the same correlation between unhappiness,
variables and restrictions summing to one in a
brains and heart activity these subjective
restricted linear least square framework will
measures seem to contain substantial amounts
of valid variance.
Angus Deaton (2007), using the Gallup data,
not only challenges some more or less well 7
As Deaton (2007, p 30) poses One surprising nding in
established interpretations of the previous empir- gure 3, the close linear relationship between average life
ical literature, in particular that money does not satisfaction and the logarithm of income per head.
572 M. Neri
Table 31.9 Sector-specific weights of the HDI and life satisfaction regression analysis, parameter estimates
Parameter estimates Model 1 Model 2
Variable Label Parameter estimate Standard error Parameter estimate Standard error
Intercept Intercept 2.63 0.03 1.80 0.06
Past life satisfaction 0.45 0.00
Gross_ed Gross_ed 0.022 0.00 0.01 0.06
Literacy Literacy 0.003 0.00 0.00 0.00
GDP_id GDP_id 0.664 0.06 0.39 0.05
Life_id Life_id 0.310 0.06 0.15 0.05
Restrict 3429 66.2 2193 57.0
enable the estimation of the relative weights explanatory variables taking into account per-
attributed to income, health and education in sub- ceived components on income, health and educa-
jective welfare. We do that in two ways by taking tion described in the previous section of the paper.
and not taking into account the presence of the The results of the regression without the
lagged variable of life satisfaction, which lagged variable presented on Table 31.10 show
generates a common multiplier effect on the long a weight attributed to inner income perceptions
run impact of each variable. The question of cur- of 64 %, outer income perceptions 17.6 %, inner
rent and past life satisfaction involves an 11-point health 8.9 %, outer health 9.1 %; and outer edu-
scale ranging from 0 to 10 and it will be described cation had a null weight. These results suggest
in detail in the next section of the paper. that the sum of weights given to each of them is
The results of the regression in Table 31.9 not so distant in order of magnitude from the
without the lagged variable show a weight of ones estimated from the objective HDI
66 % attributed to GDP, 31 % to life expectation, indicators: the weights given to income was
2.2 % to gross enrollment rates and 0.3 % to the 66 % there against 82 % here; health was 31 %
literacy indicator. This means that according to there and 18 % here; and education less than 3 %
the current life satisfaction criteria the weight there and 0 % here. One must have in mind that
should be two thirds for income, 31 % for health the income component is not related only to
and less than 3 % for both education components mean income but also to income deprivation
weights taken together. One may argue that edu- perception, which may intuitively explain the
cation is an investment in the future. The next higher weight, while conversely by the same
step is to throw light in this issue by running a token education perceptions considered in the
similar exercise but considering a future life- questionnaire are only outer ones, while in gen-
satisfaction instead of current levels. eral inner coefcients tend to be more strongly
associated with inner life satisfaction, which may
explain the smaller weight.
31.6.3 Sector-Specific Weights As we argued in the introduction, since work
of the PHDI and Current Life perceptions issues play a central part in the hap-
Satisfaction piness literature, we replicate the same exercise
with the two additional labor variables. The
Similarly, we investigate the weights given to results of the restricted linear square regression
each of the three components in the PHDI frame- again without lagged variable presented in
work that are common to the HDI sector-specic Table 31.11 show a weight of 4.1 % attributed
indicators (income, health and education) in rela- to inner work, virtually 0 % to outer work, 60 %
tion to the present life satisfaction criteria men- to inner income perceptions, 18.4 % to outer
tioned in the previous subsection. To be sure, rst income perceptions, 7.7 % to inner health,
we estimate a restricted linear least square regres- 8.3 % to outer health 8.3 % and again a null
sion at the micro-level in both endogenous and weight for outer education.
Table 31.10 Sector-specific weights of the HDI and life satisfaction

Model 1 Model 2
Variable Parameter estimate Standard error Parameter estimate Standard error
Intercept 4.66 0.01 2.58 0.02
Pincome_dep2 0.64 0.01 0.52 0.01
Income_out 0.18 0.01 0.34 0.01
Health_inn 0.09 0.01 0.12 0.01
Health_out 0.09 0.01 0.04 0.01
Cp_education 0.00 0.01 0.01 0.01
Restrict 14,402 229 6592 187
Table 31.11 Sector-specific weights of the PHDI and life satisfaction

Model 1 Model 2
Variable Parameter estimate Standard error Parameter estimate Standard error
Intercept 4.67 0.01 2.65 0.02
Pincome_dep2 0.60 0.01 0.46 0.01
Income_out 0.18 0.01 0.32 0.01
Work_inn 0.04 0.01 0.06 0.01
Work_out 0.01 0.01 0.04 0.01
Health_inn 0.08 0.01 0.10 0.01
Health_out 0.08 0.01 0.03 0.01
Cp_education 0.01 0.01 0.02 0.01
Restrict 12,428 204 6166 168
subjective aspects of peoples lives. In order to

31.7 Conclusion each country aspirations vis-a`-vis those of other
nations, it is necessary to view peoples
31.7.1 Overview perspectives through international lenses, as in
the emerging literature of happiness economics.
The knowledge of peoples perceptions allied with These approaches are not yet part of the honorable
objective data traditionally observed by most of traditions of Latin American household surveys.
the research conducted, allows policy makers to A recent innovation, presented in this book,
enhance and qualify its assessments on policies was to incorporate to LAC eld research,
adopted by the State, integrating in a more bal- questions that are acknowledged internationally
anced manner, the elements of effectiveness, ef- on social perceptions studies. The combined
ciency and efcacy of the results obtained. processing of this information allows for direct
Household surveys such as the Demographic comparison of global, national and regional
Census and the National Household Surveys from results.
the national institutes of statistics across the con- The complex mosaic of data and analyses
tinent, capture different aspects of Latin American presented in this publication allows for a com-
society, such as the distribution of income, educa- prehensive reading of the perception of Latin
tion and employment. However, they do not pro- Americans on their lives and the impacts
vide a direct notion of national differences emanating from public policies, and, further-
compared to other countries, nor do they cover more, promote international comparisons. The
574 M. Neri
results were used in several cross-readings, indicators, as well as the existing dichotomy
which indicated a trend of dissatisfaction with between internal indicators on the status of the
some public services such as education, health, individual and external perceptions about the soci-
issues that dominated the agenda of popular ety and associated policies. The relation between
Brazilian demonstrations during June of 2013. the respective components of the HDI and PHDI
The results may indicate that the way to solve is also explored and the results indicate that the
some of the challenges presented in popular perceptions of individuals with income, educa-
manifestations depends on higher and not lower tion, health and work are relatively adherent to
involvement of the State and that the sources for their counterparts goals. Particularly, when we
funding these actions are related to a more pro- deal with internal perceptions about the status of
gressive tax structure. Moreover, perceptions the individual and less with external perceptions.
indicate that population well-being passes A ranking of the PHDI is presented for
through the working world and that people 109 countries in the Appendix, with Singapore in
believe teachers hold the greatest possibility of the rst place and Haiti in the last. Brazil was in
transformation and can provide solutions to position 62.
problems, such as overcoming poverty and even Similarly, we investigate the weights given
the low quality of education. to each of the three components in the PHDI
In this manner, the results presented demon- framework that are common to the HDI sector-
strate great potential for the generation of infor- specic indicators, namely income, health and
mation and analyses and opens several lines of education, applying to the present life satisfac-
work and partnerships, showing that the promi- tion criteria mentioned in the previous subsec-
nent role to be occupy within the State on mea- tion. From the estimation of a happiness
suring the perceptions of the population on function, weights were established and rst
public policies. assigned to each component of the Human
Development Index (HDI) concerning satisfac-
tion with current life. The results indicate that
31.7.2 Main Results income explains about 66 % of the variation in
life satisfaction against 31 % of life expectancy,
It is believed in common sense that happiness leaving less than 3 % explained by components
can be considered as the ultimate objective in a of education. Similar exercise for the subjective
persons life. Thus, the study of satisfaction with components of the PHDI shows that the weight
life has an intrinsic interest as well as other attributed to inner income perceptions is 64 %,
motivations, such as the evaluation of alternative outer income perceptions 17.6 %, inner health
economic policies and the solution of empirical 8.9 %, outer health 9.1 % and outer education
puzzles of the economy. The Gallup World Poll, with a null weight. These results suggest that the
covering more than 132 countries, has expanded sum of weights given to each of them is not
the geographical horizon of the discussion and distant in order of magnitude from the ones
also allows us to gauge peoples perception with estimated from a similar equation of life satis-
respect to different sectorial social policies. The faction against objective HDI indicators, but
rst objective of the paper is to build a Perceived rather different in relation to the equal weights
Human Development Index (PHDI) framework assumed by the standard HDI (one third for each
by assembling the HDI components, namely component). On the other hand, the hypothesis
indicators on income, health and education on that different age groups confer different
their subjective version. weights to the components of the HDI is
The principal component analysis (PCA) rejected. In general, the construction of the
applied to more than two dozen subjective PHDI allows, by means of a summarizing indi-
questions allowed for eliminating the redundancy cator of subjective nature, for complementary
among similar queries, revealing a convergence of analyses to those undertaken with the
topics in two fronts, chance versus outcome traditional HDI.
Appendix
Table 31.12 PHDI ranking of 109 selected countries (2006)

Position Country PHDI Position Country PHDI
1 Singapore 0.96 56 Dominican Republic 0.63
2 Finlandia 0.94 57 Senegal 0.63
3 Ireland 0.94 58 Mauritania 0.63
4 United Arab Emirates 0.94 59 Iran 0.62
5 Austria 0.92 60 Hungary 0.62
6 Kuwait 0.92 61 Chile 0.62
7 Belgium 0.90 62 Brazil 0.61
8 Switzerland 0.90 63 Zambia 0.61
9 New Zealand 0.90 64 Mozambique 0.61
10 Thailand 0.90 65 Philippines 0.59
11 France 0.90 66 Polopny 0.59
12 Denmark 0.88 67 Greece 0.58
13 Laos 0.88 68 Pakistan 0.58
14 Chipre 0.87 69 Ecuador 0.57
15 Netherlands 0.87 70 Nicaragua 0.56
16 Australia 0.87 71 Bolivia 0.56
17 Sweden 0.87 72 Lithuania 0.56
18 Norway 0.86 73 Bielorussia 0.55
19 Italy 0.85 74 Kenya 0.54
20 United Kingdom 0.85 75 Madagascar 0.53
21 Saudi Arabic 0.84 76 Tanzania 0.53
22 Spain 0.84 77 Kazakhstan 0.53
23 Taiwan 0.84 78 Rwanda 0.51
24 Portugal 0.82 79 Malawi 0.50
25 Jordania 0.82 80 Azerbaijan 0.50
26 Costa Rica 0.82 81 Palestine 0.50
27 Panama 0.82 82 Nigeria 0.49
28 Nepal 0.80 83 Ethiopia 0.49
29 Japan 0.79 84 Afghanistan 0.48
30 Vietnam 0.79 85 Yemen 0.47
31 Jamaica 0.79 86 Niger 0.47
32 Slovenia 0.78 87 Peru 0.47
33 Germany 0.75 88 Zimbabwe 0.46
34 Botswana 0.75 89 Romania 0.46
35 Trinidad Tobago 0.75 90 Tajikistan 0.45
36 Czech Republic 0.75 91 Quirguistan 0.44
37 Indonesia 0.71 92 Burkina Faso 0.44
38 Slovakia 0.71 93 Morocco 0.44
39 Sri Lanka 0.70 94 Cameroon 043
40 El Salvador 0.70 95 Turkey 0.42
41 Libanus 0.68 96 Mali 0.42
42 Uruguay 0.68 97 Armenia 0.40
43 Honduras 0.68 98 Togo 0.40
44 Colombia 0.68 99 Cambodia 0.38
45 Venezuela 0.67 100 Sierra Leone 0.38
46 Ghana 0.67 101 Uganda 0.37
(continued)
576 M. Neri

Position Country PHDI Position Country PHDI
47 Algerie 0.67 102 Angola 0.36
48 India 0.66 103 Russia 0.34
49 South Korea 0.65 104 Moldova 0.34
50 Paraguay 0.65 105 Burundi 0.32
51 Argentina 0.65 106 Benin 0.29
52 Letonia 0.64 107 Ukraine 0.27
53 Mexico 0.64 108 Chade 0.15
54 Guatemala 0.63 109 Haiti 0.09
55 Bangladesh 0.63
a b
health_inn (pda) x life id education (pda) x educ id
1.00 1.00 y = 0.5847x + 0.14
0.50
0.50
0.00
0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00
-0.50
y = 0.4259x + 0.2943 0.00
-1.00 0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00
c
health_out (pda) x life id
1.00
0.50
0.00
0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00
-0.50
y = 0.5435x + 0.1685
-1.00
Standard Error 0.1198032
Graph 31.3 (ac) Gross correlation between aggregated PHDI and respective HDI component
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ness: Heterogeneity and its consequences. Social Resources, values and development. Oxford: Basil
Indicators Research, 74(2), 261294. Blackwell.
Rojas, M. (2007). Measurement of quality of life, research United Nations Development Programme (1990). Human
proposal, project understanding quality of life in Latin Development Report, Oxford University Press, Oxford
America and the Caribbean: A multidimensional and New York.
approach. mimeo, Inter-American Bank. Veenhoven, R. (2000).The for qualities of life: Ordering
concepts and measures of the good life. Journal of
Happiness Studies, 1, 139.
Life Satisfaction and Happiness
in Mexico: Correlates 32
and Redundancies
Gerardo Leyva, Alfredo Bustos, and Ana Miriam Romo
32.1 Introduction measures such as happiness and life satisfaction

have different relative charges concerning emo-
This paper analyzes, from the perspective of tion/evaluation, the second being a relatively more
ordinal cumulative logit-type models, correlates evaluative and less emotional measure than the rst,
of two indicators of subjective well-being from on top of each being differentially associated with
the results of the Self-reported Well-being Module variables such as income and availability of durable
(BIARE) carried out by INEGI in 2012. Thus the goods in the household, so they are close but com-
similarities and differences in the ways in which plementary indicators.
the nationally representative indicators of (1) life One would expect then that, for the specic
satisfaction and (2) happiness relate to a broad set case of individuals in Mexico, life satisfaction
of observed variables in order to identify not only and happiness are also complementary evaluative
the correlates of subjective well-being but also to indicators of subjective well-being. However, this
identify to what degree these two measures are does not follow directly from Diener et al. (2010)
redundant to each other. because in that study data comes from a large set
Diener (2005) denes subjective well-being as of countries within which Latin American
all the different types of evaluations, both positive countries are only a minor subset, so that their
and negative, that people make in their lives. This specic features could be hidden within the larger
includes reective cognitive evaluations, such as whole. Furthermore, the questions regarding life
life satisfaction and job satisfaction, interest and satisfaction and happiness are not strictly compa-
engagement, and affective reactions to life events, rable since clearly different scales are used.1
such as happiness and sadness. As has been clearly Moreover, it is necessary to keep in mind that
illustrated by Kahneman (1999), assessments and
affections are two clearly separable categories of 1
For life satisfaction two scales are used; one between
subjective well-being. Evaluations refer to how
0 and 10 but also another from 1 to 10. In turn, happiness
people judge what their life has been (or to some is not measured using numerical scales; labels are used
specic aspects of it) and affects refer to the way instead: Very happy, Quite happy, Not very happy and
people experience life from one moment to the Not at all happy (see Diener et al. 2010). Helliwell
et al. (2012) make a similar exercise with comparable
next. Diener et al. (2010) found that evaluative
information on life satisfaction and happiness from the
European Social Survey and nd that both indicators are
G. Leyva (*) A. Bustos A.M. Romo complementary, to the point that the average of both
Direccion General Adjunta de Investigaci
on, INEGI, behaves better than either of them taken separately in
Aguascalientes, Mexico terms of the proportion of variance that can be explained
e-mail: gerardoleyvaparra@yahoo.com.mx by a common set of explanatory variables.

580 G. Leyva et al.
when measuring subjective well-being by means extraction of signals from the other variables.
of questionnaires a denition of what is to be Identifying correlates of subjective well-being
understood by satisfaction with life and by happi- in Mexico, beyond being a tool to identify
ness is not usually provided to the respondent, but redundancies between happiness and life satis-
rather relies on his/her ability to distinguish faction, is a valuable end in itself, since it allows
between the two. It is expected that people react us to get a panoramic view that is also a guide for
differently depending on what they are asked, this work. The document is structured so that the
giving more or less weight to the factors of judg- methodology is rst briey discussed, with spe-
ment and to affections, as appropriate. However, cial emphasis on showing how to read the odds
whether or not the respondent makes such a dis- ratios resulting from the econometric runs from
tinction is something that is not guaranteed ordinal cumulative logit underlying the bulk of
ex-ante and is therefore a matter for empirical the analysis. Then the information used is
analysis. described, giving some generalities on the survey
When responding to an evaluative question on that underlies the study, on how the questions on
subjective well-being both cognitive and emo- life satisfaction and happiness are asked, and on
tional elements are simultaneously involved, which variables are included in the model as
but according to the specic question the relative correlates; also a brief comparative analysis of
weight of each of these two elements may be the distributions of the responses to the questions
different.2 One could be led to thinking that about life satisfaction and happiness is presented.
evaluative questions on happiness result in sub- Next, a report of the model results for each of the
jective well-being indicators that are more or less correlates considered is given, noting in each
redundant with life satisfaction, depending on the case the nature of the observed association, and
extent to which the answers to each question whether or not it is shared between life satisfac-
have a higher or lower load of valuations relative tion and happiness. The article closes with the
to affections. If such redundancy proved small so conclusions section. The results of the economet-
that both variables provide sufcient, different ric models from which the above discussion
and complementary information elements, then stems are presented in the Appendix.
it would be reasonable to investigate the two. If,
on the other hand, the information obtained with
both questions barely has differentiating
32.2 Methodology
elements to the point that, beyond the name, it
is very difcult to distinguish between the two, it
The way we follow to measure the relationship
would not make sense to inquire about both in the
between life-satisfaction and a set of correlates
same questionnaire.
considered relevant is that of the logit cumulative
The path followed here to elucidate what peo-
ordinal models, which are certainly a better
ple really have in mind when answering either
approach than ordinary least squares adjusted
question is to analyze the way in which each life
regression models. The indicators of subjective
satisfaction and happiness are associated with a
well-being we are using are categorical variables
set of variables often related to subjective well-
taking values between 11 possible different
being in the literature, as well as with other
outcomes, and are therefore discontinuous and
variables we deem of interest to consider either
bounded, which makes them inconsistent with
for their possible contribution to well-being or
the assumptions on which the standard economet-
for their quality as necessary controls for the
ric analysis is based. If we were to relate a depen-
dent variable Y with m explanatory variables,
2
It is to be expected for such assessments to be more or as in a linear regression, the equation may be given
less affected by emotions or feelings a person is as EY jX 0 1 x1 2 x2 m xm ,
experiencing unless that person actually comes from 0
Planet Vulcan. only that in this case Y Y 0 Y1 Y 10
32 Life Satisfaction and Happiness in Mexico: Correlates and Redundancies 581
is a multidimensional variable all of whose when individuals are randomly chosen from
components are equal to zero except for the one subpopulations characterized by a set of
associated with the chosen response, which takes conditions represented by the entries of vector
the value one. Even though, as Ferrer-i-Carbonell X. In general, in order to relate the propensity to
and Frijters (2004) suggests, you can make certain respond in one way or another under the
arrangements to ensure that the assumptions are conditions presented by the respondent (X)
met, at the end the regression model estimation by would require building a model for each compo-
OLS does not guarantee that the predicted value of nent. However, in this case the K categories of
E(Y|X) lies in the range between 0 and 1, so it may the dependent variable are ordered4; in other
shed predictions out of range. The most appropri- words, are in ordinal scale. Therefore, it has
ate way to analyze models using categorical been considered that an ordinal logistic regres-
variables is to compress the probabilities sion model is more appropriate.5 In particular,
estimated within a range 01 without implying use of the cumulative logistic model allows us to
that estimates of probability 0 or 1 are created.3 compare two types of probabilities; on one hand,
Among the many functions that can be used to PrY 0 Y 1 Y k 1jX, which is read as
address this problem one often used for its low the chosen category is less than or equal to k,
computational cost is the logistic function, even with PrY k1 Y k2 Y 10 1jX 1-
though interpretation of logistic models is more PrY 0 Y 1 Y k 1jX, which is read as
complex than those of regression. The logistic the chosen category is greater than k.6 To
regression model is the basis of all logistic simplify the notation, in what follows
techniques and is dened for dichotomous PrY 0 Y 1 Y k 1jX will be written as
variables. However, it is possible to extend it to Pr y kjX.
cover cases where there are more than two Using this type of model makes it is possible
alternatives, which is especially desirable consid- to observe the problem in terms of odds ratios.
ering that life satisfaction and happiness Odds-ratios of the form Pr(y>kjX1)/ Pr(ykjX1)/
variables used in this work have 11 categories. Pr(y>kjX1)/(y>kjX0)(ykjX0), reect the extent
As before, under present conditions E(Y|X) is the that the propensity to assign high ratings given
vector function of X to be estimated. In all cases, condition X0 (analysis condition), is relatively
the entries of E(Y|X) are probabilities and, there- greater or smaller than under condition X1
fore, take values between zero and one, and their (a reference condition). Thus the ratio is greater
sum equals one. Indeed, the weighted sum of than 1 if the relative probability of randomly
0
vectors Y Y 0 Y 1 Y 10 over the sam- nding someone with a value y above k is
ple gives an estimate for the frequency in which greater for the group of people in the condition of
each level of the variable is chosen by all popu-
lation units. Such sum is said to follow a multi- 4
Y k 1 is worse (or better) than Y k1 18k; here
nomial model. Therefore, when the entries of the Y is life satisfaction or happiness and has 11 categories,
weighted sum are expressed in relative terms, as with values ranging from 0 to 10.
5
percentages, they provide an estimate of the Kennedy (1994, p. 232) states that in cases like this
probability that an individual chosen at random using multinomial probit or logit would not be efcient
because no account would be taken of the extra informa-
from the population will reply in one way or
tion implicit in the ordinal nature of the dependent
another; in other words, of the probability that variable.
each component of Y takes the value one, which 6
Ordered logit models, although they account for inter-
is equal to the vector E(Y ). Instead of considering personal comparability of subjective well-being (if two
only E(Y ) in what follows, interest is centred people respond 10 on a scale of 010 is because they both
have a very high level of subjective well-being), do not
instead in similar probabilities but for the case require a response assume that 10 is the double one than
5 nor that the distance from 0 to 1 is the same as that of
910. See: Agresti (2002), Escobar et al. (2009), and
3
Kennedy (1994, p. 229). DeMaris (1995).
582 G. Leyva et al.
analysis than for people in the reference condi- correlation does not imply causation and that
tion and vice versa. On the other hand, if the odds there is a risk that the observed parameters are
ratio is not statistically different from 1 there is a affected by omitted latent variables.7 In this
pretty good chance that nding someone with a regard, to the relief of the reader, it must be
certain level or higher of the dependent variable said that the models considered include a much
is the same for X1 than for X0. In this case, both wider range of variables than most of the
the test group and the reference group published work on the subject.
populations would have the same chance of In the above results and in addition to decid-
showing a certain value y on. ing not to use regression models or ordinary least
As an example consider the dependent vari- squares as the adjustment method, emphasis has
able was life satisfaction and its relationship was been placed on the inclusion of all additional
being considered, ceteris paribus, with the socio- information available. This refers in particular
economic status of the household in which the to the sampling design that gave rise to the data
respondent lives, measured in terms of the expen- and which, for the present case, may result in
diture quintile in which the corresponding house- deviations from the usual assumptions behind
hold is located. If we set as reference condition adjustment methods and, consequently, may
(X0) being in the rst expenditure quintile and if yield suboptimal results in the best of cases.
we consider as analysis condition (X1) being in Indeed, the fact that the BIARE survey has a
the fth expenditure quintile and if we nd that two-stage, stratied, cluster, without replace-
the corresponding odds ratio is signicantly ment, xed size and unequal probabilities design
greater than 1, we would conclude that the eco- makes us doubt that assumptions such as, among
nomic situation thus measured does make a dif- others, independence, or its more relaxed version
ference in the propensity to describe life of no-correlation, or of equal distribution are
satisfaction of people as better. This is equivalent applicable. In particular, when it is decided that
to saying that it is relatively easier to randomly information on the sample design is not to be
nd someone with a certain life satisfaction value used, the risk of seeing signicantly under- or
above any threshold k (e.g., 0 or more, 1 or more, over-estimated second moments used in signi-
2 or more, 3 or more, etc.) from the fth quintile cance tests is run, which may render invalid their
population than from the rst quintile population. results. On the other hand, when the design infor-
We shall see that, in fact, those who are in the mation is used (as we do in this research), the
fourth or fth quintile are more likely to have dispersions (variances) may be assumed to be
greater life satisfaction (for all k between 0 and better estimated by including information on the
9) that those in quintile 1, but the odds of having sample design so that the results of signicance
a certain level of life satisfaction or more for tests give more reliable p-values (see, e.g.,
those in quintile 2 or 3 are not different from Chambers and Skinner 2003).
those in quintile 1.
It is important to note that the odds ratio
shows only in which of the two conditions
32.3 The Data
being compared is it likelier to nd some
individuals with a especial characteristic (e.g.,
According to Diener (2009), measurement is the
with higher subjective well-being), but tells us
most important activity in the behavioural
nothing about the absolute value of the probabil-
ity (if closest to 0 or to 1) but only if the odds are
7
bigger, equal or smaller in the analysis group From the outset, we may have left out of the analysis
than in the reference group. The idea then is to over 50 % of the variance, if we consider the issues raised
by Seligman (2002) who, citing multiple studies
nd out whether or not certain conditions favour,
hundreds of them said they converge on that approxi-
from a probabilistic perspective, a higher level of mately 50 % of nearly every aspect of personality is
subjective well-being, recognizing that attributable to genetic inheritance.
Fig. 32.1 Questions on life satisfaction and happiness
sciences, and possibly the activity that is most elements of the European Social Survey11 and
undervalued. It can be argued that scientic others derived from INEGIs initiative and expe-
knowledge and measurement go hand in hand. rience. Following ENGASTOs method of infor-
In this regard, it is particularly relevant that the mation collection, BIARE was self-administered.
study of subjective well-being is done on a scien- Doubts that may have arisen during lling were
tic basis, i.e. based on facts and data that reect dealt with during later visits of INEGI
the relevant events of the reference population. representatives.12 ENGASTO sample is repre-
The information used in this paper to describe sentative at the national level and is based on a
subjective well-being is derived from the Mexican stratied, cluster and multi-stage design. A
Self-reported Welfare Module (BIARE)8 which respondent between 18 and 70 years was ran-
INEGI carried out during the rst quarter of domly selected from each household, following
2012 as part of the National Survey of Household the rule of the nearest birthday.13 In total, 1,0654
Expenditure (ENGASTO). By being a module of questionnaires were collected.14 BIARE includes
a greater survey, BIARE involves several impor- various questions about valuations and
tant advantages, such as virtually zero marginal affections. In this report, two questions are con-
cost. Also, the availability of a wide range of sidered that in principle may be assumed to fall
economic and demographic variables that serve into the eld of valuations: life satisfaction and
as context elements and which make it possible to happiness, which were stated as follows
study and to achieve a better understanding of (Fig. 32.1).15
subjective well-being in Mexico. Moreover, it is
important to recognize that the ENGASTO ques-
tionnaire grew to include the BIARE module even
11
though, in view of its size, it already implied an http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/
12
important burden on the respondent.9 Diener (2009) states that, in terms of subjective well-
being, there are no signicant differences between the
The questions included in BIARE take into
information that results from applying questionnaires
consideration draft guidelines developed by the face to face or deferred.
Organization for Economic Cooperation and 13
Collection of this type of information from children and
Development (OECD 2013),10 as well as adolescents implies the need for more specialized items
than the ones used in this study. Moreover, the evidence
from preliminary eld trials, showed that population over
70 years, especially the under-schooled, had serious
8
The questionnaire, tabulated and database logging level limitations to interact efciently with the questionnaire,
BIARE are available free and free at: http://www.inegi. especially considering that it should be self-administered.
org.mx/inegi/contenidos/Investigacion/Experimentales/ 14
As a reference, consider that the sample used by Gallup
Bienestar/default.aspx in Mexico as part of its remarkable global exercise is
9
This led to a non-specic response of the module about around 1000 questionnaires.
15 % above the crimped no response, forcing it to make an 15
Life satisfaction was captured at the beginning of the
ex-post adjustment factors for expansion. module and happiness at the end. It is possible that this
10
Changes to the nal version mainly affect the way of relative positioning is a source of some of the differences
asking about affects. in the responses to both questions.
584 G. Leyva et al.
The ordinal logistic regression model was run Respondent has suffered physical aggression
alternately taking as dependent variable the from stranger.
answers to the questions about life satisfaction Satisfaction with family life, affective life and
and happiness. In both cases, seven groups of social life.
variables from the other BIARE or ENGASTO Satisfaction with family life.
modules were used16: Satisfaction with affective life.
Satisfaction with social life.
Socio-demographic aspects. Family support and frequency of gatherings
Age. with family and friends.
Gender. With how many supportive relatives respon-
Schooling. dent believes he can count.
Marital status. Frequency of gathering with friends.
Household size. Frequency of gathering with the family.
Town size. Personal Practices.
Speaks indigenous language. Respondent practices physical activity.
Economic aspects. Respondent belongs to an association that
Respondents household expenditure quintile. promotes faith.
Respondent receives food aid. Respondent belongs to a political movement.
Respondents activity status. Respondent owns a pet.
Someone else needs respondents nancial Respondent is registered in social network.
support. Respondent gives donations.
Respondents standard of living compared to Respondent has avoided throwing batteries.
their parents. Respondent read article/journal.
Personal experiences. Respondent meditate on his/her life.
Respondent has experienced a moment of Respondent considers to have had
great joy or happiness at some stage in achievements in life.
his/her life.
A close relative died in the last 10 years. These potential correlates of subjective well-
Respondent has had serious difculties, being of Mexicans were considered relevant for
setbacks or adversity throughout his life. their intrinsic value in many cases (gender, satis-
Respondent considers that throughout life has faction with life, economic status) and as
been able to make important decisions freely. controls necessary to understand what otherwise
How well respondent slept last night. seemed to be inconsistent data (people who seem
Respondent received a heartfelt thanks, praise to have everything to be very happy or satised
or recognition for efforts to make things right. in life but, for example, suffered the death of a
Respondent living with alcoholics. loved one recently or did not sleep the night
Abuse and violence. before).
Respondent has suffered abuse because of Before presenting the results of the economet-
some form of discrimination (age, colour, ric work, it is to ponder on the differences in the
sex, religion, sexual orientation, illness, dis- distribution of responses for each variable. From
ability, political views and nationality). the outset, it is important to note that the fre-
Respondent has suffered physical assault by quency of responses concentrated on the higher
someone living in household. scale values for both happiness and life satisfac-
Respondent has suffered physical assault by tion, as shown in Table 32.1.17
someone known.
17
It is likely that respondents exhibit digit preference so
that some numbers, such as 0, 5 or 10 may be preferred to
others in their neighborhood to express a particular evalu-
16
See Appendix 4. ative stance.
Table 32.1 Frequencies of responses to life satisfaction and happiness

Response option
Variable 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Life satisfaction 144 32 49 87 147 616 671 1,511 2,383 2,202 2,812
Happiness 108 29 42 76 104 411 395 1,189 2,365 2,619 3,316
Source: INEGI. BIARE 2012
Moreover, Fig. 32.2 shows how much the correlates of subjective well-being in Mexico.
distribution of life satisfaction as well as that of These ndings are based on the results of the
happiness are skewed towards higher values of ordinal cumulative logit type models that were
the scale, but the happiness one being relatively used to identify the odds ratios for each argument
more compact and enclosed in a smaller set of in relation to life satisfaction on the one hand,
higher values than life satisfaction. and happiness on the other.20
In Fig. 32.3 we see that even though there
seems to be a positive correlation between both
variables, especially at the highest response 32.4.1 Socio-Demographic
levels, it may also be observed that the values
people place on their happiness and life satisfac- Age. Interviewees ages range from 18 to 70.
tion are not exactly the same. In other words, From the original (uncontrolled) gures one
there is variability in their responses when they could get the impression of a faint U-shaped
answer both questions, suggesting that the relationship between age and subjective well-
respondents perceive some differences in the being, particularly for older age groups. People
thematic nature of the questions of happiness in the youngest age group (between 18 and 29)
and life satisfaction. A statistical test that show the highest levels of subjective well-being.
formalizes these assumptions, x2 homogeneity, Instead, those in the group between 45 and
which is based on the frequencies for each option 59 years show the lowest levels, with the
in the range of responses to each variable, allows remaining two groups exhibiting similar
us to reject with 95 % condence the null hypoth- averages (see Fig. 32.4).
esis that the responses for life satisfaction and However, from our multinomial logit model,
happiness come from the same distribution.18 which takes as a reference the group aged
between 45 and 59, we can not only identify if
the variable is statistically signicant or not, but
also to estimate the corresponding odds ratios in
32.4 Results19
the presence of the remaining control variables.
We nd that for the variable life satisfaction no
We now discuss the ndings for each variable
signicant differences between age groups can
within each of the seven groups selected as
be found. That is, we found no evidence of a U
-shaped relationship as reported by Blanchower
18
Calculations were carried out on the basis of the gures and Oswald (2008). In other words, once the
in Table 31.1. comparison is made in such a way that every-
19
In the following discussion, all references
thing else remains constant, we nd that satisfac-
to uncontrolled gures or original BIARE gures
have to do with average values of responses. This leads tion with the life of people is perceived very
us back to the assumption of cardinality in such responses similarly in the different age groups; in other
and to an open discussion in the literature of the subject.
Such a discussion is beyond the scope of this work
20
and shall not be addressed here. Sufce it to say that Estimated values for the odds-ratios and the signi-
the econometric analysis we have carried out does not cance of the associated parameters may be found in
require such an assumption. Appendix.
586 G. Leyva et al.
Fig. 32.2 Distributions

(Source: INEGI. BIARE
2012)
Fig. 32.3 Life satisfaction

and happiness (Source:
INEGI. BIARE 2012)
words, to be in one age group or another yield 1.14), respectively, compared with the
practically equal odds of having a certain level of 4559 years (see Table 32.2 in the appendix).
life satisfaction or higher. In contrast, differences However, the odds of the group of 6070 years
are observed between the age groups in terms of are not statistically different from the group of
happiness, as individuals aged 1829 and 4559 years in terms of happiness, so that both
3044 years old tend to be happier than those groups are equally favourable in terms of that
aged 4559. In fact, the odds of nding someone variable; so that instead of a U what we see is
happier between the two youngest groups are an L or a slide of happiness, which shows that the
32 % and 14 % higher (odds ratios of 1.32 and odds of being happier reach their top among the
Fig. 32.4 Age (Source:

INEGI. BIARE 2012.
Note: Averages of original
gures uncontrolled
econometrically)
younger population, dropping a bit in the group states that in almost every country men and
of 3044 years, and a little more in the group women are about equally happy.
4549, who have the same probability of being Level of education. While uncontrolled
happier than those between 60 and 70. It should gures show that life satisfaction increases with
be noted, however, that truncation of ages at higher levels of education (see Fig. 32.6), once
70 did not let us know what happens to those we discount the effect of other variables, remark-
aged over 70. In an alternative version of the ably of those related to the economic situation of
model (see the Appendices) in which age was households, we nd that the level of education
incorporated as a continuous variable, the coef- does not seem to contribute to the life satisfaction
cient of the variable is negative (which agrees of persons, since the odds, and therefore the
with a L) but the coefcient of age squared is probability of having a certain level of this indi-
positive, in agreement with the U. In any case, cator is not statistically different for those who
the presence of a U-shaped relationship is too have no education compared to those who do
weak in data from BIARE for Mexico, showing have it, no matter what it.
very small differences between age groups. This In other words, in terms of life satisfaction we
behaviour could be different if other age groups have no evidence to support the hypothesis that,
were considered, so it would be useful that for ceteris paribus, the life satisfaction of those with
future surveys INEGI makes the effort to recruit university education tend to be higher than that of
people with ages above 70. those with no schooling (see Table 32.2 in the
Gender. Both the original gures and the con- appendix). Thus the formal education level
trolled gures from the econometric models appears rather to be an intermediate input that
show that there is no signicant difference in favours achieving better economic situation and
life satisfaction or happiness of women com- status, among other elements that are positively
pared to men (see Fig. 32.5). Baker (2008) stated correlated with life satisfaction of people.21
that it is to be expected that while the average
levels are equal, the arguments or reasons why
women and men have these levels of subjective 21
Layard (2005) shows that education only plays a rather
well-being may be very different. Nevertheless, small impact on happiness, even if education increases
the investigation of these reasons or arguments is happiness trough the increase in income associated with
more education. Helliwell (2003) nds that once other
beyond the scope of this paper. What we nd for variables are simultaneously considered, the level of edu-
Mexico is consistent with Layard (2005), who cation is innocuous with respect to subjective well-being.
588 G. Leyva et al.
Fig. 32.5 General averages for life satisfaction and for happiness (Source: INEGI. BIARE 2012. Note: Averages of
original gures uncontrolled econometrically)
Fig. 32.6 Schooling and life satisfaction (Source: INEGI. BIARE 2012. Note: Averages of original gures uncon-
trolled econometrically)
Meanwhile, the indicator of happiness seems to be no education and those who have only incomplete
associated with educational level, since we primary, or complete primary or complete second-
observe a statistically signicant difference ary). However, the sign of the relationship is
between those with high school education or surprising since it implies that the odds of nding
higher and those who have no education. We also someone with a higher level of happiness
note that the difference is greater the higher the decreases as we consider higher educational
educational level considered (given that no differ- levels, from high school. Thus, odds ratios are
ence whatsoever is perceived between the distri- lower than 1 for high-school (0.771), degree
bution of happiness between those who reported (0.755) and postgraduate (0.641), being smaller
the greater the education level. Clearly, if one 100,000 and more, it is to be noticed that happiness
could identify what causes the isolated effect of shows signicant differences between the people
secondary and higher education to be negative for living in towns of 15,00099,000, the difference
happiness, one could inuence the uncontrolled being favourable for the largest localities. It is
effect, which is clearly positive, to make it even surprising however, that this difference not only
bigger. does not grow but does not exist with those living
Marital status. In terms of satisfaction with life in towns with fewer than 15,000 inhabitants. This
and with reference to the married group those who behaviour is certainly not the result of the relative
are cohabiting are slightly more likely to have scarcity of any group in the sample, since both the
higher levels of well-being (odds ratio of 1.12 for smaller towns and those of intermediate size con-
life satisfaction and 1.13 for happiness). If you were tribute each a quarter of the total sample size. It
to bet on which of the two groups it is more likely to could be speculated that medium-size towns contain
randomly nd someone with greater satisfaction a lot of what is bad in the large cities and a little of
with life, clearly the favourite would be the group whats good in the smaller ones. It cannot be ruled
of those in common-law marriages. In contrast, out, however, that this is a spurious result. In any
separated and divorced people are less likely case, it is worth remembering that the model
(odds ratio below 1) to be more satised with life includes specic variables related to social, emo-
or more happy than married people. Moreover, no tional and family life and therefore that what could
signicant differences were found in the odds of make the difference between the localities of each
nding someone with a certain level up of life size are issues of a distinct order, possibly related
satisfaction in the married group compared to with functionality of urban infrastructure, the qual-
widowers and bachelors. However, in terms of hap- ity of governance and other amenities that may be
piness married people have an advantage over related to size. It is not expected however, that these
widowers and singles. Sorting all groups the win- are the major contributions of the cities, since they
ning strategy emerges: being in a union is followed are the framework in which people relate to each
by being married. It also becomes apparent that other. As Weiner (2009) puts it our happiness is
widowhood and bachelorhood have different impli- completely and utterly intertwined with other peo-
cations for happiness than for life satisfaction.22 ple. Family and friends and neighbours and the
Household size. Keeping everything else con- woman whom you barely notice and cleans your
stant, household size makes no difference to the ofce. Happiness is not a noun nor a verb, but a
level of subjective well-being reported in BIARE conjunction.23
for both life satisfaction and happiness. This is
not very surprising given that among the
elements being monitored is satisfaction with
family life. What this result tells us then is that 23
Park and Peterson (2010) suggest that specic urban
beyond satisfaction with family life household environments may be more or less conducive to the
size per se has nothing to contribute to subjective development of certain character fortitudes, which consti-
well-being of people. tute one of the pillars of positive psychology . The ques-
tion would then be about what forms of psychological
Town size. BIARE considers three town sizes:
development are provided by a certain type of city, rather
those with less than 15,000 inhabitants, those with than how conducive it is to make more or less happy
between 15,000 and 99,000 and those with 100,000 individuals: Researchers in psychology can contribute
or more. We found that the size of the town makes to urban future policies and welfare of cities and their
residents by studying how cities create, facilitate or allow
no difference as far as life satisfaction is concerned.
the expression of different strengths of character among
However, with regard to those living in towns of its citizens. This is therefore a valid but different per-
spective to the one followed in this work. It is clear that
town size is a tool that aims to capture elements related to
a greater or smaller relative probability of experiencing
22
Stutzer y Frey (2006), using data from the German more or less subjective well-being. Ideally, one would
Socio Economic panel, nds that those who are married work directly with those characteristics, if only all the
are happier than those who are single. relevant information were available.
590 G. Leyva et al.
Fig. 32.7 Speaking

indigenous language
condition (Source: INEGI.
BIARE 2012. Economic
aspects. Note: Averages of
original gures
uncontrolled
econometrically)
Indigenous language. Uncontrolled gures the elements that make the difference in welfare
show that those who speak indigenous languages between indigenous and non-indigenous people
are at a disadvantage in subjective wellbeing are in the list of variables considered in the
with respect to those who do not (see Fig. 32.7). model.
However, in the presence of other control Household expenditure quintile. Taking the
variables that capture the economic situation of rst expenditure quintile as reference, we have
households and the presence of elements related that being located in the second or third quintiles
to discrimination, speaking an indigenous lan- does not signicantly increase the probability of
guage per se does not imply any signicant dif- having a higher level of life satisfaction.25 How-
ference in the probability of having a lower level ever, being in the fourth or fth quintile does
of subjective wellbeing than the rest of the popu- make a positive difference, so that it is more
lation (the variable is statistically signicant only likely to randomly nd someone more satised
with a signicance level of 17.6 % for life satis- with life in quintiles four or ve than in quintile
faction and 19.5 % for happiness). These results one. The top two quintiles offer more favourable
also bring a message to those who, echoing conditions than the rst to achieve higher levels
Rousseaus natural state,24 like to think that of life satisfaction. This suggests the existence of
indigenous peoples are inherently happier, since a threshold above which greater economic
this bias is not reected in the data. Apparently resources begin to make a difference. In other
words, in terms of life satisfaction there seems to
24 be no difference between having far less than
Rousseau speaks of a natural state of man in which he is
good and happy without worries and without industry, enough and having a little more, but still less
without speech and without home, oblivious to all war than enough. A complementary model (see
and all attachments. This being was moved by two basic Appendix 2) shows that the relationship between
impulses: self-love and compassion. He is innocent, like a
per capita expenditure and life satisfaction is
little child. There is no separation between what is and
what seems to be. He denes man as a noble savage, a positive and decreasing, which is consistent
primitive man living in peace and harmony with
nature.Http://es.wikiversity.org/wiki/L%/C3%ADneas_
principales_del_pensamiento_de_Jean_Jaques_Rousseau.
25
Only in this original state power and desire are in equi- With some ambiguity in the third quintile which is
librium and the man is not unhappy (McMahon 2006). signicant at the 15 % level.
with conventional wisdom.26 The novelty here is between the rst and quintiles three, four and ve
that income (expenditure) marginal utility begins would only respond to relative positioning. Oth-
to be positive from a certain minimum threshold erwise, it is likely that such differences reect
that apparently is between the second and third both relative and absolute elements.
quintiles. Furthermore, it should not be Activity Status. Original BIARE gures show
overlooked that the location of households in that busy people have higher levels of life satis-
quintiles is also a relative positioning, so the faction than the unemployed, which is reasonable
difference of being in the fourth or fth quintile given that some have work and some do not, and
relative to the rst can refer to status some earn money and some do not (see
considerations beyond the satisfaction of objec- Fig. 32.8). But if we keep the economic situation
tive needs. In contrast, we observe that for the and the rest of the elements considered in the
happiness variable, the expenditure quintile to same level, having or not a job does not seem
which one belongs seems to make no difference, to make an important difference. Taking as our
so that, all else constant, it is equally likely to reference group the occupied (i. e., those who
nd someone with some level of happiness in the have a market job) we nd that in terms of either
rst than in the fth or any other quintile. This is life satisfaction or happiness, having a job does
one of the most noticeable differences between not provide wellbeing per se, since once the
the indicators under analysis and shows that in household economic status is allowed for, it is
economic situation relative life satisfaction and equally likely to nd a person with a given level
happiness are two very different things for of subjective well-being in the group of those
respondents. These results are consistent with with a job as in the group of those who are
the hypothesis that satisfaction with life, be of a unemployed. This may be related to low job
more cognitive nature, is more affected by the quality for most jobs in Mexico, which makes
comparisons people make when evaluating their them more a livelihood source and less one of
position in the stratigraphic structure of professional and personal fullment. Even
society.27 controlling for age, the odds of having a higher
Receives food aid. People living in such a level of life satisfaction are clearly higher for
precarious nancial situation in order to require students than for those who have an occupation,
the help of others to complete the necessary while for happiness students also have an advan-
amount for expenditure on food are less likely tage, albeit less marked. This is much less than an
than those not in that circumstance to achieve invitation for students to enter the labour market
relatively high levels of satisfaction with life. and moves us to reect on the extent to which
The fact that this variable is statistically signi- time spent on education is something that ex-post
cant even in the presence of the variable spend- may be considered an investment (with yields in
ing quintiles shows that beyond the relative terms of subjective well-being) and not only
position is at least one absolute threshold that consumption. Its also of interest that keeping
makes a signicant difference on the level of all else constant, particularly age and economic
subjective well-being of people. Should this be status, being a pensioner is more suitable for
a single threshold then the differences observed having a higher level of life satisfaction than
having a job (odds ratio 1.477).28 Finally, note
26 that no signicant differences, ceteris paribus,
See Stevenson and Wolfers (2013).
27 are found between the levels of subjective well-
To what Frey (2008) says, in the sense that people are
concerned about their relative position in the income being of those staying at home and dedicated to
ladder. It is not the absolute level of income that matters,
but the own situation in relation to other individuals it is
necessary to add that as long as we are talking about life
satisfaction, since happiness, at least for the case of
28
Mexico, does not respond to the economic situation of This can be seen as an additional incentive for those
the household. who can keep their income level to seek early retirement.
592 G. Leyva et al.
Fig. 32.8 Population by activity status (Source: INEGI. BIARE 2012. Note: Averages of original gures uncontrolled
econometrically)
household activities and those who have a market with a standard of living equal to their home of
job. origin is observed, which suggest an aspirational
Someone needs my nancial support. Over dimension of happiness.29
and above the household economic status, people
perceiving that someone else needs his or her
nancial support are less likely to have a high
32.4.2 Personal Experiences
level of subjective well-being, be it life satisfac-
tion or happiness, than the rest. It seems that for
Has experienced a moment of great joy or happi-
Mexicans to feel necessary in this sense is more a
ness at some stage in life. Those who report not
source of stress than of well-being. Not a big
experiencing happy moments in childhood or in
surprise, since widespread poverty makes it
adolescence, or in both, do not seem to have a
very difcult to effectively respond to other
different probability of achieving a certain level
peoples demands for nancial support.
of happiness or life satisfaction than those who
Own living standard compared to that of
did report having experienced some. In this
parents. Figures show that people aspire to live
sense, we see that past is not destiny.30
better or at least as well to their parents, regard-
Death of a loved one in past 10 years. Those
less of the objective economic situation of each
who report experiencing the death of someone
household. Life satisfaction and happiness of
close in the recent past are less likely than those
those who perceive having a lower standard of
living than that of their childhood household tend
to be lower than that of those with a better level. 29
Stutzer (2004), using data for Germany nds that
Keeping everything else constant, it is less likely greater income aspirations reduce peoples wellbeing for
to nd someone with a high level of subjective a given income or consumption level.
30
Nevertheless, these positive experiences do generate
well-being among those who perceive them-
some kind of hysteresis related with differences in the
selves as having a standard of living below their probability of attaining academic achievements. Thus,
household of origin than among those who have a controlling for a set of economic and demographic
standard of living higher than that reference, variables, we nd that the probability of having an out-
standing degree of studies is inversely related to negative
regardless of the objective life level he has. In
experiences in childhood and adolescence and directly
terms of happiness, a disadvantage even for those related to positive experiences in these stages.
who do not report having any to have a relatively who have not had difculties (with respect of
higher level of life satisfaction. A death of some- those who have) is 1.42 for life satisfaction and
one close in the past 10 years tends to adversely 1.35 for happiness, which shows that the group
affect the life satisfaction of individuals, thereby who had no such difculties is a more suitable
reducing the odds of having a higher level of the eld for achieving higher levels of subjective
indicator relative to those who did not report well-being. It must be pointed out that we have
having suffered a loss of that nature. The effect no way to discern whether people who report
of this loss when it occurred in the last year is having such difculties are disproportionately
almost identical with respect to its occurrence those who, on top of having suffered them, are
over a year ago. The fact that we have no evi- also those that have had less success in
dence of greater effect on the life satisfaction of overcoming them and therefore those who keep
those who reported a more recent loss suggests them more in mind, in which case a self-selection
that the negative impact of such circumstances bias would be implied.
tends to be long term, although we may have to Considers that throughout life has been able
consider alternately that this is derived from a to make important decisions freely. Those who
self-selection process in which people who have claim to have been able to make important
suffered the most painful losses regardless of the decisions freely are more likely than the rest to
time gone bye are those who keep them more in have a higher level of subjective well-being.
mind and also those most likely to report them. It Odds ratios are 1.15 for life satisfaction and
is important to consider that while the presence happiness to 1.22, with reference to those who
of such losses has a negative impact on life could not make decisions freely.33 Note that the
satisfaction, it has none on the happiness indica- relevance of freedom is independent of the qual-
tor of people. This suggests that the impact of ity of relationships, the economic situation and
grief is mediated by social and cultural values the rest of the elements considered here,
rather than by the emotional effect of the loss indicating that people derive welfare from pro-
itself. cesses and not just from the results. Then its not
Has had serious difculties, setbacks or only important whether or not you have access to
adversity throughout life. Those who report hav- inputs for happiness, but also how you reach
ing faced difculties considered unnecessary for them. According to Frey (2008), happiness is
development throughout their lives are less likely difcult, if not impossible, to obtain directly.
to achieve higher levels of subjective well-being Happiness is more a by-product of a good
than those who did not face such difculties. In life, which means that the process, rather than
contrast to the positive events in childhood or the outcome, is what matters.
adolescence, in the case of negative events we Sleep quality last night. The sleep quality of
nd evidence of hysteresis, which shows a low people the night before taking the survey has an
resilience.31 The Nietzschean idea according to impact on their ratings for life satisfaction and
which that which does not kill us makes us for happiness. While the direction of causality is
stronger does not seem to be corroborated by unclear, it is desirable to incorporate this variable
the evidence at hand.32 The odds ratio for those as a control in order to isolate the effect of this
31
In order to properly speak about resilience it is neces- is supercial and is not intended to see its impact on
sary to carry out more specic analysis, as suggested by strengths but on subjective well being, it does give us
Peterson et al. (2008). signs that the ability to adapt to negative emotional
32
Peterson (2013) denes post-traumatic growth as the perturbations is an area of opportunity for developing
ability to achieve a better situation after receiving nega- policies to cultivate character strengths of the adult gen-
tive perturbation. This is an alternative way to state eral population of Mexico.
33
Nietzsches aphorism. Peterson et al. (2008) show evi- Here we deal with the inverse of the odds ratios
dence of stronger character tracts after a traumatic pertur- reported in the corresponding row of Table 33.9 in the
bation. While the analysis of resilience we do in this paper Appendix.
594 G. Leyva et al.
potentially circumstantial situation on the ratings disadvantage in their likelihood of achieving a

for subjective well-being of people. In general, it high level of life satisfaction and happiness in
is more likely that those who claim to have slept contrast to the rest of the population (See
well the night before report higher levels of sub- Fig. 32.9). Here is a measure of the welfare cost
jective well-being than those who chose any of discrimination. In both cases the odds ratio is
other possible answers. Other options: (1) slept 0.86, implying that randomly nding someone
well, (2) slept with interruptions, (3) hardly slept with greater subjective well-being in the group
and (4) did not sleep, are associated with a lower of people that do not suffer discriminatory abuse
relative probability of having a higher level of is easier.
subjective well-being than those who slept Assault (by someone in same household, by
well.34 acquaintances, by strangers). Having suffered
Received heartfelt thanks, praise or recogni- physical or verbal aggression seems to have
tion for efforts to make things right. People who very limited effects on the subjective wellbeing
recently received acknowledgments, accolades of people, once a number of other elements that
or awards are more likely to achieve a higher are associated with these attacks is considered.
level of subjective well-being than those who This is surprising given that uncontrolled gures
did not receive them. If they were received a show that the population suffering from aggres-
year or more ago it is as if they had not been sion, especially if they come from someone in the
received. While giving recognition for just about same household, result in well-being levels
anything surely dilutes the relevance of the act, it below the national average, as shown in the fol-
seems important not to let too much time pass lowing graph:
between recognition, appreciation or praise and In our ordinal cumulative logit model, odds
another if they are to have a lasting impact on the ratios are less than one in all cases, indicating
minds of the people who receive them. The effect that those who are assaulted are less likely to
is very similar for both life satisfaction and achieve greater life satisfaction or happiness
happiness. than those who are not subjected to them,
Living with alcoholics. The presence of although only physical assault from a colleague
addictions in household members has a negative is signicant at 15 % for life satisfaction and
impact on the welfare of people. In particular, physical assault from someone in same house-
those who live with alcoholics tend to report hold is signicant at 15 % for happiness. In other
levels of life satisfaction and happiness lower words, the model results in a very weak or no
than those who do not have to live with people relationship between subjective well-being and
who have the condition. The effect is almost the suffering attacks of various kinds. This, however,
same for life satisfaction than for happiness. occurs in the presence of controls such as satis-
faction with family life, with social life and with
affective life. So when the model is run without
32.4.3 Abuse and Violence these variables we nd a negative effect on sub-
jective well-being coming from aggressions from
Abuse caused by some form of discrimination someone in the same household and aggressions
(age, colour, sex, religion, sexual orientation, by strangers, being the odds ratios of 0.80 and
illness, disability, political views, nationality). 0.64, respectively.
People who report having experienced some
form of abuse or discrimination based on sex,
colour, ethnicity, sexual preference, etc., show a 32.4.4 Satisfaction with Family,
Emotional and Social Life
34
Even though we have no additional information regard-
Satisfaction with family life. Those who reported
ing the frequency with which people did not sleep very
well, it is clear that the not sleeping is the least sustain- having very good family relations answering 9 or
able in the long term and also the rarest of all. 10 on a scale from zero to ten are more likely
Fig. 32.9 Average life satisfaction and happiness (represented by the geometric gures in color) which are
(Source: INEGI. BIARE 2012. Note: Averages of original at the north east of the black cross are unambiguously
gures non econometrically controlled. The dashed lines above the national, and those at the south west of the
represent national averages for Life Satisfaction and black cross are unambiguously bellow the national aver-
Happiness, while the black cross the national averages age. These differences may or may not be statistically
in both variables, so that the sub groups of population signicant)
than others to have higher levels of life satisfac- signicantly higher relative probability than the
tion and happiness. With reference to those who reference group (0-responders) to result in higher
answered zero, the odds ratios of respondents levels of satisfaction with life. The odds ratio is
with 9 or 10 are 2.03 and 3.64, respectively, 2.22, implying that 0-responders to emotional
values clearly above 1 which show that those life have relatively low probabilities of having
who have this feature are much more likely to greater life satisfaction than those who qualify it
have higher life satisfaction than 0-responders to with 10. In reality it is expected that most of
satisfaction with family life. Since responding those who rate low their emotional life also
18 is not statistically different from responding show a lower level of life satisfaction than
zero, by transitivity we conclude that those who qualify with 10 their emotional life.
respondents with 9 or 10 to satisfaction with Again it is to be noted that even those who
family life are more likely than respondents qualify their emotional life with 9 are almost
with 08 to have a relatively greater level of equally likely, ceteris paribus, than those who
life satisfaction. If we consider signicance qualify it with a 0 to have a certain level of life
levels of 10 % or less, we nd the same satisfaction. In terms of happiness, those who
behaviour for the happiness indicator, only the value emotional life with 9 or 10 show signicant
odds ratios are higher in this case: 3.00 to differences from the rest. In the rst case the odds
9-responders to family life satisfaction and 6.09 ratio is 1.97 and 3.79 in the second, indicating a
for 10-responders. signicantly higher relative probability for this
Satisfaction with emotional life. Only those group of having higher levels of happiness than
who rate their emotional life with 10 have a for those who qualify with 0 and, by transitivity,
596 G. Leyva et al.
also for those who rate their emotional life but not being able to count with any of them
between 1 and 8. For happiness it seems to should the need arise.
make no difference to give any value between Frequency of gatherings with friends. Once
0 and 8 as a rating for emotional life. Only those satisfaction with social life is considered, the
that answer 9 or 10 are likelier than the rest of frequency of gatherings with friends seems to
having a relatively higher level of happiness. have no inuence on the probability of having
Satisfaction with social life. Those who value or not a higher level of subjective well-being.
their social life with 7 or more are likelier than Frequency of gatherings with family
others to have higher levels of life satisfaction. members. Once satisfaction with family life has
With reference to 0-responders for social life been considered, we nd that in general the fre-
there is no signicant difference with those who quency with which family gatherings occur has
qualied it with 16, so that it is equally likely to no impact on the subjective well-being of people,
randomly nd someone from any of these groups with the exception of gatherings on special
to have a certain level of life satisfaction. Instead, occasions throughout the year which increase
those who responded 7 are likelier to have the likelihood to have higher levels of happiness
greater satisfaction with life than whoever relative to the reference option which is
answered 0. Odds ratios increase with social life associated with gatherings more frequent than
ratings, indicating that for values of 7 or more it once a month.
is more likely to nd levels of satisfaction with
life higher than for those who qualify social life
with zero. An even greater impact of social life is
32.4.6 Personal Practices
observed on the subject of happiness, since it
results statistically signicant from level 4, with
Physical activity. People who are physically
a progressively greater inuence of social life
active on a regular basis have an advantage in
from level 6 onwards. In general, the odds ratios
the likelihood of achieving a higher level of life
are larger for happiness than for life satisfaction,
satisfaction and happiness. Keeping everything
thereby showing greater sensitivity of the former
else constant, we found no evidence that physical
to reported levels of satisfaction with the social
activity competitively is marginally favourable
life of people.
for life satisfaction but that it is so for happiness.
Those who practice non-competitive sport regu-
larly have 14 % higher odds than those who do
32.4.5 Family Support and Frequency not in favour of having higher levels of life
of Gatherings with Family satisfaction or happiness. Furthermore,
and Friends practicing competitive sports has a positive
impact on happiness but not in life satisfaction.
Number of family members believed to provide Belongs to an association that promotes faith.
support. Beyond satisfaction with family life, we Those who do not belong to an association that
nd that the number of relatives with whom to promotes faith are less likely to achieve higher
count when support is needed to face an emer- levels of life satisfaction and happiness. This
gency is relevant, since it is associated with a means that a randomly selected group of people
higher relative probability of having a higher participating in an association that promotes faith
level of life satisfaction and happiness, and this is more likely to result in individuals with higher
has a much more noticeable effect when the levels of subjective well-being than a similar
number is greater than 5. It is also to be noted selection from the group who does not participate
that not having family is better than to have one in such congregations. Note that the odds ratio is
slightly lower for happiness than for life satisfac- networks. Apparently, such a disadvantage
tion; therefore, belonging to this kind of religious stems from unfavourable comparisons often
associations seems to have a greater impact on made by those involved in the networks about
life satisfaction than on happiness.35 Lim and their lives with respect to those who boast of
Putnam (2010) argue that the positive association attributes that are considered important.36
of religion with subjective well-being is due pri- Gives donations. Generosity pays, at least in
marily to the strong relationships established terms of subjective well-being. It is more likely
within congregations (which they call super- that someone who gives donations is more
charged friends), especially in cases of satised with life than someone who does not.
congregations with high religious identity. The The difference in favour of those who do make
importance of the level of religious identity as a donations is also evident in terms of happiness.
catalyst of social relationships within the congre- Taking those who do not give donations as the
gation could be behind the fact that plain religion reference group, the odds ratio associated with
does not make a difference, but belonging to an those who do give them is 1.20 for life satisfac-
association that promotes faith does. tion and 1.16 for happiness. In principle we do
Belongs to a political movement. Those who not know if the people who make donations are
belong to a political movement have a relative best for the sake of it or if they do because they
disadvantage in their odds of having a higher are better. In any case, what we do know is that
level of subjective well-being. It is more likely the differences are signicant even after includ-
that those who do not participate in such ing variables related with the economic situation,
movements have higher levels of SWB than so it is not that the rich give more because they
those who do participate. Those not involved are richer. It is also worth noting that in con-
have odds of life satisfaction 22 % higher than trolled interventions it has been shown that
those who do. However, participation in a politi- those who incorporate those generosity practices
cal movement seems to have no signicant in their daily lives increase their levels of subjec-
impact in terms of the relative probability of tive well-being.37
being more or less happy. Has avoided throwing away batteries. To
Owns pet. In the presence of all other control avoid throwing batteries, as an indicator of envi-
variables, not having a pet is weakly associated ronmental awareness, has no apparent effect on
with lower life satisfaction, but seems to have no the relative probability of having a higher level
inuence on the happiness of people.
Member of a social network. Once the eco-
nomic situation, the quality of social and affec-
tive family relationships, among others, are taken
into account we nd that people involved in
36
social networks like facebook have lower odds These results are consistent with those reported by
Kross et al. (2013). The authors followed a panel of
of having a high level of subjective well-being
82 facebook users and through a version of the
than those without participation in such experience-sampling method, and nd that life satisfac-
tion as well as other indicators of subjective well-being
are negatively associated with use intensity of that social
network. The exercise controlled for the size of the social
network, gender, reason for using facebook, their level of
loneliness, depression and self-esteem.
35 37
The reciprocals of the values reported in the Lyubormirsky (2010) shows evidence suggesting that
corresponding row of Table A32.8 in the appendix are altruism -including kindness, generosity and compassion-
used. Participation in associations that promote faith is a are key elements for social connections that are funda-
special case within those with a religion. Merely mental to happiness. He specically shows evidence that
professing a religion does not make a difference from acts of kindness (especially if spontaneous and out of the
not having any religion, since the corresponding odds ordinary) are positively associated with the subjective
ratio is not statistically different from 1. well-being of the person who does the good deed.
598 G. Leyva et al.
of subjective well-being compared to those who valuable in themselves ve components of

have no qualms about throwing away discarded Human Flourishing.38
batteries.
Read article. Those who claimed to have read
either an article in a magazine or on the Internet 32.5 Conclusions
turned out to have a lower probability of having a
high level of satisfaction with life than those who The way the studied correlates behave does not
did not, keeping everything else constant. This allow us to make a conclusive statement about
may be related to increased exposure to making the degree of redundancy between the empirical
comparisons in which the individual who makes indicators of happiness and life satisfaction. On
them comes out in an unfavourable position, the one hand they are partially redundant in the
since it is highly likely that if you look hard sense that a substantial amount of the subjects
enough nding someone who has more of the considered behave consistently irrespective of
attributes one considers important or desirable the selection of the dependent variable. Such is
(in principle for himself but possibly for others), the case, for example, of age, gender, household
according to the established social values. In size, indigenous language, reception of food aid,
contrast, reading or not articles in magazines or experienced setbacks or difculties in life, sleep
on the internet does not seem to make a differ- quality previous night, living with alcoholics,
ence in the levels of happiness reported by peo- abuse by reason of discrimination, number of
ple, which supports the hypothesis that happiness supportive family members, member of an asso-
is a little more emotional evaluation and less ciation that promotes faith, participation in social
affected by socially established ratings that satis- networks and life achievements, among others.
faction with life. On the other hand, however, we nd that
Meditates on life. Those who meditate on their relationships are different in cases such as level
lives have lower odds of achieving a high level of of education, marital status, expenditure quintile,
satisfaction with life than those who do not. activity status, death of a loved-one, aggression
Thinking about life rather than just living it is by acquaintance, member of a political move-
often an action in which much more weight is ment, pet ownership and meditation about life,
given to what is lacking over what people have. It among others. In between we nd that other
is a rational process mediated by socially correlates behave similarly but not equally, with
established appraisals regarding what one should differences of degree rather, as in the case of
do or accomplish in life. An evaluation with less satisfaction with family life, emotional life and
head and more heart, like what is measured by social life.39
the happiness variable, does not seem to be The idea raised by Diener et al. (2010) regard-
affected by such thoughts. ing the indicator of life satisfaction would be
Considers to have had successes in life. To relatively more saturated with judgments (rel-
be considered to have had signicant success in ative to affects) than that of happiness, is con-
life, regardless of what these may be is some- sistent with some of the observed differences.
thing that goes beyond the economic situation, For example, the fact that the expenditure quin-
the quality of relationships or any other element tile be positively associated with life satisfaction
that has been added as a control in the model. but indifferent in terms of happiness refers to a
Apparently, conscience or belief of having done greater inuence of interpersonal comparisons
important things implies a favourable difference and socially determined ratings in the mental
in the subjective well-being of individuals, both
in terms of life satisfaction and happiness. This 38
Seligman (2011) states that well-being has ve
is consistent with Martin Seligmans idea of dimensions, each valuable in itself: positivity, engage-
incorporating achievements as one of the ment, relationships, meaning and accomplishment.
39
See the Appendices for greater detail.
process that people follow to qualify satisfaction rather a mere coincidence resulting from two
with life. In contrast, the response in terms of different welfare functions that would result
happiness seems actually referring more strongly that men and women had different weights and
to emotive issues, since the expenditure quintile even different arguments in their respective wel-
in the respondents household does not seem to fare functions. Also noteworthy is that aspects
make a difference in his level of happiness, once related to being better informed or to reecting
the effect of other variables is considered.40 on various aspects of reality, such as level of
Something similar happens with respondents education, membership in a political movement
receiving a physical attack by someone with or in a social network, reading of a magazine or
whom they live, which affects happiness but not internet article, or meditation about life have a
the life satisfaction of individuals, ceteris negative association with (at least one measure
paribus. Moreover, happiness seems more sensi- of) the subjective wellbeing of people, once their
tive than satisfaction with life to topics of an effects are analyzed separately from other
eminently affective nature such as family life, variables that could act simultaneously. Without
social life and love life, in the sense that a doubt, knowing more makes it easier to be
differences start to become apparent at lower safer, healthier and to have a higher income and
values of these variables and that the odds ratios through those pathways has an effect on a higher
are higher for each response level of happiness level of subjective well-being, but what we see
with respect to the same reference level. How- here is that once we see the isolated effects of
ever, we also nd relations that operate contrary being better informed and more thoughtful, we
to expectations, as the standard of living com- nd that instead of adding to well-being they take
pared to that of the parents, in which happiness is some away. In this sense it would be very inter-
more sensitive regarding status related elements, esting to explore the reasons why this is so and
in this case inter-generational. Moreover, it once they are identied, to seek ways that
s also surprising to nd increased sensitivity of through a new educational policy, through a bet-
life satisfaction than happiness regarding pet ter selection and offer of content in the media and
ownership and the death of a loved-one, since a culture that promotes more positive attitudes
in principle these circumstances would create a about oneself, among other things, to transform
greater emotional charge. No doubt it is neces- the way in which these elements are articulated
sary to study more in detail these elements in in the welfare function of individuals and
order to resolve these apparent contradictions. society.
Beyond the degree of complementariness or This paper provides elements relevant to
redundancy between indicators of life satisfac- topics that have long been discussed, such as
tion and happiness, the research undertaken the relationship between economic status and
results in a set of relevant relationships between subjective well-being, showing how (1) the eco-
the subjective well-being of Mexicans and a set nomic situation makes a difference on life satis-
of variables of interest. Consider, for example, faction but not on the happiness of people and
that women and men have nearly equal levels of that (2) having relatively little or a little more but
happiness and satisfaction with life, which still not enough with respect to some socially
invites to investigate whether this reveals a established threshold makes no difference to the
smaller distance between male and female psy- subjective well-being of individuals, who appar-
chology than is commonly thought or if this is ently are still feeling bellow, but that only after
arriving to at least the third of the ve quintiles, a
probabilistic positive difference from those in the
40
Considering that there is another variable in the model, rst quintile becomes apparent. Also among the
receiving food aid, which takes over the minimum
economics highlights are the implications for the
income for survival. The contrasting behaviour of these
variables is maintained with or without receiving food functioning of the labour market in Mexico when
aid. it is shown that subjective well-being, either as
600 G. Leyva et al.
life satisfaction or as happiness, is the same for Throughout the paper we have shown how the
anyone who has a job and for those who are metric of subjective wellbeing lets us incorporate
unemployed, after controlling for household eco- tangible and intangible elements and better
nomic status, which is consistent with classical understand how they articulate. We see how the
economic theory (Pigou vindicated against economic situation is important but also the way
Keynes)41 to mean that the marginal disutility in which aspects such as freedom to make impor-
of labour equals the marginal utility of income tant decisions; receiving awards and accolades
and contradicts what has been found for devel- for the effort to make things right; the quality of
oped countries on a variety of research on happi- family, emotional and social relationships; hav-
ness and work, such as Di Tella et al. (2003). In ing a support network or to exercise are elements
the case of Mexico, however, where most of the that also make a difference in subjective well-
workforce is employed in the informal market, being of people, and thats important, because
implying that most of the labour market seems to after all they are elements that affect the quality
adjust through prices rather than trough of life of people and therefore cannot be ignored
quantities, this is a consistent result. Far from in the diagnosis and design of policies that are
being something positive, this phenomenon may aimed at improving the quality of life to a popu-
be a reection of the poor quality of (the vast lation. Finally, we consider important to empha-
majority of) jobs not only in terms of wages and size that the measurement of subjective well-
benets, but also in terms of a very limited being does not end with gures of life satisfac-
capacity of those jobs to serve as means of per- tion and happiness, so it is necessary to broaden
sonal ourishing, which adds to the available the perspective in future work in order to achieve
explanations of why the unemployment rate in a more complete understanding of the subject in
this country is so low.42 Why loosing time Mexico. Meanwhile, we make our own the words
looking for a better job if the alternatives at of journalist Eric Weiner when after touring sev-
hand seem to be equally futile? eral countries doing interviews to identify the
It should also be noted how the model results happiest place on earth, modestly ventures to
conrm the asymmetry of the impact of positive say in a few words what matters for happiness
and negative experiences in the welfare of the Im no philosopher, so here it goes: money
people, so that, for example, a time of great joy or counts, but less than we think and not in the
happiness experienced at some stage in life way we think. Family is important. Friends too.
makes no difference in life satisfaction or happi- Envy is toxic. Excessive thinking too. Beaches
ness, while having serious difculties, setbacks are optional, not condence. Nor gratitude.44
or adversity in life is negatively associated with
both life satisfaction and happiness. This asym-
metry is widely recognized in the literature of
Appendices
positive psychology and is one of the reasons that
have led Fredrikson (2009) to argue that a person
Appendix 1
needs at least three positive emotions for every
negative emotion to maintain a healthy emo-
Odd ratios for each variable in the cumulative
tional balance.43
ordinal logit model. Every variable in every table
is included in the same model (one each for life
satisfaction and for happiness), so the thematic
41
Keynes (2005). division of the seven tables below is merely a
42
For details on the operation of the labor market in means for ease of exposition and is not related to
Mexico see Negrete (JanuaryApril 2011). the way results were obtained.
43
Gottman (1994) states that healthier and more stable
couples are associated with a 5 to 1 relationship of posi-
44
tive to negative emotions. Weiner (2009).
Table 32.2 Socio-demographic aspects

Odds ratio
Variables and levels Life satisfaction Happiness
Age (4559)a
1829 1.061 1.325 ****
3034 1.072 1.139 **
6070 1.028 0.970
Gender (woman)
Hombre 1.039 1.020
Schooling (none)
Incomplete primary school 1.011 0.968
Complete primary school 0.951 0.891
Complete secondary 1.119 0.830
High school 1.148 0.771 **
Bachelor degree 1.084 0.755 **
Postgraduate education 0.964 0.641 ***
Marital status (married)
Cohabiting 1.115 * 1.131 **
Separated 0.852 ** 0.835 **
Divorced 0.716 **** 0.800 **
Widow 0.908 0.747 ****
Single 0.939 0.800 ****
Household size 0.994 1.014
Locality size (communities with 100,000 and more inhabitants)
Communities with 15,00099,999 inhabitants 0.936 0.899 **
Communities with 14,999 or less inhabitants 1.018 1.029
Speaks indigenous language (yes)
No 1.113 1.105
a
The reference level is shown in parentheses next to the variable name
Signicance: **** 0.025; *** 0.05; ** 0.10; * 0.15
Table 32.3 Economic aspects

Odds ratio
Respondents household expenditure quintile (1)
2 0.947 1.044
3 1.123 * 1.073
4 1.191 *** 0.985
5 1.265 **** 0.926
Respondent receives food aid (yes)
No 1.236 **** 1.173 ****
Respondents activity status (employed)
Unemployment 0.868 0.803
Retired 1.477 *** 1.005
Housekeeping 1.085 1.060
Student 1.321 **** 1.200 *
Physical limitation 0.791 0.349 **
Another 0.699 ** 1.151
Someone else needs respondents nancial support (yes)
(continued)
Odds ratio
No 1.122 *** 1.093 **
Respondents standard of living compared to their parents (better)
Similar 0.940 0.867 ****
Inferior 0.747 **** 0.785 ***
Signicance: **** 0.025; *** 0.05; ** 0.10; * 0.15
Table 32.4 Personal experiences

Odds ratio
Respondent has experienced a moment of great joy or happiness at some stage in his/her life (no)
Yes, in my childhood 0.980 0.924
Yes, in my teens 1.065 0.885
Yes, both 1.067 1.099
A close relative died in the last 10 years (no)
Yes, over a year ago 0.864 **** 0.936
Yes, in the last year 0.886 **** 1.032
Respondent has had serious difculties, setbacks or adversity throughout his/her life (yes)
No 1.424 **** 1.353 ****
Respondent considers that throughout life has been able to make important decisions freely (yes)
No 0.873 * 0.817 ****
How well respondent sleep last night (very good)
Well 0.583 **** 0.634 ****
With interruptions 0.428 **** 0.581 ****
Almost no 0.387 **** 0.448 ****
He/she did not sleep 0.534 ** 0.542 *
Respondent received a heartfelt thanks, praise or recognition for efforts to make things right (no)
Yes, recently 1.170 *** 1.138 **
Yes, a year ago 1.013 0.993
Yes, over 2 years and cannot remember 1.109 1.120 *
Respondent living with alcoholics (yes)
No 1.184 *** 1.178 **
Signicance: **** 0.025; *** 0.05; ** 0.10; * 0.15
Table 32.5 Abuse and violence

Odds ratio
Abuse because of some form of discrimination (no)
Yes 0.855 **** 0.868 ****
Physical assault by someone living in household (no)
Yes 0.931 0.829 *
Physical assault by someone known (no)
Yes 0.804 * 0.853
Physical aggression by stranger (no)
Yes 0.889 0.953
Signicance: **** 0.025; *** 0.05; ** 0.10; * 0.15
Table 32.6 Satisfaction with family life, affective life and social life
Odds ratio
Satisfaction with family life (0)
1 2.198 0.988
2 1.260 0.783
3 1.169 1.076
4 0.623 0.440 *
5 1.123 0.778
6 1.226 1.042
7 1.372 1.210
8 1.666 2.012 *
9 2.029 ** 3.005 ****
10 3.639 **** 6.087 ****
Satisfaction with affective life (0)
1 0.902 1.006
2 0.451 ** 0.654
3 0.679 0.523
4 1.364 0.788
5 0.815 0.874
6 0.956 1.083
7 1.043 1.268
8 1.190 1.665
9 1.375 1.967 **
10 2.225 **** 3.794 ****
Satisfaction with social life (0)
1 0.837 0.903
2 0.990 1.404
3 0.708 1.160
4 1.209 1.847 ***
5 1.142 1.761 ****
6 1.340 1.648 ***
7 1.560 ** 2.021 ****
8 1.647 *** 2.356 ****
9 1.994 **** 3.218 ****
10 2.213 **** 3.948 ****
Signicance: **** 0.025; *** 0.05; ** 0.10; * 0.15
Table 32.7 Family support and frequency of gatherings with family and friends
Odds ratio
With how many supportive relatives respondent believes he can count (none)
One 1.492 **** 1.360 ***
Two 1.457 **** 1.297 **
Three 1.631 **** 1.230 *
Four 1.552 **** 1.436 ****
Five 1.724 **** 1.365 ***
More of ve 1.876 **** 1.576 ****
(continued)
604 G. Leyva et al.

Odds ratio
No family 3.443 ** 5.588 ****
Frequency of gathering with friends (more than once a month)
Once a month 0.896 0.909
Several times in the year and/or special occasions 1.015 0.990
No friends 0.930 1.036
Frequency of gathering with the family (more than once a month)
Once a month 0.903 1.072
Several times in the year and/or special occasions 1.006 1.189 ****
No family 0.427 0.458
Signicance: **** 0.025; *** 0.05; ** 0.10; * 0.15
Table 32.8 Personal practices

Odds ratio
Practices physical activity (no)
Yes 1.144 **** 1.144 ****
Yes, also competitively 1.128 1.128 ***
Belongs to an association that promotes faith (yes)
No 0.751 **** 0.852 ****
Belongs to a political movement (yes)
No 1.216 ** 0.903
Pet (yes)
No 0.938 * 1.035
Registered in social network (yes)
No 1.135 **** 1.170 ****
Give donations (yes)
No 0.833 **** 0.865 ****
He/she has avoided throwing batteries (yes)
No 0.966 0.948
He/she read the article/journal (yes)
No 1.118 *** 1.016
Meditate on his/her life (yes)
No 1.101 ** 1.044
Considered to have had achievements (yes)
No 0.710 **** 0.675 ****
Signicance: **** 0.025; *** 0.05; ** 0.10; * 0.15
Appendix 2 order to capture a possible U shape relationship,

which in fact happens. For brevity we only report
Table 32.9 shows the results of an alternative the age section, even if the rest of the model was
model in which age is incorporated as a continu- run using the same specication reported in pre-
ous variable and with a quadratic element in vious tables.
Table 32.9 An alternative specification for age

Life satisfaction Happiness
Variables and levels Coef P>|t| e^b coef P>|t| e^b
Age 0.029 0.001 0.971 0.040 0.000 0.961
Age square 0.000 0.011 1.000 0.000 0.001 1.000
Table 32.10 Socio-demographic aspects

Type of relationship Do
Reference they
Variable group Life satisfaction Happiness match?
Age 4549 () Similar between age (<) Lower than among the population Yes
groups considered aged 1829 and 3034 years
The U is conrmed with () Similar to the population aged
an alternative specication 6070 years
Decreases as one advances in age group
and stabilized from the group of
4549 years. Form L
The U is conrmed with an alternative
specication
Gender Woman () Similar to men () Similar to men Yes
Schooling None () Similar to those with () Similar to those with who have to No
some level of education complete secondary
(>) Greater than school onwards
Marital Married (<) Less than cohabiting (<) Less than cohabiting No
status () Similar to widow or (>) Greater than separated, divorced,
single widow and single
(>) Greater than separated
or divorced
Household () Similar to any () Similar to any household size Yes
size household size
Locality 100,000 and () Similar to city sizes (>) Greater than communities than No
size more considered 15,00099,000 inhabitants
inhabitants
Speaks Yes () Similar to those who () Similar to those who do not speak Yes
indigenous do not speak indigenous indigenous language
language language
Appendix 3 Appendix 4
The Tables 32.10, 32.11, 32.12, 32.13, 32.14, With the purpose of providing the reader with the
32.15, and 32.16 show a summary of relations interpretation of the results reported in Appen-
between dependent and explanatory variables dix 1, we next point out the questions and the
which emerge from the ordinal cumulative questionnaire used in collecting the required
model used. information to calculate each variable in the
model.
606 G. Leyva et al.
Table 32.11 Economic aspects

Reference they
Respondents Quintile 1 () Similar to quintile 2 () Similar to all quintiles No
household (<) Less than quintiles from
expenditure quintile 3 onwards. The difference
increases as considered higher
income groups
Respondent receives Yes (<) Less than those do not need (<) Less than those do not Yes
food aid help for food need help for food
Activity status Employed () Similar to unemployment, () Similar to No
housekeeping and physical unemployment, retired and
limitation housekeeping
(<) Less than retired and students (<) Less than student
(>) Greater than physical
limitation
Someone else needs Yes (<) Less than those who do not (<) Less than those who do Yes
respondents have someone who needs your not have someone who
nancial support nancial support needs your nancial support
Respondents Better () Similar to equal to that of their (>) Greater than to equal to No
standard of living parents that of their parents
compared with their (>) Greater than lower than that of (>) Greater than lower than
parents their parents that of their parents
Table 32.12 Personal experiences

Reference they
Respondent has experienced a No () Similar to those who have () Similar to those Yes
moment of great joy or experienced it who have
happiness at some stage in experienced it
his/her life
A close relative died in the last No (>) Greater than those who () Similar to those No
10 years have had it who have had it
The remoteness in time of death
does not appear to affect the
magnitude of the difference
Respondent has had serious Yes (<) Less than those who do not (<) Less than those Yes
difculties, setbacks or adversity have had it who do not have
throughout his life had it
Respondent considers that Yes (>) Greater than those who (>) Greater than Yes
throughout life has been able to have not those who have not
make important decisions freely
How well respondent sleep last Very good (>) Greater than the other (>) Greater than Yes
night alternatives the other
alternatives
(continued)

Reference they
Respondent received a heartfelt No (<) Less than those who do (<) Less than those Yes
thanks, praise or recognition for received it recently who do received it
efforts to make things right recently
() Similar to those who do () Similar to those
received it over a year ago who do received it
over a year ago
Respondent living with Yes (<) Less than those who not (<) Less than those Yes
alcoholics living with alcoholics who not living with
alcoholics
Table 32.13 Abuse and violence
Reference Type of relationship Do they

Abuse because of some form of No (>) Greater than (>) Greater than Yes
discrimination (age, color, sex, religion, those who has been those who has been
sexual orientation, illness, disability, abused by abused by
political views, nationality) discrimination discrimination
Physical assault by someone living in No () Similar to those (>) Greater than No
household who received it those who received it
Physical assault by a someone known No (>) Greater than () Similar to those No
those who received it who received it
Physical aggression from a stranger No () Similar to those () Similar to those Yes
who received it who received it
Table 32.14 Satisfaction with family life, affective life and social life

Satisfaction with 0 on scale () Similar to those who () Similar to those who No
family life of 010 responded between 1 and 8 responded between 1 and 7
(<) Less than those who (<)Less than those who
responded 9 or 10 responded between 8 and 10
affective life of 010 responded between 1 and 9 responded between 1 and 8
(<) Less than those who (<) Less than those who
responded 10 responded 9 or 10
social life of 0 to 10 responded between 1 and 6 responded between 1 and 3
() Less than those who () Less than those who
responded between 7 and 10 responded between 4 and 10
608 G. Leyva et al.
Table 32.15 Family support and frequency of meetings with family and friends
Reference they
With how many supportive None (<) Less than those who (<) Less than those who Yes
relatives respondent believes have one or more family have one or more family
he can count support support
(<) Less than those (<) Less than those without
without family family
Frequency of gathering with More than () Similar to the other () Similar to the other Yes
friends once a alternatives alternatives
month
Frequency of gathering with More than () Similar to the other () Similar to once a month No
the family once a alternatives and without family
month (<) Less than several times
in the year and/or special
occasions
Table 32.16 Personal practices

Practices physical No (<) Less than those who do (<) Less than those who do No
activity practice it regularly practice it regularly
() Similar to those who do (<) Less than those who do
practice it competitively practice it competitively
Belongs to an Yes (>) Greater than those who do (>) Greater than those who Yes
association that not promote it do not promote it
promotes faith
Belongs to a political Yes (<) Less than those not () Similar to those not No
movement belonging belonging
Pet Yes (>) Greater than those who () Similar to those who No
have none have none
Registered in social Yes (<) Less than those who are (<) Less than those who are Yes
network not registered not registered
Give donations Yes (>) Greater than those who (>) Greater than those who Yes
dont donate dont donate
He/she has avoided Yes () Similar to those who have () Similar to those who Yes
throwing batteries not avoided have not avoided
He/she read the article, Yes (<) Less than those who did (<) Less than those who did Yes
journal not read not read
Meditate on his/her life Yes (<) Less than those who did () Similar to those who did No
not meditate not meditate
Considered to have had Yes (>) Greater than those who (>) Greater than those who Yes
achievements consider have not had them consider have not had them
Table 32.17 Questions from which the information in the model come
Source
Variables Question Survey
Socio-demographic aspects
Age 2 ENGASTO
Gender 3 ENGASTO
Schooling 9 ENGASTO
Material status 14 ENGASTO
Household size Calculated ENGASTO
Locality size Sample ENGASTO
Speaks indigenous language 6.1 BIARE
Economic aspects
Respondents household expenditure quintile Calculated ENGASTO
Respondent receives food aid 15.1 BIARE
Activity status 16 a 19 ENGASTO
Someone else needs respondents nancial support 46.3 BIARE
Respondents standard of living compared to that of parents 49 BIARE
Personal experiences
Respondent has experienced a moment of great joy or happiness at some stage in his/her 42 BIARE
life
A close relative died in the last 10 years 17 BIARE
Respondent has had serious difculties, setbacks or adversity throughout his/her life 40 BIARE
Respondent considers that throughout life has been able to make important decisions 47 BIARE
freely
How well respondent sleep last night 3 BIARE
Respondent received a heartfelt thanks, praise or recognition for efforts to make things 45 BIARE
right
Respondent living with alcoholics 57.1 BIARE
Abuse because of some form of discrimination
Suffered abuse because of some form of discrimination (age, colour, sex, religion, 20 BIARE
sexual orientation, illness, disability, political views, nationality)
Physical assault by someone living in household 21.1 BIARE
Physical assault by someone known 21.2 BIARE
Physical assault by stranger 21.3 BIARE
Satised with family life, affective life and social life
Family life 64.6 BIARE
Affective life 64.9 BIARE
Social life 64.10 BIARE
Family support and frequency of gatherings with family and friends
Number of supportive relatives he/she can count on 28 BIARE
Frequency of gatherings with friends 23 BIARE
Frequency of gatherings with family 24 BIARE
Personal practices
Practices physical activity 37 BIARE
Belongs to an association that promotes faith 16.2 BIARE
Militant in a political movement 16.3 BIARE
Owns a pet 33 BIARE
Is registered in social network 27 BIARE
Gives donations 31.3 and BIARE
31.4
Has avoided throwing batteries 32.5 BIARE
(continued)
610 G. Leyva et al.

Source
Variables Question Survey
Has read an article/journal 39.2 BIARE
Meditates on his life 39.15 BIARE
Considers to have had achievements in life 43 BIARE
Gottman, M. (1994). What predicts divorce: The relation-

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The Usefulness of Subjective
Well-Being to Predict Electoral 33
Results in Latin America
Ivan Martnez Bravo
33.1 Voting and Subjective for it) if they notice it is good. A vote stemming
Well-Being from such a decision is known as pocketbook
voting (Campbell et al. 1960; Kramer 1971,
33.1.1 The Vote for the Incumbent or 1983). In the words of Lewis-Beck and
the Opposition Stegmaier (2007: 519), The theory of pocket-
book voting says that when personal or house-
The inuence of the economic conditions on the hold nancial conditions have deteriorated,
vote, specically on the vote issued in favor of voters will punish the incumbent. If personal
the ofcial party (which is in power) or of the nancial conditions have improved, voters will
opposition, is a subject that has been thoroughly reward the incumbent.
dealt with in Political Science. For the past few The second hypothesis establishes that the
years, the academy has been propounding that electorates evaluation of the candidates is
the electoral results, at least in part, are deter- based upon the standing of the national economy
mined by uctuations in the economic situation, (which it also holds the government administra-
either that of the voter, on one hand, or that tion in turn responsible): if it is good they reward
of the country or community where s/he the candidate or the party in power by giving it
lives, on another (Key 1966; Tufte 1975; Fiorina their vote, if it is bad they vote against it. A vote
1981; Hibbs et al. 1982; Chapell and Keech issued based on the evaluation of the standing or
1988). health of the national economy is known as
Thus, two great hypotheses ensue that divide sociotropic voting (Kinder and Kiewit 1979,
the studies on the topic. One proposes that the 1981).
voters evaluate the political candidates Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier (2007) concisely
depending on their personal economic well- expound the economic voting models. The vote
being and that they vote accordingly: punishing for the incumbent or the opposition in presiden-
(that is, voting against) the candidate or party in tial and parliamentary elections has been studied
power (who they make responsible for their eco- to a greater extent in the USA, the United King-
nomic situation) if they realize that their eco- dom, and France, countries with clearly
nomic situation is bad, and rewarding it (voting consolidated democracies. However, the results
from studies made for postsocialist countries and
I. Martnez Bravo (*) developing countries have only supported the
Imagina Mexico: Laboratorio de Felicidad, Mexico City, existence of a reward-punishment scheme of the
Mexico economic vote (Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier
e-mail: ivanmartinezbravo@gmail.com

614 I. Martnez Bravo
2007). This reward-punishment pattern can be individual knows his/her own well-being: it is the
counted on, election after election, country after well-being of the subject. Hence, SWB data is
country (p. 530). collected by directly asking people to report their
In short, economic performance has been con- level of well-being on a numerical scale.
sidered an essential variable to understand elec- Although it is beyond the scope of this
toral behavior in terms of voting for the opposition research, it is important to indicate that the valid-
or the incumbent: voters are held to vote for the ity of the SWB data has been corroborated many
incumbent in economic good times, and vote times.1 It has been proven that the SWB data is
against the incumbent in economic bad times. . . valid because the information that it reects is
it is the classic reward-punishment scheme reliable, and it is consistent and interpersonally
(Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier 2007: 530). No mat- comparable, among other things. See Veenhoven
ter whether the economic good/bad times indi- (1996) for a complete, thorough study of the
cator is the national economic standing or that of different objections that have been made to the
the personal nances of the voter, there is consen- validity of SWB self-evaluations and their
sus in literature regarding the greater likelihood refutations. See also Diener et al. (2012).
for the citizen to vote for the incumbent when s/he Now, studies show that well-being is composed
perceives improvements or favorable statuses in of very different factors, from personality features
one or another (his/her personal nances or the to environmental issues, touching on many others.
national economy). Van Hoorn (2007) clearly and concisely expounds
the SWB determinants. Among them are the insti-
tutional factors, where the political variables can
33.1.2 Subjective Well-Being be found. Here the role of democracy or demo-
cratic institutions (topics such as referendums or
Subjective well-being (hereinafter SWB) is a con- freedom of choice,2 among others) stands out.
cept that may be understood through nominally Democratic institutions and subjective well-being
different but essentially analog notions such as life have been observed to present a very clear positive
satisfaction and happiness, principally. It basi- relationship (Dorn et al. 2007; Frey and Stutzer
cally consists of the evaluation people make of 2000; Inglehart 2006).
their lives, solely based on their own criterion. Quality of government is another important
One denition, presented by Diener topic among the political factors that determine
et al. (1999), conceives SWB more as a general SWB; quality of government is positively related
area of scientic concern than as a particular, to SWB (Helliwell and Huang 2008; Bok 20103).
specic topic, for according to them it is a broad A conclusive nding: Life satisfaction is found to
category of phenomena that includes peoples be more closely linked to several measures of the
emotional responses, domain satisfactions, and quality of government than to real per capita
global judgments of life satisfaction (p. 277). incomes (Helliwell and Huang 2008: 595).
Kim-Prieto et al. (2005) also conceive SWB as a
whole, since SWB, they argue, encompasses a
1
wide range of components, such as happiness, Different aspects of the topic regarding SWB data valid-
life satisfaction, hedonic balance, fulllment and ity are discussed in Veenhoven(1991, 1996), Ferrer-i-
Carbonell (2002), Kahneman and Krueger (2006),
stress, and holds at its core affective and cognitive Diener (1984).
evaluation of ones life (p. 261). 2
Inglehart et al. (2008: 264) assure that the extent to
All of the conceptions of SWB place primary which a society allows free choice has a major impact on
importance on the assessment an individual makes happiness.
3
of his/her own well-being, that is to say, on the Bok (2010, chapter 10) speaks at length on the different
quality of government measurements that have been used
subjectivity of well-being. This is the fundamental
and their relation with the evaluations that people make of
principle of the concept. Well-being is subjective government performance, comparing results from differ-
because it is individual, because only the ent countries.
33 The Usefulness of Subjective Well-Being to Predict Electoral Results in Latin America 615
Income, widely accepted as an important well- government and its performance, and their sub-
being indicator, seems to weigh less than quality jective well-being.
of government to account for the well-being of Resolutely advocating for the usefulness of the
people. SWB data to elaborate public policies, Bok
Even political participation per se has effects (2010), president at Harvard University for over
on SWB. According to Weitz-Shapiro and 20 years, does not hesitate to assure that the qual-
Winters (2008: 3), people who participate in ity of the government and the perception of
political activities will be more satised with citizens regarding its performance signicantly
their lives because of the resulting feelings of affect the SWB levels of citizens. One of the
autonomy, competence and relatedness. They interesting ndings from the recent research on
nd that for Latin America there is a positive, happiness is the discovery that how government
statistically signicant relationship between vot- functions and how citizens think it functions have
ing and life satisfaction. signicant effects on their well-being (p. 179).
The citizens evaluation of government perfor-
mance affects their level of subjective well-being.
33.1.3 Research Question From this point, it is reasonable and practically
and Hypothesis compulsory to propose that the SWB data is an
important indicator of what will happen in the
The inuence that political factors have on either government. If the individual perceives that the
people life satisfaction or their levels of happi- actions and factors that depend on the government
ness has thus been proven. This research, how- produce changes in their SWB, one could only
ever, is interested in a topic that has not been expect that the individual, when it is time to vote,
studied directly by the academy: the relationship will reward or punish the government according to
between SWB and electoral results. where these changes are headed. Specically, it is
As seen above, it is argued in the academy that proposed here this is the hypothesis of this
there are political factors (that depend on the research that the higher the level of subjective
government to a great extent) that are strongly well-being of the citizens of a country, the greater
correlated to SWB, and even more, that have an the chance that the incumbent party (the one
inuence on SWB. However, the repercussions governing on Election Day) will win the next
that SWB, affected by these factors, has on the presidential elections. Similarly, lower levels of
electoral results have not been studied as of yet. citizens SWB make it more likely that the oppos-
If political actions and political factors, primarily ing party will win the next presidential elections.
depending upon the government (quality of gov- The study is made for Latin America.
ernment, degree of democratization of its It is important for it to be clear that subjective
institutions, economic development, degree of well-being, by denition, considers the complete
freedom of choice, and so on), affect the SWB well-being of a person and not just the well-being
of citizens, dont they react to such changes when of a sphere in his/her life (such as the economic
they cast their vote? Thus, the question that this scope). It is thus reasonable to expect that the
research aims to answer is: does subjective well- SWB data will capture the evaluation a person
being data help predict electoral results? makes of his/her well-being when casting his/her
In order to answer the research question, the vote better than what is grasped by just
topic regarding government performance and evaluating his/her economic situation. In this
subjective well-being is of particular concern. way, subjective well-being is expected to allow
In addition to being one of the least explored, for more complete judgments than economic
the relationship between SWB and government performance, translating into a consequential
performance is fundamental to approach the reward or punishment for the incumbent party,
research question, especially the association thus helping to better explain the electoral
between how the citizens perceive the results.
33.1.4 Sociodemographic Factors manner, for example, Mexico contributes with

2 of the 61 episodes comprising the database:
The literature review shows that the models of the elections in 2000 and 2006.
voting traditionally control for Now, in order to construct this variable, the
sociodemographic variables (Gomez and Wilson party (or party coalition) that won the presiden-
2001; Lau and Sears 1981; Lewis-Beck and tial election was compared with the party that
Stegmaier 2007, among many others).4 Lewis- was in power on Election Day for each episode.
Beck and Stegmaier (2007) make this very clear A dichotomic variable was thus built, Op, which
in their revision of voting models when they tells of the character (opposing or incumbent) of
point out that a stylized version of the standard the party that reached the presidency during each
specication (p. 521), at least for the USA, episode.6 It must be mentioned that the incum-
includes socioeconomic status, adding that, bent was triumphant in 27 episodes during the
among others, . . . education and gender have period studied. The opposition, therefore, won
all been found, at least at certain times, to condi- the remaining 34 episodes.7
tion the economic vote (p. 530). Abiding by the A point regarding the construction of the Party
custom to include sociodemographic variables in Character variable, Op, must be made clear. The
the explanation of the vote for the incumbent or electoral systems in several Latin American
the opposition, this paper will consider three countries fall back on a second round
sociodemographic variables (gender, level of (or ballotage) when none of the candidates
education and age, the three used the most) to reach the absolute majority during a presidential
control the effects of the variables of concern: election.8 There was no problem to appoint the
SWB and economic performance. triumphant candidate (and therefore whether the
opposition or the incumbent won) when the can-
didate who won the second round was the one
who had the most votes during the rst one. By
33.2 Database Construction
contrast, when the candidate who obtained the
most votes during the rst round lost during the
The variable that provides information about the
second, a decision had to be made as to which of
incumbent or opposing character of the party
the two was considered the winner for purposes
(or coalition) that won the presidential elections
of this study. The winner of the second round was
in the countries was constructed from the infor-
chosen for the following reasons.
mation on electoral results in the Political Data-
Since the winners of the second round will
base of the Americas (PDBA).5 Before we
govern during the following presidential period,
continue, and to enable the explanation, a name
the next victory will be opposing or incumbent in
is given to each election in each country that
relation to their administration (and not in rela-
occurred during the study period (19952010).
tion to those who won the rst round). Similarly,
Each election in each country in the sample from
the evaluation the citizens make of the govern-
1995 to 2010 is named an episode. In this
ment administration and, therefore, its impact on
4
Most of the time, however, a justication of the inclu-
sion of these variables in the models is not presented, and 6
many times not even the interpretation of their results is Table 33.7 in the appendix indicates all of the episodes
included. in the period and the character of the parties that won the
5
The PDBA (http://pdba.georgetown.edu/) includes data elections in each episode.
7
on the presidential elections in all of the Latin American These results are shown in Table 33.8 in the appendix,
countries that represent the subcontinent sample in this together with the percentages that they represent.
8
work: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, As regards Latin America, except for Haiti, the second
Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, round is instituted only for presidential elections, unlike
Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, other countries where it is also applied for parliamentary
Venezuela and Dominican Republic. elections.
the subjective well-being and other citizen gender is not reasonable, percentages were cal-
variables will result from the governing adminis- culated. Thus, the variable indicating gender
tration, that is to say, the administration headed reports the percentage of the male population in
by the candidate who won the second round. each country each year. All of the variables used
The data on the SWB of Latin Americans was are described below in Table 33.2.
obtained from the Latinobar ometro.9 The ques- Since the objective is to study the impact that
tion was as follows: In general, would you say SWB has on electoral results, it is essential for
that you are satised with your life? Would you the SWB data to precede the elections held in the
say that you are (1) Very satised, (2) Fairly different countries. Therefore, in order to be able
satised, (3) Not very satised, (4) Not at all to ultimately speak of predictions and effects on
satised.10 This question was made for samples electoral results, it is necessary for the informa-
of approximately 1,000 people in each country tion from the Latinobar ometro to have been
each year. For this research, the average for each gathered before the elections in each country.
country each year was calculated, so the informa- Considering that the surveys from the
tion here is handled at countrys average levels. Latinobar ometro lack any temporal order, since
This way, the constructed variable gives informa- they are carried out on different dates year after
tion on the life satisfaction average (or SWB) of year from country to country (that is, the months
the countries each year. Since the question was in which they are made each year are different, as
not asked every year, the sample is comprised of are the months in which they are carried out in
35 observations; that is to say, of the 61 episodes each country during a same year), the informa-
only 35 have information on the SWB of citizens. tion for each country for each election year must
The sociodemographic information was also be matched correctly. This entails making the
taken from the Latinobar ometro. In addition to information from the electoral results from
the vast amount of information they gather on a year in a country match the information from
public opinion, the Latinobar ometro polls also the Latinobar ometro gathered immediately
inquire about the sociodemographic status of before these elections. It must be understood
the interviewees. Evidently, information on the that the information included in the
education, gender and age of the interviewees Latinobar ometro immediately before the elec-
was also calculated at countrys average levels. tion date in a country does not necessarily belong
That is, education represents the average of years to the preceding year. That is to say, the fact that
the people from a country in the year in question elections are held after the Latinobar ometro poll
have studied. Similarly, age represents the aver- does not necessarily mean that the information is
age age in a country in a certain year. Only the not from the same year.11 These temporal
variable telling the gender of the interviewees relations between different pieces of information
was interpreted differently. Since an average (electoral results and Latinobar ometro) are
shown for each country in Tables 33.9 and
33.10 in the appendix.
9
http://www.latinobarometro.org. The Latinobar ometro Finally, the GDP per capita annual growth rate
has been making public opinion studies by carrying out is taken into account to provide information on
surveys in 18 Latin American countries since 1995. The
19952010 period holds all of the data available at the
time this research was done, which is why it is the period 11
For example: Elections were held in Paraguay and
being studied. Venezuela in 1998. The electoral results from Paraguay
10
To enable interpretation, I reverted the scale in such a were studied based on the 1997 Latinobar ometro poll,
way as to keep it from being counterintuitive, that is, so because the Latinobar ometro for 1998 was conducted
that a greater degree of satisfaction would be represented after (November) the elections (May). In turn, the elec-
by a larger number. The scale resulted as follows: . . . toral results for Venezuela were analyzed based on the
Would you say that you are (1) Not at all satised, information from 1998, since the Latinobar ometro poll
(2) Not very satised, (3) Fairly satised, (4) Very was conducted before (November) the elections
satised. (December).
economic performance or uctuations in the eco- the challenger (Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier
nomic situation (Fiorina 1981). According to 2007: 518). But since the theory is expected to
Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier (2007: 531), When be met, it will be most important to compare its
voters look at the economy. . . They may look results with those of the subjective well-being.
directly or indirectly at a host of formal indices,
such as the GDP growth rate. . . Unlike the GDP,
the GDP per capita deducts the effect of population 33.3 Empirical Analysis
growth, so that as an economy performance indi-
cator, the GDP per capita growth rate is clearly 33.3.1 Influence of Subjective
better than the GDP growth rate. The GDP per Well-Being on the Victory
capita growth rate used herein is as reported by of Incumbent or Opposition
the World Bank (http://www.worldbank.org/).
Now, although this data is a clear indicator of Let us return to the hypothesis and take a look at
the uctuations in the economic situation (which the joint behavior of the relevant variables. It
allows the study of the economic vote), it does proposes that the higher the level of life satisfac-
not allow a clear differentiation between tion (or SWB) of the citizens of a country, the
sociotropic voting and pocketbook voting. Since higher the probability that the governing party
the GDP per capita is the quotient between the (the one in power on Election Day) will win the
GDP and the population (number of inhabitants), next presidential elections. Although the econo-
one would be tempted to think that it is a good metric tests will ultimately determine the rejec-
indicator of the personal economic situation in tion or acceptance of the hypothesis, by
each country. However, it disregards internal analyzing the movement of the variables one
inequalities, assigning the same income level to can immediately shape an idea of the direction
all of the inhabitants and overlooking the of the underlying relationship. Table 33.1
differences in their personal economy, thus presents the mean life satisfaction of Latin
becoming a questionable indicator of the per- Americans in the episodes won by the opposition
sonal economic situation. In addition to this, and the incumbent.
Latin America is one of the most unequal regions This information clearly supports the hypoth-
in the world.12 Hence, GDP per capita gives a esis, since a higher level of SWB (greater life
clear idea of the economic situation of countries satisfaction) of citizens is associated with the
(in fact, it is a countrys average) and in some victory of incumbent parties and, hence, a lower
cases could indicate the economic situation of life satisfaction is associated with the victories of
each person.13 It is undoubtedly a clear indicator the opposing party (the difference of means test
of economic performance. is signicant at 1 %). In other words, this
The GDP per capita growth rate is therefore indicates that, indeed, when people state that
helpful to operationalize uctuations in the eco- they are more satised with their lives, that is to
nomic situation and thus study the presence of the say, when their subjective well-being is higher,
economic vote. It will be useful to corroborate the likelihood that the incumbent party will again
whether, as established by the theory of economic win the elections increases, whereas a lower life
voting, . . . when the economy is good, voters satisfaction of citizens makes it more likely for
will reward the incumbent with their vote. Con- the opposition to win the elections. It is pertinent
versely, when the economy is bad, voters will to insist that econometric tests must be made in
punish the incumbent by casting their vote for order to afrm the above; however, descriptive
statistics already suggest the validity of the
12 hypothesis.
Many of the Gini coefcients in the region are among
the highest in the world. The model proposed to corroborate the
13
In cases when economic inequality is very low, a con- hypothesis is explained below. Since the occur-
dition which most countries of the region are not under. rence of an event is to be explained, that is, the
Table 33.1 Mean life satisfaction according to the character of the parties reaching presidency in Latin America
during the 19952010 period
Character of the parties that reached the presidency Mean life satisfaction*
Incumbent 3.06
Opposition 2.91
Source: Prepared by the author based on information from the Political Database of the Americas and Latinobar ometro
Note: Each gure indicates the average of the average life satisfaction of the episodes in which the incumbent or the
opposition won, respectively. The average of the averages is calculated because each year the number of observations
for each country is not the same. That is, some samples are larger than others, both between countries and in a same
country from one year to another. Biases caused by overrepresenting the larger samples are avoided by studying the
average of the averages
n 35
*
The difference of means test was statistically signicant (p-value 0.005), that is, there is evidence with statistical
support that the means are different
probability of success or failure of an event that preceding the election year: it may be from the
the elections will be won or lost by an opposing same year. As explained above, it all depends on
party (or coalition) or, analogously, won or lost what happened rst, the elections or the
by the ruling party the model must explain Latinobar ometro poll. In turn, economic growth
bivariate results. Thus, the proposed model is a is always from the year before the year the
probit, which may be represented by the follow- elections are held. Since annual growth is calcu-
ing equation: lated on the basis of a complete year, it must
necessarily be from the year preceding the
P Op jt 1X f life sat jt , GDPpc jt1 , X jt SD elections, whereby the model species the tem-
33:1 porality of the GDP per capita growth with t-1.
The model therefore studies the probability of
The dependent variable, which gives information occurrence of Op 1 (that a party belonging to
on the incumbent or opposing character of the the opposition will win the elections) given the
party that won the election, has been labeled Op independent variables. The model variables are
(the initials refer to the opposing character of the described in Table 33.2.
party). It is dichotomic, so Op 1 when the Table 33.3 presents the results of the model.
winning party belongs to the opposition and The differences, that is to say, the changes in the
Op 0 when it is in power. X represents the probability of occurrence of the dependent vari-
vector of explanatory variables, namely the aver- able resulting from changes in one unit of the
age life satisfaction (or SWB) in the country independent variables, were obtained directly
during the year in question, life_satjt; the eco- when running the regression.
nomic growth of the year preceding election Let us see what Table 33.3 tells us about the
date, GDPpcjt-1; and the set of annual countrys hypothesis straightaway. First, the sign of the
averages of the sociodemographic variables coefcient that gives information on the change
(XjtSD): the percentage of the male population, in the average life satisfaction is as expected: as
the average of years of education and the average the average life satisfaction of the citizens of a
age of the country during the year in question. country increases, the likelihood that the opposi-
As for the construction of the database, the tion will win the elections decreases. In other
need for subjective well-being and the rest of the words, the greater the subjective well-being, the
information obtained from the Latinobar ometro higher the chance that the incumbent party will
to precede the elections is explained above. The win the elections again. Numerically speaking,
fact that this information is always from immedi- the interpretation would have to be: if the aver-
ately before the elections, as was seen, does not age life satisfaction goes up one unit (remember
imply that it is necessarily from the year that the scale is from 1 to 4), the chance that the
Table 33.2 Model variables

Dependent variable
Op Character of the winning party in each episode: Op 1 if the party belongs to the opposition; Op 0 if
the winner is the incumbent party
Independent variables
life_sat Annual country average of the subjective well-being of the people: annual country average of the life
satisfaction of the people (scale from 1 to 4)
GDPpc Annual country average of the economic performance: GDP per capita annual growth rate (percentage:
scale from 0 to 100)
Edu Annual country average of education: annual country average of the number of years people have studied
Age Annual country average of the age of people (years of age)
Male% Percentage of men in the country
Source: Prepared by the author
Table 33.3 Probit model to test prediction of electoral tion scale goes from 1 to 4; therefore, the maxi-
results with subjective well-being mum possible change is three levels (from 1 to
Dependent variable: Op 4 or vice versa). Thus, a one-level increase, for
Independent (Standard example, in the life satisfaction of a person is
variables dF/dx error) possible, but it is no longer reasonable in the
life_sat 1.235*** (0.477) average life satisfaction of a country: this would
GDPpc 0.017 (0.031) imply that all of the citizens climb one level in
Edu 0.150* (0.081) their life satisfaction, or that for each person who
Male% 0.174 (0.111)
conserved the same level there is another who
Age 0.070 (0.062)
raised his/hers by two levels, or that for each
Pseudo-R2 0.23
person who saw his/her satisfaction drop one
Note: By excluding the life_sat variable from the model
level there is another who increased his/hers by
(see Table 33.11 in the appendix), the explanatory capac- three levels. This way, victory due to changes in
ity is lowered tremendously: Pseudo-R2 0.03 is the life satisfaction of the population is not cer-
obtained. This gives a very clear idea of the importance tain for the incumbent or the opposition: such a
of subjective well-being to explain the vote for the oppo-
sition or the incumbent
change (one level) is utopian. The coefcient, to
n 35 insist on the point, makes sense: if the average
*Signicant at 10 % life satisfaction of a country increases by 0.1
***Signicant at 1 % (a tenth of a level: going, for example, from 2.8
to 2.9), the likelihood that the ruling party will
opposing party will win the next presidential win the elections rises by 12.3 %, according to
elections is lowered by 123.5 %. Although the these empirical results. If it increases by 0.41
effect is enormous, it makes a great deal of sense. (less than half a level), the probability that the
An increase of one level in average life satis- incumbent party will win again increases by
faction in a country is an enormous and unlikely 50 %. The magnitude and coefcient sign show
change.14 Let us remember that the life satisfac- that subjective well-being is clearly an important
variable when predicting electoral results.
Yet this strong impact made by SWB on the
probability that the incumbent will be victorious
14
Attending to the highest and lowest values in the annual is also statistically signicant. Thus, the corrob-
average of life satisfaction during the entire period oration of the hypothesis, according to these
(19952009) for each country, we see that the greatest
empirical results, is undeniable: the less satised
change was 0.55 and that it occurred in Ecuador, which
presented a maximum value of 3.03 and a minimum of citizens are, the greater the chance that the oppo-
2.48. sition will win the next presidential elections.
Now, the explanatory capacity of the model The coefcient of the GDP per capita annual
must be emphasized. It is pertinent to indicate growth rate indicates that if per capita income
that this research does not seek to construct an grows 1 % (remember that the growth rate is
elaborate model that predicts the electoral results measured in percentage points, see Table 33.2),
as much as possible. Its purpose is to prove that the probability of voting the following year for the
subjective well-being is a useful variable to pre- incumbent party increases by 1.7 %. This is
dict electoral results. It is therefore essential for undoubtedly an important change in the sense
the coefcients to be signicant (both statisti- indicated by the theory of economic voting. But
cally and in substantive terms) but not for the there is the drawback of statistical signicance: the
model to have a high goodness of t. This is why coefcient is quite far from being signicant in
a goodness of t above 20 % (Pseudo-R2 0.23) statistical terms. That is to say, on the basis of the
is a fact that must not be left unstressed. results of the model (given the lack of statistical
But how much does the average life satisfac- signicance), one would have to ensure that the
tion contribute to the goodness of t of the change in the economic situation has no inuence
model? If the average life satisfaction is excluded on the fact that the opposition or the incumbent
from the model and the regression is run with the wins; in other words, technically, one cannot speak
other variables, we see that the goodness of t of punishments or rewards given to the ruling
drops drastically, for the Pseudo-R2 goes from party based on changes in the economic situation.
0.23 to 0.03.15 This is conclusive proof of the However, the coefcient is worthy of atten-
importance of subjective well-being to explain tion. Supposing that the lack of statistical signi-
the vote for the incumbent or the opposition. cance is actually due only to the low number of
The other purpose, as was seen, is to prove that observations, the magnitude of the coefcient
subjective well-being is a better predictor of the would indicate that the uctuations in the GDP
vote for the incumbent or the opposition than per capita do have an impact on the victory of the
economic performance. According to literature, incumbent or the opposition, though less than
favorable changes in the economic situation that of subjective well-being, since they predict
increase the likelihood that votes will be cast in who will reach power to a lesser degree. In other
favor of the party in power on Election Day, that words, compared to that of subjective well-being,
is, the incumbent. The results show that although the impact that the economic performance would
the coefcient sign is as expected, it has no statis- have on the victory of the incumbent or the
tical signicance. Before analyzing the coefcient opposition is clearly smaller.
of the GDP per capita annual growth rate, it is If statistical signicance did exist, a 50 %
worth indicating that there are only increase in the economic situation indicator
35 observations. In theory, it is difcult to achieve (that is, if the income per capita were to increase
acceptable levels of signicance, since a small by 50 %)17 would have an 85 % impact on the
number of observations tend to cause large stan- probability that the ruling party will be rewarded
dard errors, which in turn result in minor statistics, with the vote; on the contrary, a 50 % increase in
nally hindering the hypothesis tests.16 subjective well-being would raise the chance that
15
This information may be consulted in Table 33.11 in the
appendix, where the results of this regression are
presented.
16
In this sense, the signicance of the life satisfaction
17
coefcient is surprising, conclusive proof of the inuence These gures are excessive but very useful for illustra-
of subjective well-being on the resolution to vote for the tion purposes; the analysis can evidently be made with
incumbent or the opposition. smaller amounts.
the ruling party will win again by 185 %!18 It is would only seem to have auxiliary functions,
worth insisting that 50 % increases both in one since it allows for a better isolation of the effects
variable and in another are changes that are of the study object: subjective well-being and the
exaggerated but extremely useful for illustration economic performance.
purposes.
The capacity of subjective well-being to pre-
dict the vote for the incumbent or the opposition 33.3.2 The Margin of Victory Of
is clearly greater than that of economic perfor- Incumbent/Opposition
mance. Not only the coefcients of the variables and Subjective Well-Being
supply evidence in this regard, but the goodness
of t in Tables 33.3 and 33.11 is also revealing in Alternately and to conrm the ndings, the elec-
this sense. On the basis of these empirical results, toral results were also studied in this investiga-
we can afrm that subjective well-being is over tion through the margins of victory between the
two times better than economic performance to incumbent party and the opposition, that is, the
predict the electoral results. The same percentage difference between the percentages of votes
change in both has more than double the effect given to the incumbent, and the opposing party
(in favor of subjective well-being) on the likeli- with the most votes. In addition to studying the
hood that the incumbent or the opposition will inuence of subjective well-being on the proba-
win: 185 85 2.18. bility that the incumbent or opposition will tri-
In regard to the other three explanatory umph, the impact that subjective well-being has
variables, that is, the sociodemographic ones typ- on the (percentage) margin of votes by which
ically used as control variables in voting models, the incumbent (or opposition) wins was also
only education was signicant (at 10 %). Thus, studied.
increases in the average education of a country,
according to the results obtained herein, have a 33.3.2.1 Construction of the Margins
negative inuence on the probability that an of Victory
opposing party may win the elections. If the First, the incumbent (the party ruling on election
average education of the inhabitants of a country day) and the percentage of votes it obtained was
increases in 1 year, the likelihood that the oppo- identied for each episode. For the episodes that
sition will win the elections drops 15 %, it won, the percentage of votes garnered by the
according to these results. closest opposing party (or coalition), that is, sec-
On the other hand, neither gender nor average ond place, was subtracted from the percentage of
age has sway over the victory of the incumbent or votes obtained by the incumbent. This necessar-
the opposition. Specically, the percentage of ily implied a positive margin, since whenever the
male population is irrelevant to determine incumbent won it had more votes than any other
whether the victory will belong to an opposing party.
party (or coalition) or to the party that is in power When the incumbent party did not win, the
on Election Day, nor is the average age of the percentage of votes that it obtained was recorded,
country. It should be pointed out that the inclu- as well as the percentage of votes for the winning
sion of the sociodemographic variables in the party, the opposition, which obviously came
analysis, traditionally practiced in literature, through in rst place. It is clear that the gure
resulting from the calculated margin was nega-
tive, since the incumbent party had less votes
18
Let us remember that the measurement scale goes from than the opposition because it did not win.
1 to 4, in such a way that 3 is the maximum change Thus, all episodes when the opposition won
possible. This way, a 50 % change, that is, a change of
have a negative margin.
1.5 levels, in subjective well-being increases the chance
for the incumbent to win by 185% This example illustrates the above: In the
(1.5
1.235 1.8525). Mexican elections in 2000, the incumbent party
was the PRI,19 headed by President Ernesto immediately after a government administration.
Zedillo. The winner of these elections was the This seems to be slightly distorted during the sec-
PAN,20 with Vicente Fox. The PRI obtained ond round: since the rst choice of a portion of the
36.1 % of the votes, whereas the PAN was electorate is not available during a second round, it
given 42.52 %. The margin was therefore nega- must therefore vote for another option. In some
tive: 6.42 (36.142.52). In the following cases, the proportional difference between the two
elections (year 2006), the PAN, currently the rst places changes drastically between the rst
incumbent, won again with 35.89 % of the and second rounds, and sometimes the incumbent
votes, while the closest opposition, the PRD,21 does not even contend (when it is in third place or
obtained 35.33 %; in this case, the margin was even lower during the rst round).
positive: 0.56.22
In brief, the margins of victory directly acquire
33.3.2.2 Empirical Analysis of Margins
their sign from the mathematical difference
of Victory and Subjective Well-
resulting from the gures reached by the incumbent
Being
party and the opposition with the most votes. Also,
Once the margins of victory were obtained, an
it is worth emphasizing that the margins of victory
econometric model was built to investigate the
do not necessarily imply the rst and second places:
impact on the margin of victory caused by the
this study found cases when the incumbent party
subjective well-being and the other explanatory
came in third or even fourth during elections, not to
variables used to conrm the hypothesis. That is
mention the times that it did not participate.
to say, the model now explains the margin of
Only the rst round was considered in the anal-
victory of the incumbent, not the probability
ysis. There were many episodes when the elections
that the incumbent will triumph. This is
had a second round. However, it was decided that
represented by the equation:
the rst round was relevant to calculate the
margins, since we were interested in registering, Inc Op jt 1 life sat jt
as clearly as possible, the impression that the
voters had of the incumbent and the opposition, 2 GDPpc jt1
3 edu jt 4 male% jt
5 age jt u jt 33:2
19
PRI: Institutional Revolutionary Party
20 Thus, the only difference between this model and
PAN: National Action Party
21 the former one is the dependent variable, Inc-Op,
PRD: Democratic Revolution Party
22
At rst the idea was to simply consider the percentage
which represents the percentage of votes for the
of votes obtained by the incumbent party. However, this incumbent party minus the percentage of votes
was discarded because when the number of parties in for the opposing party with the most suffrages, as
different electoral systems and the degree of competi- explained above.
tiveness vary (some cases are practically bipartisan and
in others there is a more or less strong competition
It must be noted that the aim of this model is to
between more than two parties), the proportion of votes provide evidence additional to that supplied by the
obtained by the incumbent party varies substantially: original model (also, since margins are not dichot-
when bipartisan, the proportion of votes by which one omous variables but continuous ones, precision
wins is greater (the votes are divided by only two parties)
than when there are several parties. This lack of propor-
and continuity is gained). The probability of vic-
tion does not completely measure the magnitude of the tory of the incumbent and opposition is one thing,
victories, which can be achieved by considering the dif- and the margin by which they win is another. If
ference in the percentage of votes obtained by the incum- subjective well-being is positively related to the
bent party and the strongest opposing party (the opposing
party with the most votes). Therefore, the difference in
victory of the incumbent, as suggested in this
percentage between one and another is the best indicator. research, it is reasonable to propose that it not
only raises the probability that it will win the Table 33.4 Model to explain the margin of victory
elections (which has already been proven), but between the incumbent and the opposition
the margin by which it wins the elections may Dependent variable: Inc-Op
also be expected to widen. Similarly, it seems Independent (Standard
reasonable to expect that if the economic perfor- variables Coefcient error)
mance is not as good as the subjective well-being Constant 202.151 (253.389)
to explain the victories of the incumbent, neither life_sat 41.642** (20.505)
GDPpc 1.141 (1.210)
does it explain the margin by which it wins as well
Edu 3.625 (3.047)
as subjective well-being does. The results from
Male% 5.314 (4.293)
the model are presented in Table 33.4.
Age 2.589 (2.228)
First of all, life satisfaction has the expected R2 0.179
sign. If the average life satisfaction of citizens
increases 0.1 (a tenth of a level), the margin Note: By excluding the life_sat variable from the model
(regarding the strongest opposing party) by (see Table 33.12 in the Appendix), the explanatory capac-
which the incumbent party will win goes up 4.16 ity lowers greatly, obtaining R2 0.028. This gives a very
clear idea of the importance of subjective well-being to
points. If it loses the elections (it must not be
explain the vote for the opposition or the incumbent
forgotten that an increase in life satisfaction does n 32
not necessarily imply a victory for the incumbent), **Signicant at 5 %
the margin by which it loses will be smaller by
4.16 points, that is, the election will be closer.23 It
must be noted that average life satisfaction is the
only variable with statistical signicance. Increased average years of education, on the
The GDP per capita growth rate coefcient other hand, change the margin in favor of the
also presents the expected sign, even though it is incumbent. Once again, it must be noted that
not statistically signicant. If the per capita the coefcients are not statistically signicant.
income grows 1 %, the margin in favor of the
incumbent party will change by 1.14 points. That
is, if the GDP per capita were to go down 5 %, the 33.3.3 Intraregional Effects
margin would change 5.7 percentage points in
favor of the opposition. This would plainly indi- Taking into account that this study is made for one
cate the presence of the economic vote. Once region (the Latin American) comprised by
again, the lack of statistical signicance could be 18 countries (entities that are different from each
caused by the very low number of observations. other by denition), it must be considered that
The non-signicant, sociodemographic con- intraregional differences are a possibility and that
trol variables affect the margin of victory of the the explanatory capacity of the model may increase
incumbent in the same way that they do it in the by isolating the effects by each country.
original model: increases in the percentage of the Following the above, 18 country dummy
male population and the average age of a country variables that account for each country consid-
turn the margin in favor of the opposition. ered in the investigation were constructed, as
described in Table 33.5. Then an alternative
23
model was applied, which considers the variables
A positive impact of increased life satisfaction on the
from the above model Eq. 33.2 plus the country
margin of victory of the incumbent (that is, what is pro-
posed and tested in this research) means that when the dummy variables, and thus controls the internal
incumbent party wins, its victory is more pronounced. effects of each country. In this manner, Eq. 33.3,
That is to say, its margin is wider: the difference in the which describes this new model, includes coun-
percentage of obtained votes is greater. In turn, when it
try xed effects that isolate the inuence that
loses, it does so with a smaller margin. In other words, the
race gets closer: the difference in the percentage of votes each country exerts on the aggregated results
for the opposition will be less. for the region.
Table 33.5 Dummy variables for country fixed effects

Arg 1 if the country is Argentina, 0 otherwise
Bol 1 if the country is Bolivia, 0 otherwise
Bra 1 if the country is Brazil, 0 otherwise
Col 1 if the country is Colombia, 0 otherwise
CoRi 1 if the country is Costa Rica, 0 otherwise
Chi 1 if the country is Chile, 0 otherwise
Ecu 1 if the country is Ecuador, 0 otherwise
Sal 1 if the country is El Salvador, 0 otherwise
Gua 1 if the country is Guatemala, 0 otherwise
Hon 1 if the country is Honduras, 0 otherwise
Mex 1 if the country is Mexico, 0 otherwise
Nic 1 if the country is Nicaragua, 0 otherwise
Pan 1 if the country is Panama, 0 otherwise
Par 1 if the country is Paraguay, 0 otherwise
Per 1 if the country is Peru, 0 otherwise
Uru 1 if the country is Uruguay, 0 otherwise
Ven 1 if the country is Venezuela, 0 otherwise
DomR 1 if the country is Dominican Republic, 0 otherwise
Inc Op jt 1 life sat jt 2 GDPpc jt1 3 edu jt 4 male% 5 age jt

6 Arg 7 Bra 8 Col 9 CoRi 10 Chi 11 Ecu 12 Sal 13 Gua
14 Hon 15 Mex 16 Nic 17 Pan 18 Par 19 Per 20 Uru 21 Ven
22 DomR u jt
33:3
The results are presented in the Table 33.6: by the small number of observations, the coef-
Once again, life satisfaction, the only statisti- cient of the GDP per capita growth rate would
cally signicant variable (in addition to the indicate an impact that is almost 50 % less than in
dummy for Panama), presents a positive relation the former model. A 1 % increase in the GDP per
that is now much stronger,24 with a margin in capita modies the margin in favor of the incum-
favor of the incumbent. An increase of 0.1 in the bent by only 0.64 points. Thus, if the GDP per
average life satisfaction (a tenth of a level on the capita were to grow 5 %, the percentage gap of
4-level scale), increases the margin in favor of votes between the incumbent and the opposition
the incumbent by 16 points: if the incumbent would only change by 3.2 points in favor of the
wins, its victory is more striking; if it loses, its incumbent. In this manner, if subjective well-
defeat margin is cut down by 16 points, that is, being turns out to be better than economic per-
the election is much closer. formance (economic vote) to explain the vote for
Economic performance, on the other hand, the incumbent or the opposition and the margin
seems to have a smaller impact now that the by which these win, the inclusion of the country
country xed effects are considered in the analy- xed effects conrms its superiority.
sis. Once again, it is not statistically signicant, There is a very interesting change in a coefcient
but giving the benet of the doubt and supposing, sign that should be pointed out. Although the mag-
as before, that this lack of signicance is caused nitude of the coefcients changes from one model
to another (with and without country xed effects),
24 they all keep the same sign, except for one: educa-
The coefcient is practically four times greater than in
the model without the country xed effects. tion. More education, as we saw in Table 33.4,
Table 33.6 Model to explain the margin of victory between the incumbent and opposition with intraregional effects
Dependent variable: Inc-Op
Independent variables Coefcient (Standard error)
Constant 695.506 (651.555)
life_sat 164.161* (81.306)
PIBpc 0.640 (1.519)
Edu 8.007 (8.418)
Male% 15.859 (13.200)
Age 7.452 (6.395)
Arg 24.939 (41.254)
Bra 32.169 (42.615)
Col 73.909 (67.503)
CoRi 103.490 (60.072)
Chi 4.288 (52.793)
Ecu 36.188 (33.121)
Sal 82.124 (59.951)
Gua 111.078 (65.412)
Hon 87.060 (50.546)
Mex 88.270 (61.978)
Nic 62.965 (46.223)
Pan 60.799* (32.363)
Par 7.243 (31.078)
Uru 15.446 (56.973)
Ven 62.762 (52.810)
DomR 46.957 (34.112)
R2 0.627
n 32
*Signicant at 10 %
contributed to change the margin in favor of the made regarding Bolivia. The goodness of t of
incumbent. However, when taking the country the model is worth emphasizing. The model
xed effects into account, we may observe that explains around 63 % of the variability of the
education helps to change the margin in favor of margin of victory between the incumbent and the
the opposition. Also, the impact is greater: when opposition. There is, therefore, an enormous
average education changed by 1 year, it used to increase in the goodness of t when the country
modify the margin by 3.6 (in favor of the incum- xed effects are considered (from 18 to 63 %).
bent); now it changes it by 8 (in favor of the This would indicate that there are countries
opposition). A detailed interpretation, well- where the elections margins of victory have
supported by theory, goes beyond the scope of been distinctly greater than in others (countries
this research work. Nevertheless, the idea that where the victories and defeats are more striking):
more education makes citizens more aware and including the country dummy variables, notably
makes them more demanding of the results increasing the explanatory capacity of the model,
of governmental administration is very reasonable. controls this effect. In brief, isolating this effect
This would clearly make it less likely for the distills the impact caused by the variables, reveal-
parties in power to win consecutively. The coef- ing even greater impact by subjective well-being
cient, however, still lacks statistical signicance. (four times greater), lower impact (almost by half)
For the rest, Bolivia is the reference by the economic situation, and a more reasonable
category. Therefore, the interpretation of the impact by education, although only the rst one is
other countries interceptions, nonsignicant, is statistically signicant.
33.4 Conclusions determinants) as a better trigger to vote for the

incumbent or opposition than economic perfor-
Albeit unknown until now, the usefulness of sub- mance. The rst (and this is a signicant theoret-
jective well-being to predict electoral results is quite ical contribution to the topic of the vote for the
clear. Here subjective well-being was proven, with incumbent or the opposition) is a better cognitive
strong statistical support, to have a positive, strong shortcut to reward or punish the incumbent than
relation with the probability that the incumbent will the latter. More so than by their pocketbook or
triumph in the presidential elections. Higher levels the health of the economy of their country,
in the average life satisfaction of Latin Americans citizens seem to steer by their own life satisfac-
make it more likely that the incumbent party will tion when choosing a heuristic tool to evaluate
again win the presidential elections, whereas lower government administrations and issue their vote
levels make it more probable that an opposing party accordingly.
will win the next elections. In theory, this is explained because life satis-
Supporting these results, the impact of subjec- faction or subjective well-being considers the
tive well-being on the electoral margin by which complete well-being of a person and not just
the incumbent or opposition wins was also con- well-being in a single sphere of his/her life (the
rmed: considering the ruling party and the stron- economic one), letting people judge their own
gest opposition party (the opposing party with the well-being more completely, which translates
most votes in the election), if the average life into a consequent punishment or reward for the
satisfaction of citizens increases, the percentage party in power and therefore helps give a better
margin (of the received votes) between both will explanation of the electoral results. As a heuristic
change in favor of the incumbent party: if it wins, or a cognitive shortcut, economic performance is
its victory will be more pronounced, and if it loses, rather lacking (because it overestimates the role
its defeat will be less clear (the election will have played by income) when faced with subjective
been closer). If the average life satisfaction well-being, a heuristic indicator by denition.
decreases, the changes will be in favor of the In addition, this has notable implications in
opposing party: if it wins, it will do so by a greater terms of public policy. If subjective well-being
margin, and if it loses, the margin by which it does and not income is the relevant variable to achieve
so (the difference in percentage of votes in favor reelection (i.e., that the incumbent party wins
of the incumbent) will be smaller. again), we would undoubtedly see a reassign-
In other respects, it was proven that the vote for ment of resources towards what produces more
the incumbent or the opposition is better explained life satisfaction, instead of what produces more
by subjective well-being than by economic per- income. That is to say, there would be priority
formance, since the impact that subjective well- interest in directing resources towards generating
being has on the probability that the incumbent or well-being instead of Gross Domestic Product.
the opposition will be victorious, such as on the Finally, it is worth repeating that the well-
margin of victory in favor of one party or another, being of people, as lived and experienced (and
is clearly higher than the impact from economic therefore reported) by them, emerges as an
performance. This is an extremely important con- extremely useful tool though regrettably
tribution with theoretical implications for litera- wasted to predict electoral results. The ndings
ture regarding the vote for the incumbent or the made here entail enormous international rele-
opposition. For years, the academy has been vance, since they supply an extremely valuable
trying to explain the vote for the incumbent or tool both for the academy and for the political
the opposition with economic performance; how- parties who are probably the most interested
ever, the triumph of the incumbent or the opposi- to know their chances to win the elections
tion is better explained by subjective well-being. beforehand and act accordingly. It thus consists
This should fuel the theoretical debate, draw- of the scientically substantiated discovery of a
ing attention to subjective well-being (and its highly useful tool to predict electoral results.
Appendix
628
Table 33.7 Character of the parties winning presidential elections in Latin America during the 19952010 period
Year
Country 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
Argentina inc op op inc
Bolivia op op op inc
Brazil inc op inc inc
Colombia op op inc inc
Costa Rica op inc op inc
Chile inc inc op
Ecuador op op op op inc
El Salvador inc inc op
Guatemala op op op
Honduras inc op op op
Mexico op inc
Nicaragua op inc op
Panama op op op
Paraguay inc inc op
Peru inc op op
Uruguay inc op inc
Venezuela op inc inc inc
Dominican Rep. op inc
Year 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
Source: Prepared by the author based upon information from the Political Database of the Americas
Note: It is worth clarifying that during this period two more presidential elections were held, one in Guatemala and the other in Peru, both in 1995. However, they are not
included in the sample because there is no data on the SWB in these countries from this year
inc means that the winning party or coalition was the incumbent, op means that the winning party or coalition belongs to the opposition
I. Martnez Bravo
Table 33.8 Character of the parties winning the presidential elections from 1995 to 2010 in Latin America
Character of the winning parties # won episodes % won episodes
Incumbent 27 44
Opposition 34 56
Source: Prepared by the author based upon data from the Political Database of the Americas
Note: Each election in each country from 1995 to 2010 is called an episode
n 61 episodes
metro and the elections by episodea

Table 33.9 Lag in the information from Latinobaro
Costa El
Year Argentina Bolivia Brazil Colombia Rica Chile Ecuador Salvador Guatemala
1995 L(0)
1996 L(0)
1997 L(1)
1998 L(1) L(1) L(1) L(1)
1999 L(1) L(1) L(1) L(1)
2000
2001
2002 L(0) L(0) L(0) L(1) L(0)
2003 L(1) L(0)
2004 L(1)
2005 L(0) L(0)
2006 L(0) L(1) L(1) L(0)
2007 L(0) L(0)
2008
2009 L(0) L(0) L(1) L(1)
2010 L(1) L(1) L(1)
Source: Prepared by the author based on information from the Political Database of the Americas and
Latinobarometro
Note: Letter L (for Lag) and the number in parentheses indicate whether it was necessary to hold back the information
from Latinobar ometro, that is, whether the elections from a particular year were studied with the Latinobar ometro poll
from that year or from the year before. Thus, L(1) indicates a lag of 1 period and L(0), evidently, the absence of lag. In
other words, episodes with L(1) indicate that the electoral result is studied based on the Latinobarometro poll from the
year before. Those from 1999 are paradigmatic cases: since a survey was not conducted that year, the electoral results
from the elections that took place that year are necessarily explained using information from the 1998 edition of
Latinobarometro. This is why all of the episodes in this line are labeled with L(1). On the other hand, the boxes labeled
with L(0) indicate that the electoral results from the elections that year were studied based on the information from the
Latinobarometro issued that same year.
a
Episode is understood as each election in each country from 1995 to 2010
630
metro and the elections by episodea

Table 33.10 Lag in the information from Latinobaro
Year Honduras Mexico Nicaragua Panama Paraguay Peru Dominican Rep. Uruguay Venezuela
1995
1996 L(0)
1997 L(0)
1998 L(1) L(0)
1999 L(1) L(1)
2000 L(0) L(0) L(0)
2001 L(0) L(0) L(0)
2002
2003 L(1)
2004 L(0) L(0) L(0) L(0)
2005 L(0)
2006 L(1) L(0) L(1) L(0)
2007
2008 L(1) L(1)
2009 L(0) L(1) L(0)
2010
Source: Prepared by the author based on information from the Political Database of the Americas and Latinobar ometro
Note: Letter L (for Lag) and the number in parentheses indicate whether it was necessary to hold back the information from Latinobar ometro, that is, whether the elections from
a particular year were studied with the Latinobarometro poll from that year or from the year before. Thus, L(1) indicates a lag of 1 period and L(0), evidently, the absence of lag.
In other words, episodes with L(1) indicate that the electoral result is studied based on the Latinobarometro poll from the year before. Those from 1999 are paradigmatic cases:
since a survey was not conducted that year, the electoral results from the elections that took place that year are necessarily explained using information from the 1998 edition of
Latinobar ometro. This is why all of the episodes in this line are labeled with L(1). On the other hand, the boxes labeled with L(0) indicate that the electoral results from the
elections that year were studied based on the information from the Latinobar ometro issued that same year.
a
Episode is understood as each election in each country from 1995 to 2010
I. Martnez Bravo
Table 33.11 Model to test prediction of electoral results without subjective well-being and with economic
performance
Dependent variable: Op
Independent variables dF/dx (Standard error)
GDPpc 0.008 (0.017)
Edu 0.039 (0.039)
Male% 0.015 (0.052)
Age 0.018 (0.027)
Pseudo-R2 0.030
No coefcient is statistically signicant
n 35
Table 33.12 Model to explain the margin of victory Ferrer-i-Carbonell, A. (2002). Subjective questions to
between the incumbent and opposition without subjective measure welfare and well-being: A survey. Tinbergen
well-being Institute Discussion Paper.
Fiorina, M. (1981). Retrospective voting in American
Dependent variable: Of-Op national elections. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Independent (Standard Frey, B., & Stutzer, A. (2000). Happiness, economy and
variables Coefcient error) institutions. The Economic Journal, 110, 918938.
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Author Bios
Victoria Ateca Amestoy is Associate Professor Social Inequalities (2010; Seismo: Zurich);
in the Department of Economic Analysis II in the Care in Households in Precarious Socio-
University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), economic Conditions in Chile, Costa Rica and
Spain. Her research interests are cultural eco- Spain, Soziale Welt, Sonderband 20, Care im
nomics, behavioral economics and social Spiegel der soziologischen Diskussion.
indicators. Some of her papers have been
Victor Alfredo Bustos y de la Tijera has a
published in The Journal of Socio Economics,
Journal of Cultural Economics, Social Indicators degree in Actuarial Science from the Faculty of
Research, European Journal of Operational Sciences UNAM, Master in Statistics and
Research and Journal of Happiness Studies. Operations Research from the Institute of
Research in Applied Mathematics and Systems
Carmen Barros Lezaeta is Sociologist from from the same University, and a Ph.D. in Statis-
Ponticia Universidad Catolica de Chile and tics from the London School of Economics and
having M. A. in Sociology. Professor of Sociol- Political Science. He has been a professor and
ogy, Catholic University of Chile. researcher at various academic institutions, as
Pablo Beyta is Director of the Social Research well as having held various positions at the
Center of TECHO-Chile and professor at the National Institute of Statistics and Geography
Alberto Hurtado University. He has taught in (INEGI). Currently he is a Research Assistant
the Pontical Catholic University of Chile and in the Directorate General Research INEGI.
Diego Portales University. As a researcher, he Esteban Calvo is an Associate Professor of Public
worked at the Institute for Public Policy UDP and Policy at Universidad Diego Portales, Chile. He has
the Hamburger Institut fur Sozialforschung served as a consultant for the United Nations,
(Germany). He is Sociologist and Master in Soci- Government of Chile, Harvard University, and Cen-
ology from the Pontical Catholic University of ter for Retirement Research. He received his Ph.D.
Chile, and candidate for Master of Philosophy in Sociology from Boston College and M.S. in Pub-
from the University of Chile. lic Health from Harvard University, and B.S. in
Monica Budowski is an Professor of Sociology, Sociology from Universidad Catolica, Chile.
Social Policy and Social Work at the University of Haydee Castillo Flores is the regional coordina-
Fribourg, Switzerland. Her research areas are tor of the Womens Forum for Central American
social inequalities, health, social policies in devel- Integration (FMICA by his Spanish acronymous)
oping countries, social support and networks, gen- and Director of the Leaderships Institute of the
der and generations. Recent publications: Segovias (ILLS). She has a BA in Social Work
Conceptualising precarious prosperity empir- and a Master in Planning and Development. The
ical and theoretical elements for debate. Interna- ILLS is the main promoter of the rst research on
tional Journal of Comparative Sociology (2010), womens happiness in Nicaragua.

International Handbooks of Quality-of-Life, DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-7203-7
634 Author Bios
Paola Cubas-Barragan holds an Mphil. Devel- Province of Buenos Aires), Director of the Cen-
opment Studies from Oxford University and is ter for Regional and Experimental Economics
currently undertaking her doctoral research in (CERX), Argentina.
Sociology [BUAP(Mex)-Rhodes University
Ramon Florenzano is an Professor of Psychia-
(SA)] on how communities organize themselves
try, University of Chile and the Andes, Research
in Malawi and the role of the international com-
Professor, University of Desarrolllo.
munity. She coordinates the Wikiprogress Amer-
ica Latina Network (OECD-Foro Consultivo Nestor Gandelman is the Director of the
Cientco y Tecnologico). Department of Economics at Universidad ORT
Uruguay. He holds a Ph.D. for University of
Rebeca de Juan Daz, Professor, Department of
Rochester. His research focuses on applied
Economics, Universidad Nacional de Educacion
microeconomics and development.
a Distancia (UNED) (Spain). Ph.D. in Economics
by UNED (Spain) and Master in Economic Anal- Jose de Jesus Garcia Vega earned a Ph.D. from
ysis and Public Finance by Instituto de Estudios Texas A&M University. He is an economics
Fiscales. The research is focused on the Econom- professor and the director of the Center of
ics of Happiness, Industrial Organization, Well-being Studies at the University of
Microeconometrics and Banking sector. Monterrey. He is 1 of the 100 researchers invited
to collaborate with the World Book of Happiness
Rolando Diaz-Loving is a full time professor in
and is a member of the BOD of the ISQOLS
the Faculty of Psychology of the National Auton-
and CIC.
omous University of Mexico. He has published
profusely on Culture and Personality, Teresa Garca-Munoz is Assistant Professor in
Ethonopsychology, Couple Relationships, Sexu- the Department of Quantitative Method in the
ality and Health. University de Granada (Spain). Her research
interests include happiness, economics of reli-
Benjamn Domnguez Trejo. Psychologist. Pro-
gion and experimental economics. Some of her
fessor at Research and Postgraduate Division of
papers have been published in Journal of Eco-
Psychology Faculty, National University of
nomic Behavior and Organization, Journal of
Mexico since 1975. Member from the National
Population Economics, International Journal of
Researcher System since 1987. Clinical Consul-
Social Welfare, Journal of Economic Psychol-
tant of Pain Clinic at the National Medical Center
ogy, Economics and Philosophy, and Journal of
20 de Noviembre ISSSTE since 2001.
Behavioral Decision Making.
Francisca Dussaillant is a Professor at School of
Victoria Giarrizzo es Licenciada en Economia
Government, University of Development,
(UBA), Doctora en Economa (UBA), Profesora
Santiago, Chile.
adjunta de Epistemologa de la Economa
Maikol Elizondo-Lara. Health Economists; (UBA), Investigadora del Instituto Interdisci-
holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Universidad plinario de Economa Poltica de Buenos Aires
de las Americas Puebla, Mexico. He is cur- (UBA). Directora de CERX, Argentina.
rently Director of Pharmaco-Economics at
Carol Graham is Leo Pasvolsky Senior Fellow
Roche-Mexico.
at the Brookings Institution and College Park
Mara Beatriz Fernandez Lorca is an Sociolo- Professor at the University of Maryland. She
gist from Ponticia Universidad Catolica de has been a Vice President at Brookings and a
Chile and having Ph.D. in Sociology. Coordina- Special Advisor to the Vice President of the
tor of the Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology, Inter-American Development Bank.
Pontical Catholic University of Chile.
Jorge Guardiola is Associate Professor at the
Dardo Ferrer, holds a degree in Economics Department of Applied Economics in
(Universidad Nacional del Sur, Bahia Blanca, Universidad de Granada, Spain. His research
Author Bios 635
interest are human development, subjective well- Since 2001 she is National Researcher by the
being, water access and water management, and Science and Technology National Council. Now-
hunger. He has eld experience in Latin Ameri- adays she is working on the identication and
can countries, particularly Guatemala, Mexico evaluation of povertys psychological costs
and Honduras. along of the human life span from a socio-
ecological approach.
Mara Soledad Herrera is Sociologist from
Ponticia Universidad Catolica de Chile. Master Eduardo Lora is a Colombian economist, cur-
Degree in Social Gerontology and Ph.D. in Soci- rently afliated to Harvard Kennedy School of
ology, from Universidad Autonoma de Madrid. Government. He is Vice-President elect of the
Director of the Department of Sociology, Latin American and the Caribbean Economic
Ponticia Universidad Catolica de Chile. Active Association and has been Chief Economist of
member of the core group of LARNA (Latin the Inter-American Development Bank.
American Research Network on Ageing), Oxford
Ivan Martnez Bravo is an economist and polit-
Institute of Population Ageing.
ical scientist who does research in matters related
David A. Hurtado, ScD, ScM. Yerby Postdoc- to Well-being, working mainly in the study of
toral Research Fellow. Harvard School of Public Subjective Well-being. He is coauthor of Mea-
Health. Department of Social and Behavioral surement, Research and Inclusion in Public Pol-
Sciences, Center for Work, Health and Well- icy of Subjective Well-being: Latin America, as
being. well as Ranking of Happiness in Mexico 2012, In
what municipalities do Mexicans live with a
Georgina Jocik Hung is Subjective Well-being
higher quality of life? He assisted the coordina-
Researcher of Universidad de Granma, MSc in
tion of The Measurement of Progress and Well-
Healths Psychology, Teaching Specialist, Aux-
being. Proposals from Latin America. At present,
iliary Professor. She has published in several
he coordinates the Research Department at
magazines either national or international and
Imagina Mexico A. C
has participated in numerous international
events. Jessica Martinez Cruz is an action-oriented
researcher interested in life stories
Gerardo Leyva Parra having degree in Econom-
methodologies. She has a BA in Sociology as
ics from the Autonomous University of
well as an MA in Gender and Development.
Aguascalientes. Holds a Master in Economics
She is the author of Pobreza y felicidad en
from ITAM and a Masters and Doctorate in Eco-
Nicaragua: Historias de vida de mujeres rurales
nomic Development from Cornell University and
e indgenas de Nueva Segovia (Poverty and hap-
the Diploma in Positive Psychology from the
piness in Nicaragua: Life stories of indigenous
Universidad Iberoamericana. In addition to hav-
and rural women from Nueva Segovia) (UCA,
ing taught economics at several universities, has
2014). She is based in Nicaragua where she is
two decades of professional experience at the
currently working on a research project on Indig-
National Institute of Statistics and Geography,
enous perceptions of well-being.
where he currently serves as Deputy Director
General of Research INEGI. Rene Millan golds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the
University of Studies of Torino, Italy. He is a
Mara Lopez Lena is full professor at School of
researcher at the Institute of Social Research.
Psychology, National Autonomous University of
Level III of SNI. He is coordinator of the Semi-
Mexico-UNAM. She got her Ph.D. at UNAM in
nar satisfaction with life and society of
1999, and has academic knowledge from three
the UNAM.
masters: Experimental Psychology, Environmen-
tal Psychology and Individual and Couple Ther- Francisco Mochon Morcillo received a Ph.D. in
apy. She was post-doctoral research fellow at Economics from Indiana University and from
University of California, Irvine (19992000). UAM. At present is full professor in Economics
636 Author Bios
in the Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Joaquina Palomar Lever is a Ph.D. in Psychol-

Distancia (UNED). His research interests are the ogy from the National Autonomous University of
economics of happiness and the digital economy. Mexico. She is currently a research professor in
the department of Psychology of the Universidad
Rodrigo Montero, Ph.D. is an Associate Profes-
Iberoamericana, where he coordinates the
sor of Economics in the Department of Economics
research on vulnerable groups, quality of life
at Universidad Diego Portales. His research
and family. He is a member of the National
interests are related to the labor market, impact
System of Researchers, Level 2.
evaluation, and more recently with happiness
economics. Tomas Rau, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of
Economics in the Institute of Economics at
Gerardo Montero Ruvalcaba Palacios is Ph.D.
Ponticia Universidad Catolica de Chile.
in Health Psychology from the National Autono-
Broadly, Dr. Raus research focuses on identi-
mous University of Mexico. Member of the
cation and estimation of causal effects in topics
National System of Researchers (SNI), the
of economics of education, labor economics, and
National Council of Science and Technology
development economics.
(CONACYT) Research Professor Department of
Nursing, University of Guanajuato, Campus Mariano Rojas is professor of economics at
Irapauto. His research is aimed at studying the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences,
relationships between the autonomic nervous sys- Mexico (FLACSO-Mexico) and at Universidad
tem and the states of chronic pain, anxiety and Popular Autonoma del Estado de Puebla,
depression. Mexico. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from
The Ohio State University. Mariano Rojas is
Ana I. Moro Egido, Ph.D. in Economics, at the
member of Mexicos National Research System;
Departamento de Fundamentos del An alisis
he is also President Elect of the International
Econ omico at University of Alicante, is currently
Society for Quality of Life Studies, as well as
Associate Professor at the University of Granada.
coordinator of the initiative Measuring the Prog-
Her research areas are dynamics macroeconom-
ress of Societies: A Perspective from Mexico.
ics, poverty and material deprivation, well-being
and education. Ana Miriam Romo Anaya holds a Masters of
Science in Ofcial Statistics by CIMAT. Gradu-
Emilio Moyano Diaz. Doctor of Psychology,
ate in Applied Mathematics, has taught at the
Professor, School of Psychology, University of
Autonomous University and Polytechnic Univer-
Talca (Chile), Prof. Away U. Federal do Parana
sity of Aguascalientes teaching materials related
(Brazil). Inv . Responsible Fondecyt Project
to Mathematics and Statistics. Currently working
No. 1131152. Coordinating Research Group
in the Directorate General Research Associate
Quality of Life and Healthy Environments.
INEGI.
Marcelo Neri is Minister of Strategic Affairs;
Rozzana Sanchez Aragon is a full time profes-
Ph.D. in Economics, Princeton University.
sor of the National Autonomous University of
Founder of the Center for Social Policies (CPS)
Mexico. Her interest areas of research are:
at Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV); teaches at
romantic relationships, emotions, emotional reg-
EPGE/FGV. Edited books on Microcredit;
ulation and well-being.
Social Security; Diversity; Rural Poverty; Bolsa
Familia; Consumption and Middle Class. He was Pablo Schiafno (1983) is an Economist formed
secretary general of the Council of Economic and at Universidad Di Tella and the University of
Social Development (CDES) and president of the Warwick (United Kingdom). His research is
Institute of Applied Economic Research (Ipea). based on Macroeconomics, Well-Being, Eco-
He evaluated policies in more than dozen nomic History, History of Economic Thought
countries and designed and implemented policies and the study of Economic Decisions in Complex
at three government levels in Brazil. and Non-Linear Systems. He is now professor of
Author Bios 637
World Economic History at Universidad Di Tella researcher for over 20 years, and currently works
and Head of Research at C.B.R.S (Universidad at CRECE in Manizales, Colombia.
de Palermo). He has published in referee journals
William Daniel Vera Rojas received his Ph.D.
and in specialized books.
from the University of Fribourg. His research at
Christian Suter is Professor at the Department the Division of Sociology, Social Policy and
of Sociology of the University of Neuchatel, Social work was dedicated to the region of
Switzerland. His research has focused on global Latin America, in particular social policies, wel-
debt crises, economic globalization and political fare regimes, middle classes and care. Recent
transformation in Latin America, social inequal- publications: Ni en la abundancia, ni en la
ity and poverty as well as on social indicators and pobreza. Condiciones de bienestar y precariedad
social reporting. He has published and edited en hogares de estratos medios y medios-bajos en
more than 25 books and special issues, as well Chile y Costa Rica (2014; Lom editiones,
as many articles in international social sciences Santiago); Regimen de Bienestar en Chile:
journals, encyclopedias, and volumes. liberalismo, crecimiento y ciudadana social
fragmented in Justicia Social y Diversidad.
Martin Tetaz is an Economist specialized in
Articulacion desde una perspectiva intercultural.
Behavioral Economics. He has done post gradu-
(2009; Universidad Catolica de Temuco, Chile).
ate studies in Psychology and is the author of
Psyconomics. He has published papers on cog- Amparo Victorio Estrada is presently with the
nitive biases and the Economic of Happiness in Iberoamerican University in Mexico City. She
peer-review journal. His last work Biased obtained her doctoral degree in natural sciences
perceptions of income distribution and at the Cologne University, Germany, and has
preferences for redistribution: Evidence from a published several contributions regarding well-
survey experiment which appeared in the Jour- being, emotional distress, social mobility, and
nal of Public Economics, received the 2013 substance abuse.
ANCE AWARD for extraordinary piece of
Jorge Yamamoto is Social Psychologist and
research paper.
Anthropologist from Ponticia Universidad
Liliana Velasquez, holds a B.A. in Economics Catolica del Peru (PUCP) and associate professor
and a M.A. in International Affairs. She has been at the same university.
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1 Happiness, Research, and Latin America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Part I The Relevance of Latin American Happiness

Part II Human Relations and Happiness in Latin America

9 Happiness and Social Capital: Evidence from Latin

Part III Material Conditions and Happiness in Latin America

Part IV Social Factors and Happiness in Latin America

20 Socioeconomic Disparities in Subjective

Part V Health and Happiness in Latin America

Part VI The Importance of Subjective Well-Being Indicators

31 A Perceived Human Development Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 557

Author Bios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 633

Victoria Ateca Amestoy BETS-Dpto. Fundamentos del Analisis

Amparo Victorio Estrada Department of Psychology, Universidad

Marcelo Neri Center for Social Policies/Getulio Vargas Foundation

1.1 Happiness spend much of their time thinking about happi-

# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016 1

1.4 Happiness in Latin America

The emergence of happiness research brought

2.1 Introduction world population average (Helliwell and Wang

# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016 17

the World Values Survey (19812008). The dis-

Table 2.1 Sample countries, survey year and number of cases

Trust with weak ties Institutional confidence

Latin Western United Latin Western United

Table 2.3 Family relations in Latin America

# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016 31

4.1 Introduction with a movement from a less desired situation to a

# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016 51

Different critiques to the predominance of which is relevant to any discussion about

4.2.2.3 People May Easily Adapt affects). In addition, satisfactory inter-personal

Table 4.1 GDP per capita and pro-market reform index

Table 4.2 Subjective well-being indicators in Latin America

researchers to move beyond their understanding of interpersonal relations; while

Bibliography Ferrer-I-Carbonell, A. (2002). Subjective questions to

5.1 Introduction For instance, from S. Bolivars point of view:

# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016 63

5.2 Method Each article included in this research was dened

6.1 Introduction relational goods have on well-being experienced

According to Bruni (2008), the concept of rela-

# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016 91

The family continues to hold a central role in

Table 6.2 Other social relationships by income quintile (percentages)

Table 6.3 Social support by income quintile (percentages)

received by households with economically active

Some studies have shown that inhabitants of

Table 6.7 Political Participation by income quintile 6.5 Relational Goods

Table 6.9 Other social relationships and happiness (percentages)

Several studies have recognized the importance

Table 6.10 Social support and happiness (percentages)