I’m not sure what an absolutely comparable number would be: people would have to be comparing themselves to the same unchanging criteria over time. The evidence, from the Easterlin Paradox etc. is that people do change their standards over time and largely seem work out how they are doing my comparing themselves against others. As such it looks like increasingly worldwide life satisfaction would be very hard.
I take these sorts of argument as reasons to move away from life satisfaction towards direct measures of people’s experience in the moment. I want to know how good or bad the person actually feels, not how well they they are doing against an arbitrary and changing standard.
I’m not sure what an absolutely comparable number would be: people would have to be comparing themselves to the same unchanging criteria over time. The evidence, from the Easterlin Paradox etc. is that people do change their standards over time and largely seem work out how they are doing my comparing themselves against others. As such it looks like increasingly worldwide life satisfaction would be very hard.
I take these sorts of argument as reasons to move away from life satisfaction towards direct measures of people’s experience in the moment. I want to know how good or bad the person actually feels, not how well they they are doing against an arbitrary and changing standard.