That’s an interesting point. It sounds like you are probably right that we shouldn’t expect better health to improve life satisfaction. I could try to argue that everyone being a little healthier for the first 70 years of their life would mean less unemployment, loneliness and chronic pain, and that those effects would be larger than the ones you bring up. But I don’t think that’s likely.
I also agree with you that the main value of better health is just in averting years of life lost. In fact, I think global health interventions are likely to be better than growth interventions for this reason.
The reason I ran the health regression (as it seems you surmised) was because that was something that people have brought up as something that might be better than gdp growth at boosting happiness, and we have good longitudinal data on it.
I also agree with you that the main value of better health is just in averting years of life lost. In fact, I think global health interventions are likely to be better than growth interventions for this reason.
The reason I ran the health regression (as it seems you surmised) was because that was something that people have brought up as something that might be better than gdp growth at boosting happiness, and we have good longitudinal data on it.
Agreed, and I commend you for this.
On the other hand, I’m afraid we might be talking past each other here (though I’m not sure how important this is):
you are probably right that we shouldn’t expect better health to improve life satisfaction
I didn’t say that—my fault, I think I wasn’t clear enough. I’m pretty sure I would be less satisfied with life if my health was worse, and I think one can extrapolate that for most people—just ask them, or observe how their satisfaction decreases after they get sick, or compare sick and healthy people, etc.
What I said is that my average satisfactionwouldn’t increase if my life was saved. And I meant that your regression using “number of years people in a country lose to ill health” is probably a poor proxy for what you’re trying to measure (i.e., better health vis-a-vis life satisfaction). This is because your metric health years is probably dominated by averted deaths (especially if one is tracking marginal improvements), and average life satisfaction only measures the welfare of those who are alive—because the dead don’t speak.
Take world1: I suddenly die of disease on my 6th birthday, and world2: my life is saved on my 6th birthday. There’s no reason to believe that:
a) I’d happier than usual (i.e., the average) on the day following my birthday in world2, or that
b) my average happiness in world1 is smaller than in world2 (either measured on 6th or on my 30th birthday).
(I now realize this might explain why some scholars use increases in mean height to measure the effects of health improvements—because this is likely more robust)
I think we are on the same page here. I was just using “improve life satisfaction” as shorthand for “improve average life satisfaction across the whole population.”
That’s an interesting point. It sounds like you are probably right that we shouldn’t expect better health to improve life satisfaction. I could try to argue that everyone being a little healthier for the first 70 years of their life would mean less unemployment, loneliness and chronic pain, and that those effects would be larger than the ones you bring up. But I don’t think that’s likely.
I also agree with you that the main value of better health is just in averting years of life lost. In fact, I think global health interventions are likely to be better than growth interventions for this reason.
The reason I ran the health regression (as it seems you surmised) was because that was something that people have brought up as something that might be better than gdp growth at boosting happiness, and we have good longitudinal data on it.
Agreed, and I commend you for this.
On the other hand, I’m afraid we might be talking past each other here (though I’m not sure how important this is):
I didn’t say that—my fault, I think I wasn’t clear enough. I’m pretty sure I would be less satisfied with life if my health was worse, and I think one can extrapolate that for most people—just ask them, or observe how their satisfaction decreases after they get sick, or compare sick and healthy people, etc.
What I said is that my average satisfaction wouldn’t increase if my life was saved. And I meant that your regression using “number of years people in a country lose to ill health” is probably a poor proxy for what you’re trying to measure (i.e., better health vis-a-vis life satisfaction). This is because your metric health years is probably dominated by averted deaths (especially if one is tracking marginal improvements), and average life satisfaction only measures the welfare of those who are alive—because the dead don’t speak.
Take world1: I suddenly die of disease on my 6th birthday, and world2: my life is saved on my 6th birthday. There’s no reason to believe that:
a) I’d happier than usual (i.e., the average) on the day following my birthday in world2, or that
b) my average happiness in world1 is smaller than in world2 (either measured on 6th or on my 30th birthday).
(I now realize this might explain why some scholars use increases in mean height to measure the effects of health improvements—because this is likely more robust)
I think we are on the same page here. I was just using “improve life satisfaction” as shorthand for “improve average life satisfaction across the whole population.”